Churchmen should generally and shamefully defect from them But this Ministration of those deserted Doctrines is not to separate from it but to stick Firm and Constant to it yea and to keep it up still as a Visible Body for all its true Members to Adhere to And I hope true and faithful Ministers of a Church may stand by it in maintenance and ministration of the Truths and Laws of God tho' that continue on a Breach and keep them at a distance from those Revolting Pastors who have defected and seperated themselves from both The foresaid Justification of Immoral Practices in such particular Cases and maintainance thereof by Doctrinal Salvo's will make the Consciences of Transgressors Easy and in Rest at Sin They will by this Means see no Breach of Duty in what they do nor danger of Punishment for doing it They are taught in these Cases to call Evil Good and to put Darkness for Light whereto such Heavy Woes are denounced by the Prophet and so under the greatest Load and Danger of Sin and Guilt think themselves Safe and Innocent This God calls Speaking Peace to the wicked or to those who should have no Peace but Terror and Indignation in their present Evil Ways And Sewing Pillows to bolster up Evil Doers to make them Easy and at Rest in their Unrighteousness And Strengthning the Hands of the VVicked making them bold and forward in their Ungodly Courses and barring their Repentance and Return from their Wickedness by leaving in them no Conscience of Guilt no Relentings or Remorse for their going on therein Now all this is a direct Ministration to destroy Souls And whilst False Prophets and Devouring VVolves are ministring Lies for their Destruction it is evidently and highly Incumbent on true and faithful Pastors who are set to Save Souls to minister the word of Truth for their Salvation Accordingly amidst all these Preachers of Peace and Strengthners of Evil Doers God tells the Prophets of Israel that they should not like Subtile Foxes have studied only how to slip aside and shun danger by silently Conniving at these Doings But ought to have gone up into the Gaps and have made up the Hedges Seeing they were publick Ministers deputed by God to act for him and for the good of Souls their part had been to stand in his Counsel and to have caused his People to hear his Words and thereby to have turned them from the Evil of their Doings When the People run thus to do Evil in such Cases without any Sence of Guilt or by calling Evil Good they heap up Sin and Death to themselves and know it not and so Perish for want of Knowledge But the Priests Lips must keep up Knowledge among the People and they must have the Knowledge of the Law at his Mouth Mal. 2. 7. And if my People are destrayed for lack of Knowledge because thou hast rejected Knowledge and the Communication thereof to my People I will also reject thee that thou shalt be no Priest to me saith God Hos. 4. 6. Such is the Obligation incumbent on true Pastors to Minister moral Truths when immoral Practises are justified in particular Cases and all the moral Duties opposite thereto are vacated and taken off by undermining Propositions and Doctrinal Salvo's And they are still more strictly obliged to this Ministration if the Practises justified by such Salvo's are 1. In immoralities of Great and general ill Fame and in things extreamly Scandalous to Religion All gross Violations of common Honesty and Justice and Breach of Faith especially when confirmed by Solemn Oaths and renouncing of Duty and Subjection to Superiours more particularly to Patents and Princes and such others are immoralities that all Sober Men think they ought to account Scandalous and of highest Reproach For the Duties transgressed thereby are generally known to be of greatest Importance for keeping up Society and for securing the Comforts of humane Life Which therefore all Mankind that feel such need of Society and would find Comfort in Life cry up and utterly decry the Breaches of them So that these Immoralities are sure to bring the most general Infamy upon any thing that is Guilty of them yea and upon Religion it self should it ever be found or represented as allowing or giving Countenance thereto Now the Ministers of Religion are to be especially careful to preserve its good Name and to keep up an honourable Opinion and Reverence for it among Men. He has nothing of the Ministerial Care or of a Ministerial Spirit who is careless and unconcern'd how ill and irreverently Men think of Religion Indeed if they would keep Religion if self up in the World they must keep up this Reverence and good Opinion of it For if once Mankind come to think ill or despicably of it they are never like to trouble themselves much therewith nor to Labour after much thereof And if they would preserve Religion reputable and secure of Mens Reverence and honourable Opinion they must watchfully keep all those things out of it which deservedly loose and lessen Mens good Opinion They must have a jealous Care to preserve it pure not admitting or justifying any thing that in the common Sense of Mankind is Infamous or of bad Name And therefore if any such things as all the foremention'd immoralities are in an High-Degree offer to creep in or if Satans Ministers are Busie to introduce them they must Oppose and Minister against them with all their Might and presently disclaim and purge them out that Religion may be clear of them They must Watch as far as they are able to keep them out of the Practice of Men least from such Practice of its Professors the Lookers on should Harbour a Presumption or Suspition as if Religion had some Toleration or Allowance for them Let Servants count their own Masters worthy of all Honour and Let Wives be keepers at Home and obedient to their own Husbands c. that the Word of God and his Doctrine be not Blasphemed faith St. Paul directing Timothy and Titus in that Pastoral and Ministerial Care which they should have of the Church But when these ill and infamous things appear not only in Practice but in Doctrines and come not as the blamed and prevaricating Acts of Professors but as Justified and Preached up by their Guides and Leaders Then Religion is more directly and planely brought in and the true Ministers thereof are more highly obliged to oppose them in its behalf to prevent its incurring any Scandal or Reproach thereby Or 2 If they are generally Preached up by Seducers and Men are every where Taught and perswaded to them Instead of giving any Discharge to those few Faithful Ministers that remain at such times the general falling away and Corruption of others adds to their Obligation For God and these moral Truths then have more need of their Ministration And they can have no Pretence left of puting off this Service to other
advanced for Practices against any of his Commandments The Pharisees had invented many doctrinal Salvo's to justifie Men in the Breach of moral Duties and to vacate several of Gods Holy Commandments Thus they dealt by the Breach of Oaths which they cleared by several arbitrary Limitations and nice Distinctions of their own about the Obligation of them or Mens becoming Debtors i. e. bound by them Mat. 23. 16 18. And by the Denial of Relief or Help to Parents which they said was discharged of the Obligation laid by the Fifth Commandment and free from Sin if it was salved by the Vow Corban i. e. if they had made a Vow before that they would never Relieve them Mat. 15. 4. 5. 6. Thus Frustrating the Commandments of God as he tells them and making them of none effect through their undermining Salvo's and Traditions Mat. 15. 6. and Mark 7. 9 13. Not to mention their Limiting the Obligation of all Righteousness to external Acts or other ways of their exempting many Offences forbid by their own Law as well as by that of the Blessed Iesus But when the Ministers of Christ met with these Salvo's it was their Part not to suffer them but to rescue moral Precepts from being corrupted and Mens Consciences and Practices from being insnared by them They were to beware of the Leaven of the Pharisees in these and other Points not only as private Christians to beware of imbibing it themselves but. as Pastors of suffering others to be tainted or corrupted therewith When by these and such like Glosses the Lawyers had taken away the Key of Knowledge and shut up the Kingdom of Heaven against Men as our Lord saith they as Ministers of that Kingdom were to unlock and open it to them and to make these Duties which were the Paths thereof plane for all who were sincerely desirous to walk in them They that are made Pastors and put in Station to be Great in the Kingdom of Heaven must both do the some themselves and teach others to observe even the least of Christs Commandments when others not only transgress them in their own Practice but teach Men to transgress them Mat. 15. 19. St. Paul afterwards speaks of False Apostles who corrupted the VVord of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that adulterated it as Vintners do their VVines by corrupt Mixtures blending their own Arbitrary Salvo's and Conceits therewith or Mixing their own Doctrines with Gods as St. Chrysostom comments 2 Cor. 2. 17. Who handled the VVord of God deceitfully 2. Cor. 4. 2. And spoke Lies in Hypocrisie pretending them consistent with or sometimes promotive of Duty and Piety 1 Tim. 4. 2. And perverted the Gospel of Christ Gal. 1. 17. But when the true Ministers met with any of these corrupt Infusions and Adulterations of Christian Doctrines instead of Treacherously conniving at these Adulterations they were by a purer and more sincere Ministration to cure and teach Men better They were to make full Proof of their Ministry in Preaching the VVord and to reprove and rebuke all that was contrary to it among those that would heap to themselves Teachers of Errors and Adulterations of the Truth according to their own Lusts 2 Tim. 4. 2 3 5. When others fell to speak Lies in Hypocrisie they were not to neglect the Gift that was in them that is their Pastoral Power and Function but to stir it up and put the Brethren in Remembrance of the pure and saving Christian Truths and Duties that they may discharge the part of Good Ministers of Iesus Christ 1 Tim. 4. 2. 6. 14. When Vain Tâ—lkers and Deceivers started up Teaching Things they ought not for Filt by Lucres sake they were call'd upon not only to hold fast the Faithful VVord as they had been taught and to keep to it themselves but also by Sound Doctrine to exhort and teach others and to convince and stop the Mouths of Gain-Sayers Tit. 1. 9 10. 11. Thus are the Faithful Ministers of Christ obliged to Feed the Church with the pure Administration of Moral or other Gospel Duties when the False Guides by doctrinal Salvo's and undermining Propositions are shewing Men how they may securely Vacate and Transgress them They are not to connive at such Corruptions and Adulterations of moral Precepts but to cry out and warn against them Nor to smother and keep up the real and injured Duties but to Preach and Minister them out to those Souls who are like to perish through their Ignorance and Breach thereof And this as they will answer Gods repeated Calls and Injunctions or approve themselves True and Faithful to their Ministerial Trusts To neglect it or fail therein would be Treachery and Falseness to that Sacred Doctrine which had been deposited with them and to those Souls which had been committed to them And this Ministration they are bound to tho' these corrupt Salvo's are only the Doctrines of the Pastors and Teachers as those foremention'd Salvo's of the False Prophets and of the Pharisees too I suppose were among the Jews and are not yet made the Determinations of the Church 'T is not enough on such Justification of Immoral Practices or advancement of Immoral Salvo's by the Guides of Souls to say the Church hath not altered its Articles nor justified nor salved the ill things so by any Synodical Confession For 't is a call to them for their Ministration if these things are done by the Churchmen Their Ministration is to provide against the dangers of Souls And they are allways endangered by damnable Practices whosoever teach them whether their particular Guides or whole Synods But particular Guides are the Directors which the generality of Men have for their Consciences and Practices So that the Consciences and Practices of the generality are endangered when they fall generally to teach them the Breach of Moral Duties by corrupt Salvo's And then true Guides are to warn them of these Dangers VVhen Speakers of perverse things shall arise from among themselves the Pastors are bid to take heed to their Flocks and to feed them with the VVord of Truth and Righteousness Act. 20. 28 30. And instead of abating this Obligation it will add to it if amidst all this Prevarication of the Church Men by such corrupt Salvo's the Church it self continues right in these Points and says the same it did in its publick Acts and Articles For then in these Ministrations those Faithful Pastors have as the Authority of Truth so also the Authority of their own Church on their Side Therein they only minister out among the Members what their own Church teaches and show themselves as Faithful Ministers of Christ in standing up for his Truths So Faithful Ministers of their own Church in standing up for its Doctrines As to the Point of separation from the Church I Grant that true Ministers must not separate from a Church for any Doctrines if the Church it self holds and maintains them tho' the
