admissible by all; individual opinions not binding. 231 administration of it, have carried this farther, we are not at all concerned in it; but in case any such thing were made out, it could amount to no more than this, that the civil power had made some encroachments on ecclesiastical authority; but the submitting to an oppression, and the bearing it till some better times may deliver us from it, is no argument against our Church; on the contrary, it is a proof of our temper and patience, and of that respect we pay to that civil authority which God hath set over us, even when we think that it passeth its bounds. But all that we are bound to acknowledge in the king's supremacy, is so well limited, that our author hath nothing to object to it." "So that y upon the whole matter, if the great and unmeasured extent of the papal authority made our princes judge it necessary to secure themselves from those invasions, by stretching their jurisdiction a little too much; on the other hand, those who have submitted so tamely to the one, have no reason to reproach us for bearing the other, servitude, even supposing that we granted that to be the case. And if in the time of our Reformation, some of our bishops or other writers have carried the royal supremacy too far, either in acts of convocation or in their writings, as those things are personal matters, in which we are not at all concerned, who do not pretend to assert an infallibility in our Church; so their excess in this was a thing so natural, that we have all possible reason to excuse it, or at least to censure it very gently. For as all parties and persons are carried by a bias very common to mankind, to magnify that authority which favours and supports them; so the extremes of the papal tyranny, and the ecclesiastical power that had formerly prevailed, might have carried them a little too far into the opposite extreme, of raising the civil power too high." Upon which he [Woodhead] argues [arraigns] two things, y Burnet, Reflections, &c. p. 16. z [That is, the first two theses laid down in the Relation, (as abridged by Burnet, p. 18.) The "first is, The two principal offices which the clergy have received from Christ are, (1.) to determine controversies in pure matters of religion, and to judge what is truth and what are errors in faith and worship. (2.) To teach and promulgate this truth, and to execute Church cen- UNFAIR CITATIONS. SECT. XVII. 232 Clergy's giving up powers, unlawful and void. Burnet, PREFAT. (1.) The clergy's binding themselves never to make any deDISCOURSE, cisions in matters of faith or worship, till they had first obtained the consent of the secular governor. (2.) The clergy's authorizing the secular governor, or those whom he should nominate, to determine those matters in their stead".' "It is certain, no clergy in the world can make any such deputation; and if any have done it, it was a personal act of theirs, which was null of itself, and did not indeed bind those who made it, it being of its own nature unlawful, but much less can it bind their successors.' "" To these passages I think fit to add what his lordship hath said of the prince's power to depose the clergy, because the Rights hath as it were marshalled up the depriving acts in battle-array against them, and frequently reproached them with suspension, deprivation, and incapacity by and from the civil power. "The third thesis is, ' that the prince cannot depose any of his clergy, without the consent of the major part of the clergy, or their ecclesiastical superiors, and in particular of the patriarch.' ; "In this the matter must still be reduced to the former point; either the grounds of such a deposition are in themselves just, or not; if they are just, the prince may as lawfully hinder any church-man from corrupting his subjects, while he is supported by a public authority or a settled revenue, as he may hinder a man that hath the plague on him from going about to infect his people; for his deposing such a one is only the taking the civil encouragement from him but when this is done unjustly, it is without doubt an act of high oppression in the prince; and as for the person deposed, and those over whom he was set, they are to consider according to the rules of prudence, whether the present case is of such importance, that it will balance the inconveniences of their throwing themselves into a state of persecution; for it is to be confessed that church-men have by their office an indefinite authority of feeding the flock, which cannot be dissolved by any act of the prince's; but the appropriating of these things," binding themselves, a [The passage is from the Relation, p. 11.] Pref., pp. xxx, xxxi. [Burnet, Reflections, p. 20. The thesis occurs at p. 12. of the Relation.] on deposition. Tertullian on the Eucharist; misapplied. 