PREFAT. DISCOURSE, 236 Bp. Bull's abhorrence of the errors charged on him. diligent examination of all the several sentiments made in SECT. XVII. the presence of the emperor: and particularly to the very clause itself of the consubstantiality, or the oμooúσios, with their unanimous consent. See the epistle of Eusebius to those of his diocese extant in the first book of the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates, chap. viii. At the beginning indeed of the council, there were some no small strivings among certain of the bishops; but which were soon pacified and laid to sleep by means of the emperor's most pious and obliging speech; as the same Eusebius doth also witness." I have transcribed this passage in answer to that of Episcopius, because he hath cited it after another such of Le Clerc's, p. 1991, and because it confirms what I have said before from ecclesiastical history, in answer to these slanderous citations out of these and other such writers, who will ever have an ill-will against the Nicene fathers, and all that adhere to their exposition of the Christian faith. But though this learned bishop hath been the champion of that council and its confession against all the Arian, Popish", or Protestant, or Socinian writers of this age, to the time of writing his books, for which he received the thanks of the assembly of the clergy of the Gallican Church"; yet our author hath reckoned him among those of whom he saith, "aso often as I consider this, I cannot, without indignation and horror, reflect upon their stupendous ignorance, or rather madness, who have made no difficulty to misrepresent the Nicene fathers as malicious or ignorant depravers of the Catholic doctrine concerning Jesus Christ, which was delivered by the Apostles, and obtruders of a new faith upon the Christian (acnominatim clausulæ de τῷ ὁμοουσίῳ) 1 Quoted above, p. 157. m As Petavius. See the Prooemium to the Bishop's Defensio, [§ 7, 8. pp. 9, sqq.] UNFAIR Dodwell quoted, from Toland; had been explained. 237 world." Nay, this our author hath done against his declaration of his intention in writing that noble defence; "ThisP CITATIONS. is the scope and design of my undertaking in this work, to shew clearly that all the approved fathers and doctors of the Church, who lived from the time of the Apostles to the council of Nice, taught the very same doctrine, though sometimes in different words, and different ways of speaking, that the Nicene fathers did of the Godhead of the Son against Arius and other heretics." This shews the genius, I should have said the evil genius of these men, who can thus abuse a living author, whose works have been lately reprinted with as much, if not with more notoriety, than any book of the same time. To these I might add his other fraudulent citations out of authors which have been effectually answered, without taking notice of the answers, of which, to his dishonour, I gave a remarkable instance in his quotations to blacken Archbishop Laud. So he quotess a passage out of Amyntor, which Mr. Toland cited with an evil intention out of a very learned author, to discredit the authority of the Scripture canon, though there was never a better answer written, than it received in two impressions of a book entitled, The Canon of the Scripture vindicated, in answer to the objections of J [ohn] T[oland] in his Amyntor, by John Richardson [B.D.] London, 1701'. P [Scilicet hic operis et incœpti nostri scopus, hoc institutum est, ut clare ostendamus, quod de Filii divinitate contra Arium aliosque hæreticos statuerunt Patres Nicæni, idem reipsa (quanquam aliis fortasse nonnunquam verbis, alioque loquendi modo) docuisse Patres ac doctores Ecclesiæ probatos ad unum omnes qui ante tempora synodi Nicænæ ab ipsa usque Apostolorum ætate floruerunt.-Ibid., § 9. pp. 13, 14.] [Bishop Bull was living at the publication of the first edition of this work, as bishop of St. David's, to which he was elected in 1705. He died Feb. 17, 1710.-Nelson's Life, p. 404.] г ["In the year 1703 Dr. Bull's Latin works were collected together into one volume in folio, by Dr. John Ernest Grabe, who adorned and perfected this new edition with his own many learned annotations, and introduced it into the world with an admirable preface, which t [Rights, Preface, pp. lxxi. Ixxii.] question is a long extract from Dod- Dodwell's "principal intention" (to PREFAT. SECT. XVII. 238 Bede and the Culdees: Tertullian on the sacerdotal So" he hath trumped up anew the ecclesiastical jurisdicDISCOURSE, tion of the abbot of Hye, to whom, though but a presbyter, he saith, the Scottish bishops were subject, and cites Bede* in the margin for his authority; though this monkish dream of an ancient Church government in Scotland by presbyters, and the whole story of the Culdees, had been twenty years before most clearly and learnedly confuted by Dr. William Lloyd, then bishop of St. Asaph, in his book entitled, "An Historical Account of Church government, as it was in Great Britain and Ireland when they first received the Christian religion'." With like impudence to destroy the distinction betwixt the laity and clergy, and to prove that laymen might exercise the priestly office, he cites that famous passage out of Tertullian de Castitate, though the argument taken from that passage for the priesthood of the laity, and the administration of the Sacraments by laymen, had been fully and irrefragably answered many years before in the time of Irenæus, and were de- u Rights, p. 339. [Bede, Eccl. Hist., lib. iii. c. 4. The passage is as follows; speaking of the monasteries founded by St. Columbanus, "in quibus omnibus idem monasterium insulanum (Hy, or Iona), in quo ipse requiescit corpore, principatum tenet. Habere autem solet ipsa insula rectorem semper abbatem presbyterum, cujus juri et omnis provincia, et ipsi etiam Episcopi ordine inusitato debeant esse subjecti, juxta exemplum primi doctoris illius (S. Columbani) qui non episcopus sed presbyter extitit et monachus."] [The passage from Bede is translated and discussed, chap. vii. § 10, sqq. p. 165. in the edition of Bishop Lloyd's work appended to the 2nd vol. of Stillingfleet's Origines Britannica. Oxford, 1842.] 