are they true to the part of Co-workers if they withdraw their Ministrations and leave and let him alone to do all the Work himself They are also said to be Co-workers with him of the Peoples Joy or Consolation 2 Cor. 1. 24. This Joy can be had only in the Way of Holy not of polluted Prayers and of Maintaining not of vacating Gods Precepts and of humbly and industriously Seeking to approve themselves to God by Good not of justifying themselves in Unrighteous and Wicked Practices For in those Ways they have nothing to do with Joy but remorse and Shame and Sorrow are their Portion So that if the true Pastors are to be Ministers and Co-workers of their Joy and Consolation they must Minister and Co-work at such Times to keep up pure Worship and pure Precepts and Practices among them because else they would not have what they may justly Rejoyce and take Comfort in Again the Ministerial Characters may be considered 2. Secondly as they relate to Religion And here also they carry with them a plane Obligation to the foresaid Ministrations in the Forecited Cases With Respect to Religion they are styled Ministers of the Word We will give our Selves say the Apostle to the Ministry of the Word Act. 6. 4. Or Ministers of the Gospel or of the Now Covenant The Gospel whereof I am made a Minister Eph. 3. 7. Col. 1. 23. And God hath made us able Ministers of the New Testament saith St. Paul 2. Cor. 3. 6. Or sometimes lastly Stewards of the Mysteries Let a Man so account of us as of Stewards of the Misteries of God saith the same Apostle 1 Cor. 4. 1. Now as Ministers and Stewards of the VVord of God of Religion and of its Mysteries they stand intrusted with the Charge thereof The Part of Stewards and Ministers is to keep such Pearls of Price safe to supply what is wanting to them or improve them to advantage of their Fidelity and Care wherein they must give a strict Account to their Masters So that as Ministers and Stewards of Religion and of its Mysteries they stand obliged 1. To keep and preserve them They must see that they be not lost nor injured in any Part that the Word of God be not maimed or perverted nor his Worship adulterated and polluted nor his Doctrines and Precepts either denied in Terms or vacated by corrupt Glosses or undermining Propositions This is the First Thing which they owe to those good things wherewith they are intrusted That good Thing which was committed to thee keep 2 Tim. 1. 14. O! Timothy keep that which was committed to thy Trust 1 Tim. 6. 20. Hold it fast and in the Form of Sound VVords wherein thou hast received it 2 Tim. 1. 13. And Remember how thou hast received and heard and hold fast Rev. 3. 3. These things are a Depositum 1 Tim. 6. 20. a good Depositum 2 Tim. 1. 14. or most Sacred and Pretious Things Lodged in their Hands and left to their Keeping So that their first Fidelity to these Depositums must be the Fidelity of good Keepers They must see that they be no worse for being in their Hands that nothing be Spoiled or perish from them but that they have themto produce safe intire and uncorrupted when they are call'd for back again And this Keeping of these Ministers and Stewards must not lye merely in Keeping these things thus Pure and Perfect to themselves But 2. In Keeping them up so pure and perfect among others This Worship is to be a publick Worship and Christs Followers are to joyn in Common and concur therein And this Word is to be generally and publickly communicated and a true Sence thereof is to be born up and held fast in the Church of Christ. So that these Keepers of the pure and perfect Word and Mysteries of Religion must be Ministers to exhibibit and deal them out and Stewards to dispence them The Part of Stewards lyes in dealing of them out as good Stewards of the Manifold Grace of God Minister the same one to another saith St. Peter 1 Pet. 4 10 11. And the Part of Ministers lies in Administrations or in Ministring the Gospel as St. Paul saith Ro. 15. 16. To be Ministers of the New Covenant is to have the Ministration of the Spirit and the Ministration of Righteousness which is therein offer'd 2 Cor. 3. 6 8 9. That is to stand charged with the Administration thereof by Affording People the appointed Ways of Entring and Confirming it in Administration of the Sacraments and of being built up in the Duties and of Supplying and Fetching down the Grace and Blessings thereof in Administration of the VVord and of Prayers And thus the Scripture sets off being Ministers of the VVord by having the Charge of Preaching and Testifying it To make thee a Minister and a VVitness saith our Lord to Paul when he committed the Gospel to him Act. 26 16. And the Ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus to Testific the Gospel of the Grace of God saith the Apostle Act. 20. 24. And they were then said to have fulfill'd this Ministry of the VVord when they had Preach'd it all about Act. 12. 25. As therefore they are obliged to purge out all Prophanation and polluted Matter from Worship and Prayers and all corrupt Glosses and vacating Salvo's from the Doctrines and Duties of Religion as their Faithful Keepers So are they obliged to exhibit the same thus purged and cleansed in their own Ministrations that they may keep them up among others as their Faithful Stewards and Ministers And they are very much wanting to Religion and its Mysteries if they do not acquit themselves both as their Faithful Keepers and Dispensers in the foresaid Cases And this Keeping and Dispensation of the foresaid unpolluted Worship and moral Doctrine where that can be had is to be in a regular and standing Church If there is a want of Pastors and People in any Defection to incorporate in the Administration and Profession of them 't is a Fatal Blow indeed to pure Worship and Doctrine in any Kingdom But if a Remnant is left both of Pastors and People who still Faithfully and Firmly adhere thereto their Way is as a Light set on a Candle-Stick or as a City set on an Hill by a visible Communion to profess them and to bear them out before Men. 'T is a Debt they owe to Religion and to Gods Holy Truth and Worship to appear to the World as a visible Church for the Maintenance and Ministration thereof For Religion ought not to stand on scatter'd Individuals but to be born up by Communions of Pastors and People or by regular Societies Our Lord has instituted a Christian Church for the Profession aâ—â— Support of Christian Worship and Doctrine And the Church is to be the Pillar and Basâ—s or Stay of Truth Or that which should support and bear it up and make it both more conspicuous and more
the Cause of Athanasius Pope Julius gave Notice of the time appointed for it to the Eastern Bishops who had been Deposing Athanasius at Antioch and substituting Gregory in his place writing to them to send some of their number to clear the justice of their sentence and proceedings in that cause This is plain from Athanasius who says it was held after the Letters sent by Eusebius and after both the Eusebians and he himself had been cited to appear at it And also from Pope Julius 's Letters to them on the Request and at the Conclusion of the Roman Synod wherein he mentions the return of his Presbyters Elpidius and Philoxenus who were sent with the former Letter and the answer they had brought him from Eusebius and the Orential Bishops But before this first Letter to notifie the time appointed for the Roman Synod to the Orentials Julius on plain appearance that their sufferings were not for any other pretended Crimes but only on account of the Orthodox Faith had embraced the Communion of Athanasius and the other Deposed Bishops For Sozomen relates that on his receiving them to Communion he writ that Letter to the Orientals taxing their unjust sentences and attempts upon the Nicene Faith and calling them to the Synod to be held at Rome there to justifie their proceedings against them And in the Letter which the Orientals sent back to him which he received as I have now shewn before the sitting of the Roman Synod and which was read to the Bishops therein Assembled they complain of his having Communicated with Athanasius and his Adherents which they said was a Reproach cast on their Synods and an Abrogation of their sentence So that his disregard of the Synodical Deprivations of Athanasius and the other Orthodox Bishops Deposed in the Synods of Tyre or Antioch was not on account of their having been regularly reversed by any Superior External Judicature But it was as having been of no force and effect in themselves because passing on Christs Faithful Pastors for their Fidelity and Firmness to the True Christian Faith Besides when the Synod at Rome sate in the cause of Athanasius and the other Orthodox Bishops and Synodically admitted them to Communion I do not see how in the Regular way of External Judicature this could take off the Deprivations by the foremention'd Synods For the Synod at Rome was inferior in Number of Bishops Consisting as Athanasius says only of about Fifty Bishops Whereas the Synod of Tyre besides the Egyptians who came along with Athanasius Consisted of sixty Bishops met there from divers places says Socrates and the Synod of Antioch which again Deposed him and the other Orthodox Bishops consisted of Ninty seven as Sozomen reports And moreover the Synod of Rome consisted of Bishops who lived more remote and further off and were Subjects of another Prince viz. Constans Whereas the Synods which deprived them Consisted of the Neighbouring Bishops some of them Comprovincials to the accused parties and were Subjects of their own Emperor viz. Constantius whose censure may seem more concluding on the Fellow-Bishops of their own Empire So that Julius and his Fifty Bishops in the Roman Synod could not reverse the Depositions of those former Synods in Regular way of outward Judicatures But yet finding whatever other things were pretended that in reality they had been deposed in those Synods for their Firmness to the Nicene aith in prejudice whereof there lyes no power of depriving in any Synods before any Superior or more general Council had reversed their depositions in Regular way of External Judicature they took part and Communicated with Athanasius and the other Deprived Bishops And this the Faithful Aegyptians both Clergy and People had done without any regard to the Deprivation of those Synods all the time of Athanasius's forced absence from them and are applauded by Pope Julius for the same For in his Letter to the Church of Alexandria after the Synod of Sardica on the Restitution of Athanasius to his See he extols them for their firm and constant adherence to the right Faith and to him their Bishop who had been so glorious a Confessor and Maintainer thereof all the while he was violently torn from them and another obtruded on their Church in his room And like to this has been the Practice I think of all times For still as Errors and Corruptions in Doctrine Worship and Practice prevailed and became general in any places on any considerable opposition made to them by Christs faithful Ministers to silence Gain-sayers they have had the establishment of Synods And these Synods have anathematized the Truth condemned and deposed the Preachers and excommunicated and cast out the Adherents and Practicers thereof But yet the Preachers and Ministers of God's Worship and Truth have still held on their Ministrations and God's faithful People have stuck to them therein And under all the depositions and excommunications of Councils or Churches they have kept Communion with one another in these necessary Truths and Ways of God which Corrupt and Apostate Councils have anathematized Or else under that power of Error which has so often tyrannized over the Truth more especially in the Arian Persecutions and in the several steps and advancements of the Papal Corruptions the pure Worship and Doctrine of Christ had perish'd and all Face of a true and unadulterated Church had long since failed from off the Earth This I say in case of Depositions or other Censures for the Cause of the necessary Truths or Worship of Jesus Christ. In deprivations for other things or on pretence of mere personal Crimes the Case I grant may be otherwise For in them though the Sentence be unjust it is a personal Wrong and affects the sufferers themselves And in private sufferings 't is reasonable to bear much for Orders sake and to be tyed up to ways of Order for Redress So that such sufferers shall be bound to rest under the judicial Injustice till they can have it reversed in like sort as it was laid on viz. in way of Judiâ—ature or by Regular Appeals And accordingly in all depositions for such private or personal Crimes this is required by the Antient Canons If a Bishop Presbyter or Deacon say the Councils of Carthage and Sardica and the same Determinations says Balsamon are to be taken as meant of Lay-men too be deposed on pretence of his Idleness and Neglects let him not dare say they to go on or to assert his former Right of Communion during the time of his Excommunication till his Cause has had a new Cognizance and Examination or been heard over again And if before such re-hearing he presume to do otherwise he shall be judged say the Fathers at Cartharge thereby to have given sentence of Condemnation against himself But in Depositions or Excommunications for doctrinal Truths and spiritual Ministrations there is not only a Wrong to themselves but
