DISCOURSE, Cases parallel to that of avoiding excommunicates. PREFAT. avoiding of excommunicates, he saith', "doth not only deprive SECT. VIII. them of their employments and professions, but if strictly put in execution, would cause them to lead lives more to be dreaded than death itself, and at last to perish most miserably." How false this is, appears from the exceptions just now mentioned, in which conversation and commerce with excommunicates is not forbidden. But admitting all he saith were strictly true, I must tell him, that all this misery would be the effect of the excommunicate's contumacy and stubbornness, and not of the excommunication; because the Church is always ready to receive him upon repentance; this power of her priests being not for destruction, but emendation and edification, as we shall hereafter see. He cannot but know, that other civil societies, particularly the universities, have a power like this, which they exercise in excommuning the citizens and magistrates of Oxford and Cambridge, when their rights, privileges, and immunities are invaded by them; but they do not this with an intention to hurt them or their families, but to reduce them to reason, being always ready to take off their prohibition of the scholars to trade with them, as soon as they remove the cause; and what any of them suffers in the mean time by being excommuned, his sufferings are properly from himself. I need not make any application of this power to that of the Church, only I would ask our author, first, whether it is a "power of life and death," (as the other, he saith, is, in the clergy ;) because perhaps a stubborn townsman may bring himself to poverty for want of trade, by his own stubbornness? And, secondly, whether God may not give the like power to His ministers of commanding the people, for the benefit and honour of His Church, in all places to avoid the conversation of excommunicates till they are reconciled? Let us see what we can find to this purpose in the Scriptures; I say in the Scriptures, which he very seldom cites in his book. In Matt. xviii. 15-18, our Lord gives a rule to His disciples of proceeding with an injurious brother. First He directs to tell him of his fault privately, then to admonish him before one, or two, or more; and if he could not be brought to reason by neither of those ways, then to tell it to the Church; i [Rights, p. 39.] k Ibid. Similar instances in the New Testament. 167 CENSURES. but if he neglected to hear the Church, then they were to oN CHURCH look upon him as a heathen and publican, that is, as one no longer fit to be conversed with. Now, supposing this were only a permission, and not a strict command, yet what our Lord permitted, the governors of the Church have power to enjoin; and the author of the Rights may in his way of arguing against shunning excommunicates, say the same thing against our Lord's directions here, that it "deprives men of their professions and other men's assistance, and if strictly put in execution, would make them lead lives more to be dreaded than death, and at last perish most miserably." The same he may say of the Apostle's command to the Romans (chap. xvi. 17), of "marking them who cause divisions and offences, and to avoid them;" and of his injunction to the Corinthians (1 Cor. v. 9, 11) "not to keep company with open fornicators, idolaters, drunkards, railers, and extortioners, with such no not to eat." So in 2 Thess. iii. 14, it was his command, that "if any obeyed not his word in that epistle, they should note that man, and have no company with him, that he might be ashamed." So St. John, in [2 John his second Epistle, commanded the Christians to whom he ver. 10.] wrote it, that if any came among them under the name of Christians, and did not confess that Christ was come in the flesh, that they should not "receive them into their houses, nor so much as salute them." If they had power to prohibit Christians to keep company with such open scandalous sinners that they might be ashamed, then I hope they had power for the same good end to command them to avoid excommunicates, and that this power is still in their successors, to whom the power of the keys belongs. I presume it is reasonable to think, that the Corinthians, who were to shun the incestuous person before excommunication, did avoid him afterwards, what inconvenience soever he suffered by it, while he was refractory and stood out. Every one who knows the discipline of the primitive times, must know how strictly these directions and commands of our Lord and His Apostles were observed; and, for my own part, I think them so binding upon my conscience, that I should think myself obliged to have no commerce or conversation with the author of the Rights, and some other writers as bad as he, men PREFAT. DISCOURSE, 168 Excommunicate Magistrates. Causes of excommunication. tioned in "The Axe laid to the Root of Christianity'," exSECT. VIII. cepting in the cases above mentioned, and to shun them in all places; and wherever I by chance met them, not to "bid [Jude ver. them God speed," or to sit down at a table to a "feast" where 12.] there were such "spots." But to expose and exaggerate with all his power the severity of this godly discipline, and make it as odious as he can, he saith", "The magistrate is not exempt from it, since he is an ecclesiastical subject, but may be reduced to this miserable condition of being avoided and shunned by his soldiers and others, on pain of being delivered to Satan." How false this is, appears from the exceptions before mentioned"; the duty of shunning excommunicates not extending to natural, domestic, or civil relations, or to discharge any child, or servant, or subject, or soldier from his duty to his domestic, civil, or military superior, though