233 this to such a precinct, and the supporting it by civil encouragements, [it] is a human thing, and is therefore subject to the sovereign power." But of what he said in the last four lines I shall say no more here, than that I think they seem to call for his lordship's second thoughts and farther explication. In p. 107 he most impudently, as well as falsely, cites Tertullian De Corona Militis, to prove that receiving the Eucharist from the hand of the bishop was 'an innovation,' whereas the contrary is most evident from the father's words, which are these: Eucharistiæ Sacramentum, et in tempore victus, et omnibus mandatum a Domino, etiam antelucanis cœtibus, nec de aliorum manu quam præsidentium sumimus. "We receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist commanded by the Lord to be received at the time of (our love feast) meals (in the evening) and at all times, in our (morning) assemblies before day, but we receive it from the hands of none but of the bishops." The next citation in which I tax him of want of ingenuity, and fraud, is that in which he puts Bishop Bull with Petavius, Curcellæus, Cudworth, and Le Clerc, to prove that the doctrine of the Nicene "fathers was not that there is only one Divine essence in number, but in kindf." He might with as much modesty, truth, and ingenuity, have named this great defender of the Nicene faith and fathers with Socinus, Epi d cap. iii. [Tert. Op., p. 102, A.] 66 e [Tindal (Rights, p. 107.) translated the words 'omnibus mandatum,' "committed to all." The passage seems to mean, "the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which was enjoined by the Lord, both at the time of a meal and to all, we receive in meetings before dawn," and of course fasting, ('ante omnem cibum,' as he says, Ad Uxorem, lib. ii. c. 5. Op., p. 169, A.) “ and only at the hands of those who preside." Tertullian is arguing that traditionary practices are to be observed, though not contained in Scripture, nay even when they seem, as in this instance, to oppose it; not meaning that the Church practice was "an innovation," as Tindal says, but that the practice of His Church from the first evidenced the intention of our Lord, and determined the sense of Scripture.] ["To which may be added that the doctrine of those fathers was not, that ; UNFAIR CITATIONS. DISCOURSE, 234 Bp. Bull classed with those whom he opposed; PREFAT. Scopius, and Sandius, against whom he hath written, as well SECT. XVII. as against Petavius, by name, as may be seen in the Proœmium of his Defensio fidei Nicenas, as well as in his Judicium Ecclesia Catholicah, which he wrote on purpose against Episcopius, of whom he gives this character in the Proœmium to his Defensio, &c. Simon Episcopius theologus cætera doctissimus, sed in antiquitate ecclesiastica plane hospes. To which I must add what he saith of Episcopius' censure of the council of Nice, and the other councils which maintained the Nicene confession, "that they were led on by fury, faction, and madness:" Quis vero, inquam egok, &c. "But who, say I, doth not perceive that these things must proceed from a mind which is not so sound or so composed as it ought to be? For how could it become a sober and a modest man thus to tear and rend with slanders the venerable prelates of the most august synod? But now to the matter. He is not ashamed to say, that the Nicene creed was made in a heat, by the fury and the factiousness of a party, without sense or any consideration. But the emperor Constantine, who presided in the said synod of Nice, expressly testifieth, in an epistle to the Churches concerning the same council, that he being himself present in it, all