Doctrine or to be one with them in Error and Wickedness is not Charity but destruction to those who are seduced by them If such defection from pure Worship and Doctrine is their Case the guilt of making a division lyes plainly at their doors In such Breaches St. Paul notes the Dividers from the Doctrine as making the Schism and not the faithful Adherers to it who refuse to break off from it in order to their keeping on with them Mark those as causing the Divisions or Offences who go contrary to the Doctrine which ye have learned saith he Rom. 16. 17. And divisions made by such defection are incureable by any thing but their own repentance and return to their former ways Their Brethren can not heal or close them by following them in their desection because that is to be false to Truth and to their own and others Souls which are all in danger of perishing by straying from the same Nay should they do as they desire and all come over that would only be a false and seeming Cure but really make the Breach wider For the whole Body of Christians from the beginning to the end are but one Church And those Christian Societies which make up this one Church are the several Churches of all times and places All true Christians which now are or formerly have been or hereafter shall be are all Members of one and the same Body as I formerly shewed So that the Unity which good Christians are to aim at is to appear of one Society and Communion with the whole Body of faithful Christians from first to last with all the faithful who have kept to this Unity and are now in Heaven as well as with all who either now are or hereafter shall be in earth doing the same Or to be found united and in the Communion of that Body or general Collection and Assembly of Saints who shall all appear together as one Body that has kept up the Faith and Unity of the Church in opposition to all Heretical or Schismatical Oppugners thereof at the last Day And they are lamentably out and take their Aim too narrow who look only at keeping an external Union with the Assemblies and Religious Societies of their own place and time though that be in breaking off from the Way and Communion of all the faithful Christians of other places at that time and of all that are gone before them and will make them appear separately from the general Assembly and great Collection of Saints at the last Day Now true Doctrine and Worship as I have shewn are among the chief Ligaments in this Body of Christs Holy Catholick Church And if even any regular Bishops or Metropolitanes with their respective Societies or Churches break off from any necessary Truths or Worship of Christ they break off at the same time from all this great Body of faithful Christians of all other other places and times who are all united and incorporated in them and stand upon them And if these defectors appear to make the Generality or great Number in their own particular Times and Countries yet are they but a handful compared to that General Body or Collection on the other side whom they have defected and broke from and who will stand all in one compact Body against them at the last Day viz. the Catholick Church of all Times and Places So that those few faithful among them who continue sirm and stand out against their defection do not go off from the main Body or greatest Numbers but stick to them the Catholick Church of all Ages and Countries which makes the vast Body and infinitly the greatest Number being in reality with them The Catholick Church consisting of our Saviour Christ of Apostles and Prophets Martyrs and Confessors and of all the truly Faithful who have gone before us are now or shall be after us when all is done will make the Body And those few Faithful Christians sticking to this when the numerous Defectors in those Countries start from it stick to the Body So that as the Council of Constantinople declares of those who break off Communion with their Bishops yea before Synodical Sentence when once they openly teach any Heresie condemn'd by the Holy-Fathers or Councils by so doing they do not rend the Unity of the Church by Schism but study to free or defend it against Schisms or Divisions So at such times they must bespeak their Brethren as St. Cyprian did the Confessors who sided with the Schismatick Novatian Because we can not leave the Church and come over to you which instead of patching up would be to break and divide the Churches Concord and Unanimity We beseech you by all the ways we can that you would return and come back again to your Mother the Church an̄d to our Fraternity By keeping then to the necessary Doctrines and Worship of Christ of the Catholick Church and of our own Church we keep united to them and so far as we break off from these we answerably break off from them And therefore the running in of more into such defection instead of closing up the Schism would increase it It would only make the more People guilty of dividing and standing off from Christ and from the Catholick Church as that contains all Orthodox Christians and Right Churches who are gone before us or are now or shall be after us Yea from all their Ancestors during all the Successions of them to their unhappy defection in their own Church And even from themselves in all their own best dayes whilst they stood true to their own pure Worship and Orthodox Principles Which is such a way of healing Schisms as Rebellion is of remedying Grievances that is instead of taking any off it brings abundance more upon us And this makes the Charge of Schism stronger and more aggravated in the fore-mentioned Cases where the Corruptions of Doctrine and Worship make them a corrupt Church as well as the setting up of Anti-Bishops makes them a Schismatical Church There is plainly a Schism in making of Anti-Bishops which is a setting up of opposite Altars But it is a more wicked and ungodly Schism when these opposite Altars are set up for wicked and ungodly purposes to head sinful and unchristian Worship and Doctrines That Schism is complicated with Heresie or other dangerous depravation of Religion It is not only making a Breach in the Church but withal it is forming a Party against Truth and Holiness It is giving Religion a second Blow to maintain a former and setting up one ill thing to secure a worse It seeks to confederate Men in the Breach of Unity that it may hold them fast in Breach of Piety or Moral Honesty And a Schism so set up to strike at Religion is more impious in the sight of God and of all good men and the Guilt thereof is more flagrant And besides 't is incureable by any but themselves For the Schismaticks run into such
OF Christian Communion To be kept on In the Unity of Christs Church and among the Professors of Truth and Holiness AND Of the Obligations both of Faithful Pastors to Administer Orthodox and Holy Offices and of Faithful People to Communicate in the same Fitted for Persecuted or Divided or corrupt States of Churches when they are either born down by Secular Persecutions or broken with Schisms or Defiled with Sinful Offices and Ministrations In three Parts Printed Anno Dom. 1693. THE PREFACE Reader 'T IS a sad thing when any Kingdoms are divided about the Payment of their Allegiance and Civil Duties which must needs bereave vast Numbers of the Innocence and more of the Comforts and Quietness of Humane Life But it is still worse when this grows into a Division of Churches and Breach of Religious Communions For besides that Religion is the chief of all things which can concern us and whereon we must Build all our Hopes of Good in another Life Religious Exercises and Assemblies should be the properest Cordial to Revive our Spirits and the best and surest Refuge for us to flee unto in the greatest civil Distractions But such Division of Churches and Communions unsettles and distracts the Hearts of Good and Pions People about this and makes them at a Loss where to serve God and say their Prayers And this must put all who pretend to seriousness or a Religious Spirit on shewing Compassion and some on endeavouring Relief and on reaching out such things as may direct and be of use to them in a Safe and Conscionable Guidance of their Steps at such times And this is the Design of this Treatise Wherein my Business is not at all to Dispute the particular Titles to any Crowns or to examine the Claims of the several Pretenders to them In that I leave every Honest Mind to other ways of Informing and Satisfying themselves and of Forming such Judgments thereof as Truth and Justice shall happen to require in their particular Case But when by those Ways they are come to be resolved therein I endeavour to shew them what things lie most upon Conscience either their Pastors or their own as to Church Ministrations and what way they are to take about Religious Offices and Communion on such unhappy Divisions These Matters I Treat of not as they are State Points like one who seeks only to be a Stickler in Civil Differences or to help those who on such Breaches Study only to make a Bustle in State Parties But as they are Matters of Religion and concern all who would keep in the Favour of God and in the right Way to Heaven For my Design and Study all along is to shew how they who desire nothing more than to save their immortal Souls may keep free from Guilt and Eternal Danger in these particulars My great Care for them and for my self in these Matters being how we may truly and acceptably Serve God more than any Temporal Interest or the Cause of any Persons or Parties in this World And this I offer to the Conscientious who prefer Religion before Worldly Ends and Eternity before this Life And who in these Differences are Willing and Desirous to take the sure Way to Future Peace and Everlasting Bliss however the same may expose them here to Worldly Difficulties Uncomfortableness and Persecutions As for the Ways and Practices here spoken off I have given warning of their Gullt and Danger with planeness And this is necessary in all good Christians especially in Ministers who are not to call Evil Good or to give soft Names to ill things and to palliate Unrighteousness instead of exposing and exploding it which were to take part with Wickedness and to sew Pillows for the Bolstring up of Sinners I am sensible what need there is of Charity and Candor at all times especially on the Bursting out of Differences And how indispensable Christian Duties these are not only in Men at Ease but in Confessors and Sufferers for Righteousness towards their Persecutors If I keep not Charity though I give my Body to be Burned and Suffer Martyrdom it Profiteth me nothing 1 Cor. 13. 13. And when we see Men inapparently Wicked and Ungodly Ways or Unrighteous Things done 't is the part of this Charity and Candor to shew Favour and Easiness in Judging of the Dispositions of Mind wherewith they do them Ascribing them so far as it can find any reasonable Colour or Pretence thereof to the most excusable Principles As to their being Mislead by the plausible Arguings of Deceivers or to an Error of their Judgments rather than to their acting all the while against their own Belief and Convictions And to their being over-awed by Fear of Princes or of Popular Violence or being Forced by Worldly Wants and Necessities rather than to their doing the same willingly and of themselves or out of Malice As our Blessed Lord whilst he hung upon the Cross most Candidly imputes the Wickedness of his Crucifiers to their Ignorance Father forgive them for they know not what they do Luke 23. 34. It is also the Part thereof freely to encourage and Friendly to desire and endeavour their Return rejoycing to have them see their Folly rather than to see them suffer for it And without Upbraiding them with the Remembrance of former Errors Amicably to Welcome and carry on the Change when through the Blessing and Grace of God they are wrought upon by whatever Methods of Providence and begin to come to themselves But whist it is so Favourable in judging of the inward Dispositions of the Persons 't is no Part of this Charity and Candor either to think or to speak Favourably of the Ungodly or Unrighteous things themselves whch are set up or driven on at such Times The unlawful Practices themselves it censures with Justice being a Charity that is Pure and Pious and that is careful for God and for the Duties of an Holy Religion in the First Place Out of Love to God and Religion it cannot Favour Vices or softer and take part with any Sin Yea and out of Love to Men it cannot speak softly of destructive Courses or represent any ungodly Ways or Things as less Dishonourable and Offensive to God or as less Dangerous to Souls than in the End they will find them So that they are mightily Mistaken who think it any Part of true Christian Charity and Candor to befriend ungodly Practices or to minee and soften unlawful and unrighteous Things which were to conspire with Sin and Wickedness against God and Religion and to betray the Souls of Men instead of befriending them I am also sincerely and conscientiously srudious of Peace and to keep Men unreproveable in that is one intent though not the only one of these Papers And before open Breaches are made the Love of Peace will spend it self in endeavours to prevent them But if they are made already as they are to a great Hight when the Espousers of ill
are not only set up but justified 1. In some particular Cases especially of general Concern CHAP. IV. More of the Cases wherein Faithful Bishops and Ministers are bound to stick to their Pastoral Powers and Ministrations THey are still more bound to this Ministration when 2. This Justification of immoral Practices is by eluding and vacating of moral Precepts opposite thereto by Doctrinal Salvo's Instances of these Salvo's How they vacate the respective moral Precepts Such Salvo's make a Change in moral Doctrine though Men still own the Duties under their general Names The Duty of Pastors to defend and bear up moral Duties against such Salvo's by their Ministrations shewn at large And this when such corrupt Salvo's are only the Doctrines of the Pastors not the Determinations of the Church They are more strictly obliged thereto if the immoral Practices justified by such Salvo's are 1. extreamly Scandaelous to Religion 2. Generally Preach'd up by Seducers Or 3. Come strongly recommended to carnal Passions and Interests chiefly if driven on by general Persecutions CHAP. V. Of the Obligations to actual Ministration which lie upon them in the foresaid Cases THese deduced from their Office and Characters as they relate 1. To God and stand in Place 1. Of his Messengers 2. Of his Ministers and Ambassadors The various Obligations laid on them thereto by this 3. Of his Co-workers 2. As they relate to Religion as they are Ministers and Stewards of its Word and Mysteries The Obligations arising hence CHAP. VI. More of the Obligations to actual Ministration which lie upon them in the foresaid Cases 3. AS they relate to the Souls of Men and are set over the Church 1. As Watch-men 2. As Overseers 3. As Guides or Leaders 4. As Pastors or Shepheards 5. As Doctors or standing Teachers of the Church As Lights of the World and the Salt of the Earth Their Obligations to such exercise in the foresaid Cases from all the foresaid Characters Different Degrees in this Obligation A Spirit of Love and Zeal to Christ and his Church which stand not upon strict Terms the Spring and Principle of this Exercise How this clears the Duty of deprived Bishops and Clergy as to this Exercise on such Revolutions Answerable to this Obligation of the Pastors to afford such Ministrations at such Times is the Peoples Obligation to adhere to them and attend on them for Participation thereof PART II. Of Deprivations by Civil States or Ecclesiastical Synods CHAP. I. Of the Force of State Deprivations in the foresaid Cases THE Plea of a Deprivation of State represented in Bar of their Ministrations in the foresaid Cases Concerning which 1. This is to be press'd only under a supposed Legal and Rightful State 2. It s Deprivation is no conscionable Discharge from their Spiritual Ministrations in the foresaid Cases This is meant only of pure Spiritual Ministrations Not 3. of any Temporal Accessions and Inforcements of those Ministrations over which the State has Power because it conferr'd them As also over some other Powers belonging to the Church whilst it kept separate which it gives up to the State during its Incorporation with it These it gives up 1. with a Salvo to the Interests of Religion and of