he were not only an excommunicate, but an apostate; and therefore as this discipline doth not affect a magistrate of any sort in his domestic, so neither in his civil or military capacity; but as all his children must obey, and all his servants attend him within doors, so must all his subjects obey him, all his officers attend him, and all his soldiers march and fight in obedience to his orders without. He must still have his lictors, and still ride in his curule chair; and to be short, he is the same magistrate after, as he was before, excommunication, and must have the same duty paid him by his inferiors in their several relations and posts. In a word, his full charge against this discipline is false, for 'it deprives' no man 'of all converse,' as he saith, nor is any man "left by it alone and solitary in the midst of mankind.” Then he goes on to reflect on the censures of the Church for "trifling causes, for which the penalty of excommunication is commonly inflicted." Here again is his mobbish fallacious way of arguing against the use of power from the abuse of it, which, if it were true, would argue down all domestic, civil, and military power in the world. But, I must tell him, if those he calls trifling causes were examined, they would be found to be the weighty causes of contempt and contu Objection of driving subjects from their country ; 169 macy, when refractory persons will not own the judgment and authority of the ecclesiastical courts, or submit to them, though but in so small a matter as "a groat, or a shilling." In the next place, he saith', that "if excommunication belongs by Divine right to the clergy, then the magistrate hath not all power necessary for the protection of his subjects, because, by the terror of this dreadful punishment, they drive the most useful citizens and their trades into foreign parts, to the ruin of the commonwealth.” To which I answer, as formerly, whether it belongs to them, or no, is a question of fact; and if it doth, as indeed it doth belong to them, then the terror of the punishment is no argument against it. For all punishments of all sorts are more or less terrible, and the argument is as good against the civil as the ecclesiastical power. What a powerful declaration could he make against aquæ, et igni interdiceres? and how finely could he harangue it against the dreadful power of making acts of attainder, or against the powers that kings and sovereign estates have of forbidding their subjects, under the pain of death, to harbour or receive traitors and rebels, by which, he may say, they drive the noble peers, the worthiest gentlemen, the best patriots, and the most useful citizens, and their trades, into foreign parts, to the ruin of the commonwealth? But secondly, if by the terror of excommunication he means the terror of it as a pure spiritual punishment, that can drive none into foreign parts, because an excommunicate at home is as much an excommunicate abroad, all the Christian world. over, being bound by the sentence wherever he goes; though he should "take the wings of the morning, and fly into the uttermost parts of the sea," even there his excommunication will hold him, as well as in his own country, and he shall be bound both in heaven and earth. But if by the terrible nature of it he means, as I suppose he doth, the civil punishments that attend it by the laws of Christian countries, then it is not the clergy, but the magistrates themselves, who are judges of the public good, that drive out the most useful ON CHURCH CENSURES. 170 Objection from possible abuse of Power. The question PREFAT. citizens and their trades into foreign parts, to the ruin of the DISCOURSE, commonwealth. SECT. VIII. Then he saith, "If the clergy met in council may determine for the Christian world, when they shall eat, and when not; that is, appoint times of fasting and abstinence, "and can forbid the use of flesh, and excommunicate all who disobey them, why may they not assume the same power about drinks, and clothes, of rising, or going to bed, or working, or not working, which is included in appointing holy days." Here is still the same fallacy again of arguing against lawful power from the abuse of it in those that have it; and his argument is as good in the same instances against the temporal as the spiritual power. Thus the dissenters argue against the power of the Church in imposing ceremonies, because if the Church have power of imposing, as they call enjoining, ceremonies, it may as well impose ten thousand, as one or two; but power is always lodged somewhere, and if those in whom it is vested will abuse it, by grievous and insolent impositions, they must be answerable for it to their superiors on earth; or, if they be supreme, to the great God in heaven. Nay, this way of arguing will divest a father of a family of all his authority, who may make himself very uneasy to his domestics, by tyrannical impositions in the same instances. But the question, as I must still observe, is a question of fact, whether the governors of the Church have a power to appoint times of abstinence and fasting, and of appointing holy days, and in some cases of giving orders about clothes, or not. And when our author will desire me, I think I shall be able to prove that she hath such power, particularly as to clothes, which our author thinks the greatest of absurdities: 1 Cor. 11.15. the Apostle commanded the Corinthian women to be veiled, or covered in Divine service; the Church in the best and purest ages commanded the same"; and if for the same reason the convocation should ordain it now, after his and their examples, and according to their excellent discipline, I think they would do what would be for their honour, and the good of souls. I once saw the greatest queen of Europe quit all |