matters were therein discussed with all due examination. The same emperor, in an epistle to the Church of Alexandria in particular, which is found in the Ecclesiastical His 8 [See of Socinus, Def. Fid. Nic. Prooem. § 4. p. 5; Episcopius, § 5. pp. 6-9; Sandius, § 6. p. 9; Petavius, § 7. sqq. pp. 9-13; Bull's Works, vol. v. Oxford, 1827.] [See the Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ; Præmon. ad Lectorem, and Introduction, ibid., vol. vi. pp. 5-13.] i [Def. Fid. Nic. Prooem., § 5. ibid., vol. v. p. 6.] * Ib. [The whole passage beginning with a quotation from Episcopius (Instit. Theol. iv. 34. sect. 2.) is, "Et si quod res est, dicendum est, ea ab episcopis inter se magna cum æmulatione jurgantibus et contendentibus, ex fervore, si non furore, partiumque studio insano ac maleferiato, præcipitata potius videri debent, quam a compositis animis profecta.' Atque ut intelligas, Nicænum præcipue symbolum ab ipso hic perstringi, mox subdit, Quis enim nescit quam acres in synodo Nicæna disceptationes, quam præfracta jurgia inter episcopos excitata fuerint?' Quis vero, inquam ego, non sentiat, hæc ab animo haud satis sano aut composito profecta esse? adeone decuit virum sobrium ac modestum venerandos augustissimæ synodi antistites convitiis lacerare et proscindere? Sed ad rem. Symbolum Nicænum ab episcopis, 'ex furore partiumque studio insano ac maleferiato, præcipitatum fuisse' non veretur dicere. At Constantinus imperator, qui synodo Nicænæ moderator ipse præfuit, in Epistola ad ecclesias de eadem synodo diserte testatur (apud Euseb. de Vita Constant., lib. iii. cap. 17. p. 586), quod se præsente in ea ἅπαντα τῆς προσηκούσης τετύχηκεν erάoews, 'cuncta competenti examine discussa fuerint.' Idem in Epistola ad Alexandrinam ecclesiam proprie scripta ait (apud Socratem Hist. Eccles., lib. i. cap. 9. p. 30. ed. Vales.), se inter Ni Bp. Bull against Episcopius, on the Council of Nice. 235 tory of Socrates, says, that he himself, among the Nicene bishops, and as it were one of their number, and their fellow-servant, did, being present, so undertake the examination of the truth, as that all things which might bear a show of, or administer occasion for a doubtful or ambiguous sense, or difference of sentiments, might be accurately discussed. To which epistle of Constantine Socrates adds this remark; 'O μèv dè Baoiλeùs, &c. 'Now the emperor wrote after this manner to the people of Alexandria, hereby teaching them that the council's definition concerning the faith was not slightly and rashly, but maturely and deliberately, after a diligent enquiry and full examination, determined; and that there was not notice taken of some arguments, and others passed by or silently suppressed, but that all whatever could be brought for the proof or disproof of the doctrine to be esta blished, was fairly produced and canvassed openly. Neither was any thing by them simply or inconsiderately defined; but all was in the first place accurately sifted and examined into.' Nay even Eusebius himself, who seems to have had the next place in the Nicene assembly to the emperor (a writer of very great integrity, of a temperate and moderate genius, and no wise partial against the Arians), expressly relates how that all the bishops did subscribe to the faith agreed on in that council, our ȧvežeтáσтws, not rashly and without consideration, but after an accurate, deliberate, and cænos episcopos, velut ex eorum numero unum, et conservum ipsorum, præsentem veritatis examen ita suscepisse, ut ἠλέγχθη ἅπαντα, καὶ ἀκριβῶς ἐξήτασται, ὅσα ἢ ἀμφιβολίας (sic enim legendum esse, ex eadem clausula mox a Socrate repetita, satis liquet) diχονοίας πρόφασιν ἐδόκει γεννᾷν, i.e. 'Cuncta, quæ controversiæ aut dissen sionis materiam excitare videbantur, accurate discussa atque examinata fuerint.' Ad quam Constantini Epistolam hæc annotat Socrates (p. 31): 'O μèv δὴ βασιλεὺς τοιαῦτα ἔγραφε τῷ ̓Αλεξανδρέων δήμῳ, μηνύων ὅτι οὐχ ̓ ἁπλῶς, οὐδὲ ὡς ἔτυχε γέγονεν ὁ ὅρος τῆς πίστεως· ἀλλ ̓ ὅτι μετὰ πολλῆς συζητή σεως καὶ δοκιμασίας αὐτὸν ὑπηγόρευσαν καὶ οὐχ ̓ ὅτε τινὰ μὲν ἐλέχθη, τινὰ δὲ ἀπεσιγήθη, ἀλλ' ὅτε ὅσα πρὸς σύστασιν τοῦ δόγματος λεχθῆναι ἥρμοζε, πάντα ἐκινήθη· καὶ ὅτι οὐχ ̓ ἁπλῶς ὡρίσθη, ἀλλ ̓ ἀκριβῶς ἐξητάσθη πρότερον i. e. UNFAIR CITATIONS. |