Souls 2. Only whilst it continues protected not when the State puts True Religion under Persecution CHAP. II. Of the Kings Ecclesiastical Supremacy Received and Asserted by our Church It lies not in his being invested with or having a Sovereign Disposal of the Powers of Orders But 1. in retaining his civil Power over all Persons whether Lay-Men or Ecclesiasticks In Virtue of this civil Power over the Persons of Ecclesiasticks he can command them faithfully to discharge their Spiritual Functions 2. In the Subordination of Ecclesiastical Courts and Causes wherein Ecclesiasticks are content to act subordinately on the Score of their secular Mixtures and Jurisdictions And in holding all this 3. in Opposition and Bar of all other Earthly Dependance especially of all Forreign Iurisdiction and Appeals This Supremacy excludes not Spiritual Ministrations of deprived Clergy in the foresaid Cases This may be collected from their Adversaries Concessions CHAP. III. Remarques on the Preceeding Account of the Force of State Deprivations and Instances of Deprivations alledg'd to the contrary considered and cleared up THE preceeding Account of the Force of State Deprivations is not 1. To deny the civil Power the Cognizance of Bishops and Ministers in civil Matters Nor any Iust Power over Ecclesiasticks 2. Nor to set the Church above the State as the Papal Usurpations pretend to do Nor to mistake or overlook the Condition of an incorporate Church The Deprivation of Abiathar by Solomon considered and cleared As also the frequent Depositions of the Jewish High Priests by the Roman Governours And of the Greek Patriarchs by the Turks And of the Popish Bishops by a Commission of State pursuant to an Act of Parliament in Queen Mary's Days CHAP. IV. Of Deprivations by Synods in the foresaid Cases DEprivation of Bishops most fit and pr per for Synods Their Deprivation no Discharge from Ministrations in the foresaid Cases as shown by reasons And by the Practice of the Church This is meant when Synods deprive for the cause of the Truth not of other mere Personal â—rimes where the Injured must acquiesce till relieved by regular Sentence â—hat regard is to be had to the Decisions of Synods in these Cases PART III. Of SCHISM CHAP. I. Of the Nature of Shism And of the Schism of particular Members from their own Church in throwing off Subjection and Dependance on their own Bishops OF the Union of a Society which Schism breaks One way of Uniting Societies is by Uniting them under the same Heads These in Church Societies are the Bishops Union of particular Members to their own Church is in Keeping Subject and Dependant on their own Lawful Bishops And their Schism lies in breaking off from them especially in seting up Opposite or Anti-Bishops against them So 1. in such Oppositions the Anti-Bishop and his Adherents make the Schism if the former Bishop was Orthodox and is still Rightful Bishop of the Church Of George the Cappadocian and Athanasius 2. The Unity of the Church doth not go with the greatest Numbers What distinguisheth Meetings in the Unity of the Church from Schismatical Conventicles Schismaticks too oft the more Numerous Party Much less doth it go with Places of Assemblies 3. Therefore in pressing Ecclesiastical Unity Men must be press'd to keep United to their own Orthodox Rightful Bishop not to any Opposite Bishop The Gospel Precepts of Love and Peace c. all on this Side and not to be urged the other way Such a Schism not to be cared by the Recessions of the Suffering Bishops in the foresaid Cases CHAP. II. Of the Schism of particular Churches from other Sister Churches by rejecting Fraternal Communion therewith UNity of one Body to be kept up among all particular Churches This is chiefly by the Union and Accord
with the Wheat till at the general Harvest they come to be seperated and Weeded out by the Angels as our Lord says Immorality whilst only in Practice tho' it Dishonour God and hinder the Effect of Prayers as to the Practisers themselves yet doth not affect Communion or stain the Devotion of others and intercept the Blessing from those good Practicers who joyn with them in publick Offices And this is the Error of those among our Dissenters who have insisted on the Plea of mixt Communions meaning thereby a Mixture of Persons or of good and bad Practisers in Gods Worship and Service which they pretend should be made up of Saints or of Pure and Regenerate Souls Church-Governours I grant in such Sort as may be most Medicinal to the Offenders themselves and to preserve Religion from the stain and the sound Members from the Infection of such Companions are to remove such especially when the Immoralities are Gross and Notorious from Communion by Church-Censurers so far as may be profitably and prudently done in Course of Discipline and as Times and Circumstances and the State of a Church in this corrupt and mixt World will bear But this will be no absolute Provision against them and after all the Church here will have a Mixture of Persons or good and bad to meet together in Divine Offices and 't is not for any to break Communion with it thereupon But though they are not universally to keep out Immoral Practisers yet they are to keep out Immoral Prayers from publick Ministrations For these are offer'd to all that come though only fit to Poyson not to Nourish them And are put up to God in the Name of the Congregation and so are a publick visible and professed Dishonour to him So that they who have the Care of publick Worship must take care to Purge them out of it It will be incumbent on them to supply the Church 2. Secondly With the Ministration of all that Truth which is necessary to be believed or Practised The Word or Preaching of these Truths is to bear up Religion and to save the Souls of Men. And the Ministry of this Word is committed unto them This Ministration must be of all Necessary Truth What our Lord intrusted with the Apostles and in them with the Bishops and Pastors of the Church to the end of the world is to Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded Where all things must needs take in all that are necessary Mat. 28. 20. And St. Paul in Discharge of his Cure of Souls pleads himself pure of the Blood of all Men as having deolared to them the whole Counsel of God which their Blood might any way depend upon and having kept back nothing that was Profitable to them Acts 20. 26 27. For in these Points if the People perish through the Watch-Mans being Dumb or for want of his giving warning the People Die indeed and are taken away in their Iniquity but their Blood will God require at the Watch-Mans Hand Ezek. 33. 6 8. As for inferior Truths which are not commonly necessary for Christians to know and to be instructed in but in their Nature are more indifferent They may be forborn for Peace as need requires and to prevent great Stirs and Divisions in the Church But Truths of Necessity and Importance must not be neglected or given up on such Pretences And it must be a Ministration of all that is necessary whether in Faith or Practice That which makes either to be a necessary part of their Ministration is because they are necessary parts of Religion and necessary to the Souls of Men. And this makes an equal Necessity of Ministring both For Obedience is as Necessary and indispensable a Branch of the Gospel as Faith And Practical Opinions are as much set by as Propositions about Faith and as much Dishonour may accrue to God and as much Danger to the Souls of Men by Practical as by Speculative Heresies Nay many times more since matters of Morality and Practice are more naturally imprinted on all Mens Hearts and are more easy and obvious to all Understandings They lye open to the Unlearned as well as to Learned Men. Yea the Ignorant and Unlearned oft-times continue to see them when the Learned overlook them a little Skill with a sufficient Degree of Honesty qualifying Men to discern these Matters and there not being so much need of Learning in those who would descry as there is in those who would pervert and mistake them And this makes the Mistakes of Men in these Points both more Dangerous to themselves and more Dishonourable to Religion For being so generally known or easy of Knowledge There is not like Room in them for Extenuation and Excuse of Error or Ignorance as there is in Speculations of Faith that are of harder Examination and lie further off which renders Practical Heresies oft-times more Dangerous And on the same Account the Dishonour to God and Religion thereby is more universally noted being more manifestly Apparant and more sensibly Disgusting to the Generality of Beholders Which makes them also more Disgraceful and Standalous And therefore they stand particularly bound to Minister the Word and give warning in these Points Both as what would oft-times more surely and irremediably shed the Blood of Souls and as what would prove more Scandalous in the Sight of all considerate Persons and make Religion more generally Despised Blasphemed and evil Spoken of Particularly it will be incumbent on them to supply the Church with the Ministration of Necessary Practical Truths 1. When Dangerous and Immoral Practices are setting up Especially if they are setting up generally and most People are in danger of being drawn into them As when they come dressed up with Appearances and Recommendations of Wordly Ease or Interests or are driven on by the Arm of Secular Power or by the Cry of a Time And undisturbedly as when they who are in the place of Reproving Dissemble and Connive at them and are Dumb not lifting up their Voices against them These Immoral Practices tho' the Immoral Things are only Practised but not Justified are most Dangerous and Destructive to those Souls who are involved therein And when they see Men in the Ways of Death the Watchmen are required at their Peâ—il to give Warning and to tell them what will be the End thereof If thou givest him not Warning nor speakest to warn the Wicked from his wicked Way to save his Life his Blood will I require at thine Hand Ezek. 3. 18 20. and cap. 33. 8. They are the Spiritual Weaknesses and Diseases of Souls their Strayings and Loosing of themselves in Wrong and Pernicious Ways And the Duty of Shepheards is not to stand off or to keep Silent when these Maladies have seized the Flocks but to shew their Pastoral Care and make Provision for them They are as God tells the Shepheards by Ezekiel to Heal that which they find to be Sick by applying
Which made them more sensible of the advantage of having these powers quietly and uncontestedly lodged in their own Hands These it might safely part withall during the incorporation as retaining still what it could not part with viz a Power of standing by all Necessary Points of worship and Doctrine and of doing what is necessary for the Souls of Men and as being also fitted all the time in the main with what is needful in Point of Discipline And its parting with them was in way of Compromise and Bargain as a grateful Return for the benefits and priviledges of its Enfranchisement and Incorporation or on consideration of its enjoying a Freedom not only of exercising spiritual ministrations but of exercising them in the way of an incorporate Church viz. in holding Benefices and in being back'd therein by secular Jurisdiction Laws and Priviledges And whilst these benefits of Incorporation are held on in favour of the Truth the cession of the Church in these Points is to be held on too and not to be resumed back again Protected and incorporate Bishops and Pastors must be content to claim Episcopal and Pastoral powers under the recessions and limitations of an incorporate Church Thus our Articles and Canons receive and assert the Ecclesiastical Supremacy of our Kings which contains the foresaid Church-Recessions And denounce Excommunication ipso Facto to those that Deny any part of our King 's Legal Supremacy in Ecclesiastical Causes or his having the same Authority therein as the Godly Kings had among the Jews or Christian Emperors had in the Primitive Church And accordingly in our Form of Ordaining Bishops they profess to think themselves call'd to this Ministration according to the Will of Jesus Christ and the Order of this Realm and promise to censure and punish the unquiet and disobedient within their Diocesses according to such Authority as they have by God's Word and as to them shall be committed by the Ordinance of this Realm But now all this giving up these or the like powers to the State for the sake of this Incorporation and in way of bargain and compromise or other abridgement of its own ministrations is 1. With a Salvo to the Interests of Religion and of the Souls of Men. They cannot give away any thing to make themselves wanting in any necessary service unto them nor part with their powers of ministring to Souls to build and nurse them up in pure Worship Doctrin and Practice These Powers are a Sacred Depositum which if they imbezzle or yield up in complyance they are false to God and to mens Souls and thereby betray both them and their own Holy Fâ—â—ction And their Acts also are nullities wherein they offer or promise to do the same For they are Acts against an antecedent Obligation which are wicked in the making as Herods Oath was to gratifie Herodias in the Baptists Death and the Jews Conspiracy and Oath to kill St. Paul But they are null as to the Obligation of performance as is agreed in the case of all contracts and promises to do unlawful things or things evil or forbidden in themselves They can neither discharge themselves I say nor receive any discharge from Princes of exercising these Powers where Christ requires they should exercise them for the Service of Religion of Souls as I have shewn he doth in the fore mentioned cases In Stewards it is required that they be found faithful in dispensing out these Ministrations as he orders not in suppressing them contrary to Order 1 Cor. 4 2. Necessity is laid upon me and woe be to me is here the Scripture denunciation if they preach not the Gospel or fail trustily to discharge that Ministry they have undertaken 1 Cor. 9. 16. No earthly Powers by confering on them the benefits of Incorporation get any Authority over Christs Ministers to discharge them of Ministring to their Master in these matters For this would be to give the civil power which ought to keep under Christ a power over him It would turn them from Nursing Fathers who by giving it a civil enfranchisement undertake to protect the true Religion into devouring Wolves who seek to make a prey of it It is expresly declared against by the Apostles who appeal to the common sense of mankind Whether they are not bound to obey God rather than men Act. 4. 