66 a Rights, pp. 168, 169. [The passage is this, "Differentiam inter ordinem et plebem constituit Ecclesiæ auctoritas, et honor per ordinis consessum sanctificatus; adeo ubi Ecclesiastici ordinis non est consessus, et offers et tinguis et sacerdos es tibi solus. Sed ubi tres, Ecclesia est, licet laici." To which Tindal unfairly adds a clause which occurs some lines after, omnes nos Deus ita vult dispositos esse, ut ubique sacramentis ejus obeundis apti simus."-Tert. De Exhortatione Castitatis, c. 7. Op., p. 522, A. Of this work the Bened. Editors say (Vita Tertull. A.D. 213), "Librum ..de Exhort. Cast. Nicephorus, (lib. iv. cap. 54,) inter eos recenset, qui contra Ecclesiam Catholicam conscripti sunt, et in quo eo dementiæ videtur venisse ut apud tres etiam laicos, utpote Montanum et insanas ejus Prophetidas Priscam et Maximillam, esse Ecclesiam existimet." They place the statement among the heretical paradoxes of Tertullian, No. 17.] powers of the Laity. Stillingfleet's Irenicum. 239 by Mr. H. Dodwell, in his book entitled, De jure Laicorum Sacerdotali ex Sententia Tertulliani [aliorumque veterum] Dissertatio [adversus anonymum↳ Dissertatorem "de Cœnæ Administratione, ubi Pastores non sunt."] Londini, 1685. So hath he very frequently cited Bishop Stillingfleet's Irenicum, though he is forced to confess that the "Appendix to the second edition runs counter to it," he means his "Discourse concerning the Power of Excommunication," of which he saith, "the whole design of it is to maintain that doctrine of two independent powers, which he had so much exploded in his book." To what purpose then did he cite the Irenicum, not only in this place of his preface referred to in the margin, but so often after in his book, against the Church, if, as he is forced to confess, the author hath since told us, "that he knows no incongruity in admitting an imperium in [The anonymous writer was Grotius; his work was republished at the beginning of Dodwell's reply: it is contained also in his Opera Theologica, London, 1679, tom. iv. p. 505: a translation of it was sent out by Tindal, appended to his Second Defence of the Rights, p. 179. Dodwell argues (cap. ii. pp. 46-164.) that Tertullian does not assert as a fact, that the Church of his time held this view, but on the contrary implies (what he shews to be the case) that it did not. He then considers the value of Tertullian's individual opinion and arguments, and particularly (§ 23-25) considers the words here referred to, ubi tres sunt, ibi ecclesia,' which, the presence of clergy being implied, was a received maxim, 'licet laici' Tertullian's own addition.] : [Stillingfleet, in 1659, at the age of four and twenty, published the work entitled" Irenicum; a weapon salve for the Church's wounds or the Divine right of particular forms of Church government discussed and examined according to the principles of the law of nature, the positive laws of God, the practice of the Apostles and the primitive Church, and the judgment of reformed divines. Wherein a foundation is laid for the Churches peace and the accommodation of our present differences."-Works, vol. ii. p. 147. The object of this treatise was to maintain the negative of the question, "Whether any one individual form of Church government be founded so upon Divine right, that all ages and Churches are bound unalterably to observe it."- UNFAIR CITATIONS. SECT. XVII. 240 Stillingfleet; the Church a distinct society. PREFAT. imperio," and that "the magistrate's power is cumulative DISCOURSE, not privatived?" I can scarce forbear to cite the whole passages, which he hath curtailed, because they run as counter to the Rights as he saith they do to the Irenicum; and let him write never so often, and never so much, that Discourse of Excommunication, wherein the Church is proved to be a society of a quite different original from the commonwealth, and distinct from it, will be a confutation of what he writes. But besides his Discourse of Excommunication, that great man afterwards published several pieces as counter to his Irenicum as that of Excommunication, viz., The Unreasonableness of Separation, &c. at London, 1681. The Charge to the Clergy of his Diocese at his Primary Visitation [in 1690]. His Sermon preached at a Public Ordination, March 5, 16845%, out of which I will present him this passage: "For the Church is a society in its nature, design, duties, offices, censures, really distinct from any [mere] human institution. And no Christian who believes that the kingdom of the Messias was to be an external, visible kingdom, can be of another opinion. And although Christ be the King of kings, and Lord of lords, and therefore, as kings, they are subject to Him; yet that authority which Christian kings do exercise over their subjects, doth not overthrow the rules and orders which Himself hath established in His Church; for no power derived from Him can void or destroy His own laws and institutions. Since then the Church doth subsist by virtue of Christ's own appointment, and that Church is to have peculiar officers to instruct and govern it, it must follow that even in a Christian kingdom the Church is a society distinct from the commonwealth1? This is as counter to his Irenicum as any thing in his Discourse of Excommunication, in which he hath provedi, "first, that the Church is a peculiar society, in its own nature distinct from the commonwealth. Secondly, that its power over its members doth not arise |