19. 20. And would leave no ministrations of true Gospel Worship and Doctrin under any Christian state which should fall from any necessary parts thereof and begin to persecute them as the Arian Emperors did in the Persecutions they rais'd against the Orthodox and as Popish Princes did in like violences used by them at any time against our Protestant Brethren or Ancestors Than which nothing can be worse calculated for any Church of God but especially for the Christian Church which is to continue a Church in persecution and to bear up Christian Worship and Doctrin by due ministrations of both when any powers of this World fall from protecting most violently to bear them down And this in all times has been the Opinion and Practice of God's faithful Ministers when the State which by Incorporation should have back'd and strengthned them therein fell to discharge and bar them of their ministrations in these cases Thus God's Faithful Prophets and Ministers did in the Jewish Church who approved themselves glorious Confessors and Martyrs in administring God's Word and true Worship when the State fell to break in upon them and instead of backing and protecting them in those ministrations according to the purport of incorporation fell violently to discharge and drive them from officiating any longer therein Thus likewise Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria Paulus of Constantinople and other Bishops did in the Arian Persecution The civil State had then received the Church into it self endowed it with civil Edicts and enfranchisements And the deprivation and ejection of these Bishops out of their Churches particularly of the Great Athanasius was with State-Concurrence and for State-Causes or Pretences Among other Articles Athanasius was charged with Contumacy against the Emperour in refusing to appear upon his Edict at the Synod of Caesarea And with a Treasonable Design to stop the yearly Transport of Corn from Alexandria to Constantinople on which suggestion he was banish'd to Tryers by Constantine Not to mention the Accusation of his having impos'd on the Aegyptians a Tribute of Linnen Cloath and having conspired with one Philumenus against the Emperour and having Treasonably corresponded with the Traytor Magnentius and usurped the Imperial Prerogative by holding the Festival Dedication of the great Church of Alexandria without the Emperours Warrant and the like And his Deposition and Gregories and Georges Advancement to his See by Synods were seconded by Acts of State having the Approbation and Justification of the Emperors and the Assistance of Prefects as well as the ‖ Imperial Letters violently forcing one out of the
Bishops and Heads of Union in those dioceses according to his Rules and Principles of Union And then how shall a mere command of state dissolve the tye made by him or break communion betwixt their Bishop and them Whilst Christ by conscionable obligations of Church Unity bids them adhere to their Bishop and keep one with him must they give ear to the state that bids them divide from him I think on second thoughts he will not make Church Union or the dependance of people on their Bishops so unsettled or precarious a thing as either to have no fixt and conscionable principles ingaging and holding all good Members thereto of its own or to have it in the power of a secular state when it pleases to set them aside and over-rule them CHAP. III. Remarques on the Preceding Account of the Force of State-Deprivations and instances of Deprivations alledg'd to the contrary consider'd and clear'd up FRom what I have said in the foregoing Chapters about the power of the Civil State and the effect of its Deprivations I think it may appear that the Bishops and Ministers of Christ continue still invested with their Ministerial Powers and can receive no discharge from the exercise thereof in the formention'd Cases by any State Deprivations And of this I observe from what has been hitherto discoursed 1. First That this is not to deny the Civil Power the Cognizance of Bishops and Ministers in Civil matters Allegiance 't is true is a civil matter and most nearly concerns the civil peace Indeed it is not only Civil but also Religious For when men are requir'd to Swear it and in all Churches to pray conformably to it Solemn Oaths and Prayers are most sacred and Religious Acts. And Allegiance in it self is a moral duty for due payment whereof all stand answerable to God in the last judgment as well as a civil or state-duty for which they are answerable to the state in judicatures of this world But it is such a matter of Religion I say as is also a civil matter subject to civil Cognizance or a point of State too And if this is refused to a Rightful state it is not only an offence against Morality and Religion which spiritual Judicatures and Synods may punish with Canonical Depositions But also an offence against the state which such Rightful state may punish by state punishments as it may all other state offences and in Ecclesiasticks when they are guilty thereof as in all other persons And among these punishments by Deprivation though not of mere spiritual powers the state having no Authority to take away those mere spiritual powers which it never gave yet of all that is Temporal in Church-Ministrations so as that such refusers shall no longer hold benefices and preferments or state endowments Yea and even as to those mere spiritual powers it may make them of themselves to forbear any further exercise thereof to keep state-favors and endowments to the Church when their deprivation is in a case that concerns only their own personal rights and priviledges but not the Truths or cause of Christ as was before observed But if at any time or in any Kingdom this should be refused to an Usurping State which has no Legal Right but which calls for this Allegiance Oaths and solemn Prayers and Religious services conformable thereto against him who has the Right Then such refusal is neither a Religious nor a Civil offence neither against God nor Gods Vicegerent Divine or Humane Laws but a due obedience to both And this brings on the Case of all the foresaid immoralities Damnifying Religion and endangering Souls wherein faithful Bishops and Clergy whatever they incur by standing to their Spiritual Ministrations must not let them fall â—n regard to any Deprivation of Usurping Powers Nay nor in regard to the most rightful States should they issue out against them state-deprivations to stop their Ministrations against any such like immoralities or other irreligious and endangering ways And this Limitation of the regard they ought to have to his deprivation is not to deny the Rightful Civil Soveraign any part of his just power over Ecclesiasticks But only to deny him such a power as would leave our Saviour Christ himself who is his Master as well as theirs â—o have no power over them Or such a power as should enable him to discharge them of what Christ has given in charge to them to take away what powers he confers or to loose what he has tyed on But under all this discharge of their foresaid Ministrations notwithstanding his inhibitions and deprivations it allows the Civil Magistrate as much Power over their persons to mulct banish or put them to death on just cause as they are his Subjects as over any others And to have power also over the mixt way of administrations so as to be able to deprive them though not of all exercise of their spiritual powers yet from holding or exercising them with Temporal jurisdictions effects and priviledges after the way of an incorporate Church And to have those other foremention'd Prerogatives of conveneing Synods passing Canons sending prohibitions to stop any process in prejudice of the Prerogative or of the Laws c. Which for the favor and continuance of those secular mixtures have accrued by incorporation and belong to Christian Kings And these things which are allow'd are as much as any of them can claim of Ecclesiasticks as they are Kings And on the other side those things which are denyed are such as they would abhor to challenge or desire who would own any subjection to Christ or bound their pretensions as Christian Kings 2. Secondly nor is it to set the Church above the State as the Papal Usurpation pretended to do But only to set Almighty God and his blessed Son Jesus Christ above it Not leaving subjects whether Laicks or Ecclesiasticks in complyance with any the most rightful state to disobey God Nor Ministers to let fall any Services and Ministrations of Religion or cure of Souls which Christ calls them to exercise yea not only when the state is consenting but when it gain-says it and doth all it can either to disable or discourage them from it he not having thought fit to stand to the courtesy of any civil state whether or no the Ministry of saving Souls should be prosecuted and whether he should be served and have a Church on Earth But at the same time it sets God and Religion above their Power it subjects all both Laicks and Ecclesiasticks to the same in other things Allowing every rightful civil state the chief civil power over all Ecclesiastical Persons And the chief civil power over all Ecclesiastical Causes so far forth and so long as they are mixed and compounded with civil benefices and jurisdictions And a civil power to compel Church Men by civil penalties to do the duty of their Spiritual Ministrations and to hold them under a necessity of not resisting by Arms but of
not for Anti-christian Corruptions And had they really been what they thought as they were not but quite contrary it had been their duty to go on in their Pastoral Cures and Ministrations with Persecutions for all their deprivations And so we our selves should have thought at least we all seem as if we should if by Gods Providence the civil State had gone on to deprive our reformed Bishops for sticking to the worship and doctrines of the Reformation and had set up Popish Bishops in their Places Notwithstanding which I suppose both our faithful Prelates and People instead of silently acquiescing would have gone on ministring and communicating in the reformed worship and doctrine of this Church But whatever they thought of these things or how consonant or disagreeing soever their Actings were to their own Apprehensions in this case it suffices for justification of our Reformed Bishops advancement to their Sees without their being deprived by competent and lawful Synods which is objected as a thing most exceptionable therein and as seeming most to deviate from Ecclesiastical Rule that in reality they were not Orthodox And that for this want of Orthodoxy without any need of recourse to the Authority of mere State Deprivations to take off people from a spiritual Adherence and Communion with their Bishops the People before they could have a Synodical Deprivation were loose from them and at liberty to unite themselves to the Orthodox Reformers in their Room CHAP. IV. Of Deprivations by Synods in the foresaid Cases ANd thus I think it may sufficiently appear how the manifold obligations which are shewn above to lye on Faithful Bishops and Ministers not to suppress but to exercise their spiritual ministrations in the foresaid Cases are not set aside or barr'd by any inhibition or deprivation though of the most Lawful Civil State They will do it with more ease and worldly encouragement when the State tolerates and much more when it fortifies and furthers them therein But they are not at liberty to give it off but must go on exercising the same when it is more troublesome and when the State gain-says and puts them under persecution for so doing And thus it is where the State will Act apart and proceed without a Synod in depriving Bishops and in discharging the Ecclesiastical Communion and dependance of the people Spiritually related and united to them But Deprivation of Bishops who are Spiritual Powers is more ordinarily by a Synod of Bishops who are a Spiritual Judicature Great Reason there is for the Deprivation of Bishops to proceed in this course The Civil-State indeed comes in by Reason of Civil Accessions and Endowments which strengthen and encourage the spiritual ministrations But these Civil Accessions are but Accessaries and Appendages and their spiritual powers are the Principal in their Ministrations and in Church Communion and dependance on them And therefore the removing of their ministrations and of the Communion and dependance of the Church thereupon is never so fitly and fully attempted as by spiritual judicatures who being spiritual persons have more directly to do with Church Communion and spiritual powers And accordingly this has still been the course of the most Pious Princes who have reserved the deliberations about Religion and Church matters and the Depositions of Bishops which so closely affects Church Communion to Convocations and Synods of Bishops and â—lergy And when these proceed to sentence it more directly affects the concerned parties Church Communion and Church Governors being more directly under the Church-mens Cognizance and not only indirectly and by the by as it may ingage the deprived persons when not bound to it otherwise to yield and acquiesce in voluntary complyance for civil interests But suppose a Concurrence of both these powers and that the deprivation of the Rightful State is confirmed by Synodical Concurrence Yet I observe in the last place that this Deprivation by Synods is not sufficient to bar or discharge Bishops or Ministers from the foresaid Exercise of their Spiritual Ministrations in the above mention'd Cases Bishops and Metropolitanes are not more subject and dependant on Synods than Presbyters and people are on their Bishops Our Lord himself and his Holy Apostles having appointed Bishops in his Church and call'd for our subjection and obedience to them But this submission of Priests and people to their Bishops is with a Salvo to their Holy Religion and its Articles and Interests And if any Bishops go against the Truths or Laws of Christ or against the interests of Souls and of True Religion we are not to follow them or to depend on them therein To stick to any necessary Christian Doctrines Worship or Practices Christs Faithful people and Ministers must break even with their own Bishops holding even them Anathema as St. Paul directs when they would lead them contrary to the Doctrine of the Apostles as I noted before and shall shew more fully afterwards And so must they with any other Bishops or Number and Synods of Bishops in like Case All Exercise and Administration of Church Authority and Jurisdiction is tyed to Rules Not only to Rules of the Churches own making or Ecclesiastical Canons but above all and in the first place to the Rules laid down by Christ himself And all the validity of Church Acts in way of external judicature in Synods or otherwise is so far as they go by them or do nothing against them Thus it is in Decreeing Rites and Ceremonies or Determining Controversies of Faith wherein though the Church has Authority yet is it thus limited and has no Authority as our Church Declares to ordain any thing contrary to Gods word Even general Councils are bounded by this Limitation and things ordained by them say the Thirty Nine Articles again as necessary to Salvation have neither strength nor Authority unless it may be declared that are taken out of Holy Scriptures And thus it is also in Matter of Censures or Ecclesiastical Sentences judicially past therein upon persons whether Laicks or Ecclesiasticks We in the Exercise of our Apostolical Power can do nothing against the Truth or in punishing and Censuring any for Faithful observance thereof but all our Power is for the Truth and to be exercised in its behalf by punishing and not sparing not those who stand to but those who defect from it 2 Cor. 13. 8. When the Church speaks to us in External Judicatures we must hear it as our Lord orders But we must hear it speaking under Christ never against him So that if it Excommunicates any for sticking firm to any part of his Holy Religion with whom for that very adherence sake he requires his Faithful Followers to hold Communion Or if it deprives or discharge any Ministers from Administring the same in any case where he has charged them to keep on that ministration Its power here is set up against him and its Acts have no Power to bind those who are concerned in them
Thus it is when it sha Excommunicate any for adhereing to any necessary Christian Doctrines Worship or Practices For all who would hold to Christ must Neglect such Censures and though any Church or Synod throws such persons out of its Communion they are joyfully to well come and receive them into theirs For when our Lord Arthorizes and gives validity to Church Censures saying they shall be bound in Heaven and bidding us look on all who will not hear the Church as Heathâ—ns and Publicans He limits this validity to those censures which pass upon men not for any parts of righteousness but for real offences If thy Brother Trespass against thee and will not hear thee tell it unto the Church So that some real offence or Trespass must still be the ground of the process Mat. 18. 15. 17. It must be for not hearing the Church when it calls us to his Truths and Precepts not when it sets up to carry us from them For there if it use censures it acts of it self and not by his Commission It opens or shuts by an Erring Key and must not expect that what is so bound or loosed on earth shall be Ratifyed in Heaven By such perverse Censures the Church only deprives it self of the Communion of Faithful Christians but doth not deprive them of Communion with Christ or with one another The unjust Excommunications of the Jewish Sinhedrim when they cast Christs Disciples out of their Synagogues only estranged or cut off themselves says Photius but brought those Disciples so much nearer to their Lord and Master And so now says he when the imitators of the Jews Excommunicate the Followers of the Apostles they thereby only Conjoyn and Unite them the more to those Divine Apostles to whom they are more closely and exactly knit both in Faith and Life by the Communion of sufferings But they miserably cut off themselves both from their Doctrine and from our Orthodox Faith And therefore instead of bemoaning themselves under such Excommunications and seeking to have them take off by Complying with the Church our Blessed Saviour fortifies his â—râ—â— followers against them and bids them not only patiently to rest under tâ—em but triumphaâ—â—ly to re oyce therein They shall put you out â— the 〈◊〉 ues says he to â—â—em and Cautions them not be offended thereat when it should happen or not to fall off from him or his ways to recover the Liberty of the Sâ—nagogues again Joh. 16. 1. 2. When they shall seperate you from their company by Excommunications and Anathema's and shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil for the Son of Mans sake rejoyce ye in that day and leap for joy for behold Great is your Reward in Heaven for in the like manner did their Fathers unto the Prophets Luk. 6. 22 23. And thus the Holy Apostles and Faithful Adherers to Gods Truth and Worship and good Christian Practices did in all times when for such Adherence they fell under the Anathema's of Synods or the Excommunication of Churches during the Papal or any other former or later Persecutions They joyfully received such sentences and always owned one another and held Communion in Adherence to Gods word and ways among themselves when they were cast out of the communion of such corrupt and Apostatizing Synods or Churches And 't is the same when it shall deprive or discharge any Faithful Bishops and Ministers from supporting such necessary Doctrines worship and practices by their Ministrations as Christ requires For then notwithstanding such deprivations and discharge by Churches and Synods CHRIST'S Faithful Ministers must hold on Ministring and his faithful People must hold on Communicating and Adhereing to them therein Thus as our LORD Notes their Fathers had Separated and cast out the Old Prophets from Prophesying in their Company or Assemblies Who still went on Preaching and Ministring the Word which they were sent out to publish And thus the Sanhedrim that great Synod of the Jewish Church discharged the Apostles from Ministring Christianity or Preaching any more in Christs Name who told them they could by no means desist thereupon but must hold on their Ministration being to Ovey God rather than men Act. 4. 18 19 20. Thus also several Synods Deprived Athanasius and the other Orthodox Bishops who were the stout Asserters and Maintainers of the Divinity of our Lord against the Arians Such was the Synod of Tyre And such also was the Synod of Antioch whose Deprivations of Athanasius and the other Orthodox Bishops were a Blow made at the Nicene Faith though their Canons being good and according to Primitive Usage were by Orthodox Councils afterwards taken into the Book of Ecclesiastical Canons out of which several of them are repeated verbatim in the great Council of Chalcedon and are there among the Canons of others Synods taken in to be Canons of the Universal Church And such likewise were the deprivations of other Synods assembled in that Cause afterwards Now under these Synodical deprivations the great Business of those suffering Bishops was to shew that whatever other Immoralities or Personal Crimes were pretended against them as several were most impudently pretended against all Ground and Reason yet in reality and truth their deprivations were for the Cause of the Faith or for their firmness in maintaining the Divinity and Consubstantiality of Christ with the Father This Athanasius and Paulus plead for themselves teaching That their Depositions were not for any other Cause but for the subversion of the Orthodox Faith as is related by Socrates and Sozomen And what they made appear to the Emperor Constans was That they suffered not for the Crimes or ill Lives they were accused of as the sentence of Deposition did contain but for their thinking and teaching differently from the Synods their Dâ—posers about the Faith And when it was once clear to any Persons or Churches that they were deprived for the cause of the Faith they were not hindred by any Authority of external Judicature in the Synods their deposers but readily received and communicated with them as Christs true Bishops still in those places For notwithstanding these Synodical Deprivations Athanasius was all the while own'd and adher'd to by the Faithful Aegyptians as Paulus also was by the Faithful Constantinopolitanes And when they came to Rome on their giving full satisfaction in this Point Julius the Bishop of Rome received them to Communion Hearing the Cause of each says Sozomen and finding them all to agree in the Nicene Faith which he saw undermined and struck at by their Deprivers he received them to Communion as being of the same Belief with himself This Reception of Athanasius and others who stood deprived by the Synods of Tyre and Antioch c. to his Communion was before the Synod of Rome wherein the Orientals should have justified their Proceedings had acquitted and received them For before the Synod was held at Rome in
Truths or Commands of Christ he is Christs true Bishop still in that Church and his faithful Peoples spiritual Head for all that unjust sentence For Christ stands by him who stands by his Doctrines and Precepts and unjust Depositions on these Accounts have no more validity in his sight than unjust Excommunications for the same Accounts have as has been already shew'd But if there is no Interposition of Synods but a mere Deprivation of State that will much less do it For there is a spiritual Subjection and Dependance of People to their Bishops especially to such as suffer for adhering to Christian Truths or Precepts which the civil State cannot break or dissolve Christ himself by his Institution has made a spiritual Relation between them and antecedently obliged his People to this Union and Adherence to them as they are vice Christi his Ministers and Vice-gerents as St. Cyprian says Kings and Civil States may come afterwards and tye this spiritual Union and Adherence faster on by temporal Dependances and Enforcements And what they lay on they may take off again But the spiritual Relation and Obligations do not depend on them but on Christ himself Religion lays them on and leaves it not in the Power of any Prince to cancel or discharge them They stood fixed whilst the Church was separate from the State before any secular Powers came in to protect it and will still continue if they turn all their Power to persecute and oppress it Nor has our Lord left it to their courtesy whether there shall be any spiritual Relation betwixt his People and their Pastors whether they shall keep up their spiritual Relation and Dependance and he shall have a Church on Earth or no as is before discoursed more at large The Learned Author of the Vindication of Their Majesties Authority in filling the vacant Sees owns the Advancement of George the Cappadocean into the place of Athanasius to have been Schismatical and an Usurpation and Breach of Catholick Communion The setting up of this Anti Bishop was by a Deprivation of State For Constantius took away the Churches from Athanasius and his Adherents which is the State-way of depriving Bishops and gave them to George the Anti-Bishop and his Adherents Nay he sends an Edict to the Senate and People of Alexandria requiring them on their Allegiance instead of sticking to him as their spiritual Head with the Affection and Dependance of Members with their united Force to persecute Athanasius And made it criminal in any Persons as Sozomen relates to harbour or conceal him And accordingly the Imperial Ministers and Praefects violently drove him and the Orthodox out of the Churches and by extream Force put George and the Arians in possession thereof And having placed this Anti-Bishop upon his Throne with all secular Cruelties and barbarous Usage compell'd the Clergy and People to acknowledge and submit to him It was also brought about by Deprivation of Synods For after the Sardican Synod which restored him Athanasius had been again deposed both by the Synod of Arles and afterwards by the Synod of Milan wherein besides a few from the East above three hundred Bishops of the West met as Sozomen says and condemned him And the setting up of George against him after this was in a Synod viz. the Synod of Antioch which declared the Uncanonicalness of his Restitution and Ordained George as a former Synod at that place had Ordained Gregory before to be Bishop of Alexandria in his Room These indeed as the Author of the Vindication suggests were Heretical Synods And Dionysius of Alba Eusebius of Vercelles Paulinus of Tryers and Rhodanus and Lucifer who at Milan protested against their Proceedings declared that thro' Athanasius the Emperor and the Arians his Enemies were striking at the Catholick Faith which the event of things and the Proceedings afterwards in the Synods of Ariminum and Seleucia verified as Sozomen observes But in way of external Judicature the Deprivation tho' of Heretical Synods must at least carry with it as much Plea as Deposition by no Synods can pretend to there being more shew of Ecclesiastical Authority in Acts of Heretical Synods than in none at all But for all this Deposition both by the Imperial Edicts and Synodical Sentences since the true Cause thereof was his firmness and constancy to the Catholick Faith Athanasius as the foresaid Author owns still kept on his spiritual Relation and the People their spiritual and Religious Obligations to and Dependance on him So that George as he says was an usurping Invader a breaker of Catholick Communion and a Ring-leader of a Schism in the Catholick Church when he set up against him And the same it would be in the case of any other Bishop deprived by the like Authority for his Fidelity and fixt Adherence to any other Truths or Laws of Christ. For his faithful Bishops must stick to him in all other Points of Christian Truth and Practice as well as in the Orthodoxy of the Nicene Faith And that against the Deprivations of all other States and Synods as well as of the Arians And their sticking to Christ in these Points can give no liberty to their Clergy and People to break off from them Their stedfastness therein must tye all faithful Members faster to them but can never be expounded as a conscionable discharge of their spiritual Obligations and Dependance on them If a Schism is made in a Church then by a defection from the rightful Orthodox Bishop thereof laid aside either by a Civil State or Ecclesiastical Synod only for his faithful Adherence to the Doctrines or Laws of Christ or by turning over to an Anti-Bishop set up against him 'T is plain the Anti-Bishops with their Makers and Adherents make the Schism They were all Members of the one Body whilst they kept subject and united to the Rightful Bishop who is the Head of it But when they broke off from him they divided themselves from the Body and formed themselves under an opposite Head into a new and opposite Body But he and his Adherents still preserve the Unity of the true Body The breakers off make the Division but they preserve their Union As those Branches do which still grow to the Tree when others are broke off from it and those Streams which still communicate with the Fountain when others are stopt and those Rays which keep connected to the Sun when others are interrupted Which Similitudes St. Cyprian makes choice of to set off the Unity of the Church and to shew that they preserve this Union who keep to the same Head and Origine What they do therefore in these Cases by sticking to each other as they did before when others break off is not to make the Schism but only not to follow and run into it And they are no more chargeable with the division for this than the General and his faithful Souldiers would be in an Army for
Christs Name is filling Jerusalem with his Doctrine Act. 5. 28. ver 41. And the Priests and Rulers forbidding the Apostles to speak to any Man in his Name is forbidding them any more to preach his Doctrine Act. 4. 17. 18. And so when our Lord prays to his Father that his Disciples may be kept in his Name to the end that they may be one he notes the necessity of continuing in his Doctrine to their keeping his so much desired Union Jo. 11. 17. Accordingly he adds that they may be one as we are viz. he and the Father For their Unity is by this way among others viz. by keeping to the same Word or Doctrine he teaching them what he had from his Father v. 8. And this is to be kept one after his departure as they had been kept one before as he continues to pray v. 12. For before they had been united in his Word which he gave unto them and which they had received and kept v. 6. 8. Thus also St. Paul tells us that the giving of Pastors and Teachers to Edâ—fie or compact us all into one Body of Christ is for edifying us in the Unity of the Faith and of the Acknowledgment of the Son of God Eph. 4. 11 12 13. And that the Church is to be one Body in holding to the oâ—e Faith Eph. 4. 4 5. And this has been the currant sense of the Christian Church The Vertue which keeps the Church together is Faith saith the Pastor Hermes as he is cited by Clemens of Alexandria We are constituted one Body of Christ and Members â—re of another by having the same Faith with him and with one another say the Fathers in the sixth general Council By the joyning of Charity and Faith Christ binds us up â—â—to one Body in himself saith St. Gregory the Great And we Christians are a Society says Tertullian incorporated on a Belief of the same Religion Or as he elsewhere expresses it confederated in the Fâ—llowship of the same Profession As to Points of Faith I understand this more particularly of those Points which are more important and call'd Fundamental and are all contain'd in the Apostles Creed These are the necessary and grand Points of the Christian Religion and the Belief thereof makes us Christians and accordingly they are all profess'd in our Baptism when we take this Profession upon us And this Faith is one necessary Bond of Union to keep Christians together in one Society Their first care must be to keep to this Faith which makes them Christians and in this Belief of the Christian Religion their next care must be to keep to any particular Society or Christian Church Other Points of Belief which are more remote from the Foundation do not so generally influence Mens Salvation nor so necessarily break off Communion but that Men may hold on joyning in the same Offices notwithstanding their embracing of some erroneous Opinions And under such Errors Peace and one Communion were pressed by the Apostles I conceive on the Churches in their Days But these being more necessary and essential to the Religion are more necessary also to the keeping of Society and Communion which is to be kept up among those who are united and agreed in this Religion And since all Church Association is to be on this bottom of Chrian Worship and Doctrine good Christians Unity or Dependance on their Bishops or one Churches Communion with other Churches is only to be whilst the Bishops and Churches themselves keep united to Christian Worship and Doctrines 'T is to their Bishops as to their Spiritual Teachers on whom they are to attend as obedient Disciples and so whilst they instruct and train them up in God's Truths not in ungodly Errors 'T is to them as they are Christs Ministers and so whilst they minister his Word not their own As joynts Eph. 4. 16. Col. 2. 19. And joynts are to compact or pin the Materials or Members together whilst they rest upon the Ground and Bottom viz. the Doctrine not when they start aside and go off from it And of an Heretick St. Paul says that he is turned aside or like a corner-stone started out of the Building So that the other Parts are no longer to be knit together into one spiritual House by him When People come at first to be Church-Members and to unite under their Bishops the Doctrine and Worship is first laid as the Ground-work for both the Head and Members to stand upon Thus we see it was in the first Formation of Churches and setting up external Union and Dependance under Bishops The Christian Doctrine was first taught and received which was the Foundation laid I have laid the Foundation says St. Paul when he had planted the Faith 1 Cor. 3. 10. And on the Foundation so laid a Church was raised and Bishops chosen out of the first-Fruits of the Converts as St. Clemens says and set over those that believed And ever since before Men receive Baptism to make them Church-members there is a Profession made of the Doctrine of the Apostles both in Faith or the Articles of the Creed and in Practice or the Commandments So that 't is Bishops heading of this Doctrine and Worship which bring Members to incorporate and unite under them And as their heading it brings People to them so their rejecting or defecting from it loosens the Tye and sets them free to go off again Their Fellowship with the Apostles and our Obligation to hold Fellowship with them is tyed to their keeping the Apostolical Declarations of what they had heard or seen 1 Jo. 1. 3. And in the Account of the Communion of the Primitive Christians the Fellowship of the Apostles and of the Bishops their Sucessors is linked to the Apostles Doctrine and to their breaking of Bread and Prayers Act. 2. 42. If a Bishop then defects from Christian Doctrine and Worship or falls into Heresie or Unchristian Worship that is a Discharge of his People from their spiritual Dependance and Relation and supersedes the Obligation of keeping Unity under him If we the Apostles or even an Angel from Heaven should preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have already preached unto you let him be Aâ—athema or Accursed that is have no more communion and commerce with him than with those whom the Synagogue or Church has cut off Anathema being the Word for one excommunicate both in the Scripture and in the constant Language of the Church Gal. 1 8 9. And this he says as St. Chrysostom notes not only against those who subvert the whole Gospel but against those who go a little beside it or overthrow any Parts thereof And if a Church defects from the same it sets other Churches loose in like manner from the Obligation of holding on communion with them Unity of Faith binds them mutually to observe the Rules of fraternal communion and defection in Faith
Souls endangered by such Salvo's it was the Duty of true Prophets and Priests among them and would be so in all other places on like occasions by their preaching and Ministrations to keep up sound knowledge among the People in these Points yea tho' such preaching and ministrations made a Breach between them and those defecting Teachers And it was the Peoples duty to follow any among them who would teach them better when they could have such Teachers as they had in our Blessed Lord and his Apostles Whatever Allowance under the favour of Necessity men may have to keep on with such of which Plea of necessity I shall say more hereafter yet where there is choice of others more Orthodox they are no longer tyed to such Pastors as openly and obstinately preach up damnable practices to disgrace Religion and endanger Souls Bear they may for a time in hopes of Reformation and because it is easier to prevent than to patch up Breaches wise Lovers both of Peace and Truth would not be hasty in coming to extreamities But if still they will persist and go on in such pernicious Ways and Doctrines good People and Pastors may withdraw themselves from their Communion as St. Paul says in the places already cited And the Reasons of breaking off on such defections from necessary points either of faith or practice are still more urgent if there is no Liberty left in any Churches for other Pastors to stand up ministerially or exercise their Ministry in defence of those necessary points whilst they continue with and adhere to them For then the Concealment and Suppression of necessary Truths is made a condition of Communion and other Pastors if they will hold on with them must suffer that good thing which has been committed to their Trust to be extinguish'd without standing up according to their duty and solemn undertaking to minister the same Which will make it necessary for all who will choose to stand by Christ and his Truths rather than by such his Apostatizing Servants and Corrupters thereof to depart from them When therefore the Bishops and Pastors of any Church fall off from ministring necessary Christian Doctrine or Worship and especially when they come to allow their Communion to none who will go on administring the same they thereby loosen the bands of Union and break that spiritual dependance and relation which the People and other inferiour Pastors ought to have upon them They are no longer the true Joynts to compact the Members nor the Head of Unity to keep together the Body of the Church And thus it was at the Reformation under Queen Elizabeth with the Popish Bishops whose corrupt Worship and Doctrine yea and rigorous exaction of complyance with both from all who expected to hold Communion with them had set their Churches at liberty to go off from them as I formerly observed and to seek more Orthodox Bishops in their room And so it would be in the case of other Bishops especially of those who espouse a Schism and communicate with Anti-Bishops in opposition to the true Bishops if they fall from ministring necessary Christian Truths whether of Faith or of Moral Doctrine and Worship as in the fore-mentioned Cases And when the Church is thus loosed of its dependance on their Persons by the defection of such erring Bishops It may be free to unite it self to other Orthodox Bishops Either to receive such an one for its own local Bishop as was done at the Reformation by substituting Orthodox and Reformed Bishops into the Sees of Popish Bishops Or till it can have that by receiving the Benefit of Episcopal and Priestly Acts from any other Orthodox Bishops and Clery as they can be met with It may fetch all Orthodox Ministrations and spiritual Functions from other places when it cannot have them from an Orthodox Pastor or in the Unity of the Church at home This it may do says St. Cyprian in this Case As well as the Mariners when their own Port is sanded or otherwise insecure may pass it by and put in at another Or as well as the Travellers when their own Inn is beset with Thieves may take up their Lodging at another which is more safe And as the People of such defecting Bishops and Pastors may seek out and unite themselves to others for all necessary Ministrations so may those other Orthodox Bishops and Clergy who are sought to be free to receive and supply them This is plain of both because the Church whereof the one are Members and the other are Bishops or Priests is a Catholick Church For being Catholick its Baptisms and Ordinations are Catholick and make as the one Christians so the other Bishops and Priests that must be owned for such over all the Christian Church and not only in some limited Parts or Districts thereof And betwixt the Members of this Catholick Church there is to be a Communion of Saints so that the one may receive as Members and the other administer all spiritual Acts and Functions as Pastors as there is opportunity and as need requires When the Orthodox Members of such defecting Pastors come to them considering the Catholicism of the Church tho' never so far remote in place they must own them as their Brethren and professing the Communion of Saints they must receive them to their Communion When shuning the Rocks in their own defecting Church they seek a more safe harbour in theirs 't is their part to receive them with a prompt humanity and to give them such reception as was given to him who had faln among Thieves in the Gospel not only to let them in but to take all due and needful care of them saith St. Cyprian Yea and as Christian Bishops they are to look upon this Reception and these Ministrations as one part of their Episcopal Charge For they are Bishops of the Catholick Church as well as of their own Sees and have relation to the whole Church as well as to their own Diocess The Administration he has received is not only for his own Flock but for the Church in common says St. Ignatius of the Bishop of Philadelphia And Christ has committed to you not only your own but the Universal Church says Eleutherius to the Gallicane Bishops And though as being more especially Bishops of that place they have more particular Obligation to look after their own Flocks Yet as Catholick Bishops they must be concerned for the whole Church and look on it or any destitute parts thereof as their own as occasion requires It behoves us all to extend our Care and watch over the Body of the whole Church whose Members are disposed through each of the varicus Provinces say the Presbyters and Deacons of Rome to Cyprian on his informing them of the Deposition of Privatus Lambesitanus the Heretick And unum Gregem pascimus though we be many Pastors yet we are to look upon all as one Flock says St.
those who had been Ordained by them Besides all this instead of Anti-bishops being absolutely null and in reality no Bishops to heal and compose the differences of a miserably harassed and divided Church on such Competitions it has been sometimes agreed that whichsoever of them were the Right on the death of either the Survivor should be owned and the Church should have no other Bishop and so all the Ordinations and Episcopal Acts therein should pass through his hands and stand on his Authority whilst he lived Thus it was at Antioch where the Church was divided into Two Parts 〈◊〉 for the cause of the Faith which was common to them both but of the Bishops as Socrates says some owning and adhering to Meleâ—ius and others to Paulinus For to heal and close this lamentable Schism it was agreed which Sozomen calls an admirable Counsel and expedient that on the death of either the survivor should hold the See alone for his Life without being confronted and opposed by the Ordination of any other Person To prevent which an Oath was exacted of all in that Church who seemed to stand fairest for the Episcopate and of Flavianus among the rest that on the death of either of the Bishops they would not be Ordain'd Bishop of Antioch whilst the other survived Which Agreement and Oath being afterwards broke by Flavianus when on the death of Meletius he was Ordained Bishop against Paulinus cost him so much trouble and difficulty as he found to get himself received for the Bishop thereof both in Egypt Arabia and Cyprus and at Rome and among the Western Bishops afterwards Thus though Men in a Schism did ill in Ordaining others yet were not those Ordinations null in themselves but really conferred the powers of Orders which the Persons might exercise if the Church pleased And when once the Persons were reconciled and had satisfied the Church for their Schism they have often been allow'd to officiate in Virtue of that Ordination without being Ordained over again by the greatest Councils and through the early and later Ages of the Church And this shews that their Ordinations were not null in themselves For if such Persons had never received any Spiritual powers in their Ordinations they had none to exercise And had the Church been of this perswasion it would never have admitted them to exercise those POWERS which it believed were never Conferred on them But though these Men even after they had faln into a Schism or others who were Ordained therein had Orders yet was it in the power of the Church to deny them the Ministerial Exercise of their Orders Men must have the Communion of the Church as well as Orders before they can exercise their Orders and minister to the Faithful in any Religious Assemblies And though their Schism doth not utterly devest or exclude them from the Powers of Orders yet it doth from the Communion of the Church without which the Faithful who are not to seek but to shun the Ministrations of Schismaticks and Excommunicate persons must not partake with them in any Exercise of Orders And to this Communion after once they have justly lost and faln from it they are to be restored again in Degree more or less and to be received to the Communion either only of Lay-members or else of Clergy and to officiate according to their former Honors as the Church pleaseth And as to this Admission and Allowance to exercise their Orders in its Communion the Church has acted variously according as it saw cause When Ordinations have been made against the Rules of Unity though the Offenders thereby received Orders yet in care of these Rules and to assert and keep up Discipline it has at some times denyed as well as at other times granted its Communion to them for their Exercise of the same Where it judged that Rigor expedient on their submission it would receive them to communicate as Lay-men But they should not be allow'd the Priviledges nor permitted to act and officiate as Bishops and Priests in her Communion nor should other Churches receive them and joyn with them as such till moreover satisfaction had been first given to those Rules of Unity in Ordinations which had been broken in theirs And this it has done not only in case of this great Rule of not Ordaining a Bishop into a full Church but also in case of other Rules which are of less Account than it is Thus of Ordination into a Church already vacant if it is made without the Metropolitanes consent the Council of Nice and afterwards the Council of Antioch Deâ—rce That the Church shall not receive such an one for a Bishop And of Ordinations at large without declaring the appropriate Church or Place wherein the Person Ordained is to officiate the Council of Chalcedon decrees that they shall be invalid Not to mention or insist also on the Council of Nice's rejecting of the Anti-bishops Ordained by the Schismatick Meletius till they were confirmed by a more holy imposition of hands as their Synodical Epistle says because there was an incapacity more than ordinary for giving Orders not only to Anti-bishops but to any others in his Case which because it may be of use in this Argument I shall give an Account of Meletius was Bishop of Lycus in Egypt under the See of Alexandria and as Epiphanius relates was next in dignity and power to Peter the Bishop of Alexandria himself And he with his Adherents broke off from the Unity of the Church and set up a Schism separating from Peter the Bishop of Alexandria and assembling for Prayers and other Divine Offices by themselves and Ordaining opposite Bishops Priests and Deacons for the erection of opposite Churches in several places as Eleutheropolis Gaza and Aelia as Epiphanius says And these separate erections of Churches and opposite Ordinations he made after he had been justly deposed by Peter in a Synod as we are assured by Athanasius who had the best Opportunities to understand the Truth of these Matters and the most cause to inquire into them and also by Socrates afterwards And that too among other Crimes for his having faln in the Persecution to deny the Faith and to sacrifice to Idols Which Crimes when any Bishop or Clergy were once convicted of by the great Rule of Church-Discipline they were never afterwards to exercise any Clerical Powers or to officiate as Bishops and Clergy but upon their Reconciliation were to be received only to Lay-Communion After such Falls says St. Cyprian 't is in vain for any to seek to usurp the Episcopacy since 't is manifest such Men can neither preside in the Church of Christ nor ought to offer Sacrifice to God Chiefly since it has been Decreed by Cornelius and by Us and by all the Bishops of the whole World concerning them that after such Offence they may be admitted to Penance and the Peace of the Church but must stand
removed from the Honour of the Priesthood and Clerical Orders Accordingly Basilides the Bishop after he had denyed and cursed Christ was very thankful as he says and looked upon it as a great Favour to him that he could be received to communicate as a Lay-man And likewise Trophimus the Bishop when he had sacrificed to Idols was admitted as he tells Antotianus only to communicate as a Lay-man not to usurp the Priests Office any more as some malicious persons had inform'd him which made Antonianus complain of the same to Cyprian as a Violation of this known Rule of Discipline And in Vertue of this being the known and received Rule of the Church the Donatists sought to invalidate and overthrow the Ordination of Caecilian against whom they had set up their Anti-bishop Majorinus at Carthage pretending that Caecilians Ordainers particularly Faelix of Aptisng had been Traditors in the precedeing Persecution or had faln from Christ and deliver'd up their Bibles to be burnt by their persecutors Which Charge had it been true as it was false would have been received and owned for a just Exception on both sides And the Catholicks would have rejected Caecilian till he could make out some better Ordination as well as the Council of Nice did these Egyptian Anti-bishops that had no better Ordainer than Meletius who stood guilty of the like Offence But it was rejected in Caecilians Case as being a malicious Forgery the Donatists thereby impudently laying their own Crimes on others hoping that would hinder men from inquiring after the same in themselves Indeed as Epiphanius relates this Matter Meletius made this Schism and Ordained these Anti-bishops not after he had sacrificed to Idols and had been Synodically condemned by Peter for the same but whilst he as well as Peter was a stout Confessor for the Faith against Idols and in his Zeal for the Discipline of the Church against Peters easiness in admitting the Lapsers who sought to them whilst they were together in Prison for the peace of the Church But Athanasius who was nearer to this Transaction and who after some others was chosen to suâ—ceed Peter in the same Church is more like to understand the Truth of this Affair than Epiphanius was Whom Baronius and Petavius look upon as mislead into this account by some false Acts or Histories of the Meletians who dealt injuriously with Peter and the Catholicks in Egypt like as the Donatists did with Caecilian and those Catholicks in Africk on whom they labour'd to fix the Crime of being Traditors whereof the Catholicks were free but they themselves were notoriously guilty Thus though their Orders were valid in themselves without which they could have been received at no time yet have they not always availed to Claim and obtain the Churches Communion without which the persons could not be received by the Faithful to exercise the same And this has been when the Church saw fit and expedient to insist upon the Rules of Unity in Ordinations and more vigorously to assert Ecclesiastical Law and Discipline And this it might assert or relax as it saw Cause Ecclesiastical Law and Discipline is not a Rule of indispensible Obligation to the Church but such as it may and oft-times has receded from on great reason and necessity What Rules the Church makes the Church may alter and go off from in particular Cases as need shall require and as may best serve those ends for which it made them Accordingly Rules of Discipline have not been one and the same in all Ages For to omit others the ancient Councils asserted the free Election of Bishops nominated here by the Prince to the Bishops of the Province And for bid the Translation of Bishops from poorer to richer Sees And the Attendance of Bishops about Courts of Princes the Council of Antioch confirmed afterwards at Chalcedon and in Trullo forbidding them to go to the Emperor without the approbation and Letters of the Metropolitane And excluded both Bishops and Clergy from intermealing and incumbring themselves with Secular Trusts and Administrations All which are otherwise in these latter Ages And such Rules of Discipline as have been observed more strictly have not had one equal and uniform Tenor of Observation but have been sometimes remitted and sometimes exacted and stood upon as the Church was driven thereto by prudential Reason Thus it has been with the Canons or Rules of Discipline about Ordinations Which as the Church has sometimes insisted on as I noted to vacate the Ordinations which any Bishops made against them I mean to deny the Persons its Communion without which whatever powers of Orders they had received they could not be received in any Assemblies of the Faithful to exercise the same So were they at other times relaxed and over-ruled by the necessities of the Church and the Persons on their reconciliation admitted to officiate in vertue of such Orders as I think may abundantly appear by the fore-cited instances And this very Reason is given for it by the African Fathers in the Synod of Carthage when they admit of the Ordinations of the Donatists which the Transmarine or Italian Synod had rejected telling Pope Anastasius that this Reception of them to the same Orders was for the great necessity of Africk for a †better provision for Catholick Unity and for the benefit and peace of the Church These instances and proofs I think may be sufficient to shew that Anti-bishops and others of their Ordination have Orders though being in a Schism the Faithful ought not to joyn with them in their use thereof Their Schism makes them Sinners in receiving and in using their Orders and shuts out others from communicating therewith But it doth not utterly destroy and null their Orders nor must it be said I conceive that by such sinful Ordination they receive nothing or that whatever they had formerly received they lose by falling into Schism so as that thenceforward they have no Orders nor are Bishops or Priests at all The Donatists indeed as St. Austin reports asserted this and taught that by breaking off from the Church though men did not lose the Baptism which they had received before yet they lost their Orders or the Authority and Power of Baptizing And on pretence thereof they re-baptized those who since the Breach had been baptized by any of the Catholick Clergy As to which he owns that whilst they continue in their Schism they sin in exercising their Orders They do not do right saith he in giving Baptism to others whilst they themselves are broken off from the Church And it is to their own destruction so long as they have not the Charity of Union The having Baptism themselves and confering it on others are both pernicious whilst they continue out of the Bond of Peace But though they ought not to use these powers till they have amended their Schism yet as he
him making a New Body under him which apparently destroys Union and makes two out of one And thus we fee it doth in all Societies If an Opposite General is set up by a mutinous Party it divides the Army or if an opposite King is set up in a Realm it makes a Sedition and divides the Kingdom Or if the same is done in a College a Family or other Societies as well as in a Church opposite Heads do unavoidably make opposite Bodies and visibly destroy the Unity of any Society by breaking into two Societies or into as many as there shall be opposite Heads thereof Accordingly the Ancients place the Schism of Church-Members in breaking off from Rightful Bishops or setting up others in the same Church against them Thus in the Apostolical Canous the Schism of Presbyters of other Clergy or Laicks is express'd by their setting up another Altar and assembling separately in contempt of the Bishop So also the Council of Carthage declares concerning any Presbyters who should do the same after they had been sentenced and segregrated by their Bishops that therein they are Makers of Schisms And the second General Council rejects men as Schismaticks tho' they give out that they confess the Right Faith if they assemble and hold Congregations in opposition to their Canonical Bishops Hence says St. Cyprian come Schisms and Heresies because Men envy and contemn their Bishops They have risen and do rise from this viz. from some proud Persons presumptuous contempt of the Bishop who is one and presides over the Church Especially if they set up an Anti-Bishop and oppose a second Bishop to the first or to one Canonically Ordained already and rightfully possess'd of the same Church This was the Case of Novatianus whom the three Italian Bishops which he call'd to Rome for that purpose ordained Bishop of Rome against Cornelius who was already the Rightful and Canonical Bishop of that place This setting up of Anti Bishops St. Cyprian tells them is erecting an Adulterous Head a second Bishop being no more to be admitted to the same Church than a second Husband to the same Wife whilst the former lives and a spurious or adulterate Chair And bids them know that after once a Bishop is lawfully made and Ordained in any Church they can no ways set up another Bishop against him in the same place He calls it erecting unlawful Priesthoods and opposing against the True Altar and Holy Sacrifice a False and Profane Altar Sacrilegious Sacrifices And he aggravates the Novatian Schism by saying they had not only broke off from the Bishop and Church but had proceeded against the Ordinance of God and Catholick Unity to set up against him another Bishop an adulterous and contrary Head And on like setting up of Anti-Bishops after others were first in place Optatus Charges the Donatists with Schism afterwards These setters up of opposite or Anti-Bishops first break off themselves from their own Bishop before they can set another up against him And being broke off from their Bishop they are broke off from the Church which is in Episcopo as I shewed before or goes along with the Bishop those Members only making the true Body which adhere and keep to the Head and those ceasing to be any longer of the Body who are separated from the Head And therefore these opposite or Anti-Bishops and opposite Altars that blessed Martyr still says are foris and extra Ecclesiam and have receded ab Ecclesia that is are not within but without the Church Now from this Account of Church-Union in any particular Churches and of Schism which lyes in the unjust Breach thereof I shall observe these three Things 1. First That when a second or opposite Bishop is set up in any Church against a former Orthodox one who is still Bishop thereof the Anti-Bishop and they who set him up and adhere to him make the Schism For the other with his Adherents as the same Head and Members abide still where they were and are still the same Church But the Anti-Bishop and his Followers are gone out from them which Optatus gives as a plain Proof against the Donatist Bishops that the Schism lay at their doors They have broke themselves off and by erecting themselves into an opposite Head and Body make a new and opposite Church Consenting to set up another Bishop they consented therein to set up another Church as I observed before from St. Cyprian So that they rend that Body which by keeping wholly to one Bishop before was but one into several pieces and break one Church into two Churches This I say they do if the former Bishop is Orthodox For if he is Heretical Heresie as I shall shew dissolves the Union and cancels the Obligation of Adherence between such Head and Members They are bound to own him as their Head and to be one with him as his true and genuine Members whilst he is at the Head of Christian Doctrines and necessary Truths but not when he falls off from them into damnable Heresies and Unchristian Errors And if he is still the rightful Bishop of that Church If he voluntarily quits his Right and Relation to them and gives it up by his own Resignation they are no longer bound to adhere to him For these Unions and Dependances are contracted by the consent of Mens own Wills and are kept up betwixt these Heads and Members not by natural but voluntary Communications So that if a Bishop throws up his own Relation and will no longer preside over them as Head of a Church they are no longer bound to keep in Dependance and Subjection or to stick to him as Members thereof Or if he loses it against his Will by a just sentence and deprivation that also discharges the Members from their Union and Dependance and sets them free to receive and to unite themselves to another in his place But if neither Death has put an end to his Relation nor he has thrown it up by his own Resignation nor is deprived thereof by the finishing of a Regular Process and Synodical Sentence against him he is still the Bishop of his CHURCH and will bar and keep out any other Person from being Ordained a Bishop over them A Bishop can by no means be constituted in that Church whose own Bishop is yet alive and stands vested with his proper Honour unless of his own accord he renounce his Bishoprick And as to making a vacancy by deprivation it behoves first that the cause of him who is to be cast out of his Bishoprick be canonically examined and the Process against him be fully brought to an end And then after he is canonically deposed another may be promoted to his Bishoprick say the Fathers in the Council of Constantinople But if even a Synod of Bishops shall deprive an Orthodox Bishop of any Church for adhering to the