other objections to Burnet's view. 291 going elsewhere for regular ordinations";' I say, I desire to know whether that case happening in any part of Christendom just as his lordship describes it', be not the same with the case of Jeroboam and his priests, or very like it? I desire also to be informed by his lordship, whether that or any other case of necessity, when it authorizes a company of Christian people, or the supreme magistrate over them, (let their whole body and wills be never so much comprehended and concluded in him",') to constitute ministers, it also authorizes them to sink or suppress any order of the ministry, especially the supreme order of bishops? Methinks it must be a strange necessity that authorizes men to set up a ministry in part, and not in whole; to supply the want of the ordinary mission, and not to supply it in perfection: Jeroboam, who for the same "political reasons" which his lordship allows', set up priests of his own creation, made high-priests as well as priests. I might ask his lordship more questions, but I will conclude, most humbly beseeching him to consider, whether instead of writing up the other Protestant Churches to the Church of England, as one would think a bishop should do, he hath not written her down to them in his Exposition of the twenty-third Article, and upon supposition (for things may be supposed that never will be) that episcopacy should be abdicated for politic reasons here as in other countries, what his lordship could say, after such large concessions, in defence of his own most sacred apostolic order, why it should not be deposed. He hath observed of it", that the world received the Christian religion with [under] it, that all the corners of the Christian Church,' and 'all the parts of it, the sound as well as the unsound, that is, the orthodox as well as the heretics and schismatics, agreed in it.' His lord ["If it should happen that princes or states should take up such a jealousy of their own authority, and should apprehend that the suffering their subjects to go elsewhere for regular ordinations, might bring them under some dependence on those that had ordained them; and if upon other political reasons they had just cause of being jealous of that, and should thereupon hinder any such thing in that case, neither our Reformers nor their successors for near eighty years after those articles were published did ever ques tion the constitution of such Churches." s["The prince or supreme power Exposition, p. 349. [See above, note r.] u Pref. to the Life of Will. Beddel, bishop of Kilmore. [London, 1685. The work was written by Bishop Burnet.] SUCCES SION OF BISHOPS. SECT. XXI. 292 Burnet's earlier statements on Episcopacy. PREFAT. ship also observes, that it was the government of the Church, DISCOURSE, when 'the fury of persecution, which always was the bishop's portion, made it no desirable thing to be a bishop; and in a course of many centuries, when nothing but poverty and labour was got by the employment,' and when "there were no princes to set it on as an engine of government, and no synods of clergymen gathered to assume that authority to themselves, by joint designs and endeavours." “And can it be imagined," saith he, "that in all that glorious cloud of witnesses to the truth of the Christian religion, who as they planted it with their labours, so watered it with their blood, there should not be [so much as] one single person found on whom either a love to truth, or envy at the advancement of others prevailed so far, as to declare against such an early and universal corruption (if it is to be esteemed one). When all this is complicated together, it is really of so great authority, that I love not to give the proper name to that temper that can withstand so plain a demonstration." This is his lordship's character of episcopacy, and I cannot but think, that a government so set up, and so universally received by all Christians, and in all Churches, deserves to be thought not only not criminal, but necessary, as a Divine institution not alterable by the will of men; and that it ought not to be given up to men of that temper his lordship then had in his eye, or to be sacrificed to "politic reasons," or the interest and ambition of any mortal, or the humour of an ignorant, deceived, or otherwise stubborn and obstinate people. I think we ought rather to bear our testimony for it unto blood*. But to go on, our author, in his last chapter, hath rather * [Hickes doubtless had in view the giving up episcopacy in Scotland by William III., for politic reasons, his own interest, and the humour of the people. According to Burnet, William answered an application from the Church, "that he would do all he could to preserve them, granting a full toleration to the presbyterians; but this was, in case they concurred in the new settlement of the kingdom. If they opposed that, and if, by a great majority in parliament, resolutions should be taken against them, the king could not make a war for them;" but "they declaring in a body with so much zeal in opposition to the new settlement, it was not possible for the king to preserve that government there; all those who expressed their zeal for him, being equally zealous against that order."Own Times, vol. ii. p. 23. fol.] [Rights, chap. x. of which the subject is "that the Catholic Church consists of several bodies independent on each other and that none of these have power to make clergy except for themselves; and that the contrary necessarily supposes a universal bishop or pope."] Tindal denies that all Churches make one society. 293 Of THE CHURCH. and ori of the Ca Church. outdone than fallen short of himself in bold assertions, and UNITY OF in spiteful and scurrilous expressions and reflections upon the clergy; and though others think he hath written it, as the SECT. XXII. rest of his book, with a design to confound all revealed reli- of the unity gion as much he can, except what the Unitarians own; yet ginal rights considering who the author is, I am of opinion it is written tholic rather with a design to destroy the Church of England, and serve the interests of the Church of Rome, to which he either went over, or was going over in the reign of the late King James. And I think it is impossible for a serious man to read it, without suspecting that he is either a theist or a papist in his heart. That which he undertakes to prove in it is, "that the Catholic Church consists of several bodies, as independent on each other as so many several states or kingdoms, and that none of them hath power to make clergymen but for themselves." His first argument is a similez: "If they," saith he, "who have the supreme temporal power in one country cannot give one a right to exercise any civil jurisdiction, or even any ministerial office in another not subject to them, the reason is equally concluding as to ecclesiasticals. And by the same reason, he who is excommunicated in one national Church is no more so in any other than one who is outlawed in one country is so in others." If he had pleased, he might with as much boldness, and as little truth or proof, have asserted, that as he who is born in one country hath no right by virtue of his birth to the particular privileges of another, so a man baptized in one Christian national Church hath no right to communion in another; or that he who is made a member of the Church in one nation is not thereby made a member of the Church in another, much less of all the national Churches in the world. But this he thought was too plain, to deny Christians of one country the rights of their baptism in another; Christians of all national Churches still believing and professing, as Christians have believed from the beginning, that the several Churches all the world over make up but one Catholic Church, of which Christ alone is the head. He saw plainly that his new assertion was directly contrary to the constant notion that all Christians, in all ages and places, ever had of Rights, p. 378, [in substance.] 294 Churches complete in themselves, homogeneous, PREFAT. the nature of the universal Church, as of one body made up SECT. XXII. of several members; and therefore, saith hea, "to avoid these DISCOURSE, consequences it is said, that every nation is not a complete body politic within itself as to ecclesiasticals, but the whole Church, say they, composes such a body, and Christ is the head of it." Here, as is usual with him, he couches several equivocal expressions and fallacies together; for if by 'every nation' he means every national Church, who is it that saith every national Church, or a Church when it is national, is not a complete body politic within itself? or who will not allow every Church, whether national or not national, to be as complete a body within itself as every college in Oxford is, though but a part of that greater society and more noble body the university, of which the chancellor is the head? Those who assert that all the national Churches in the world make up one universal Church, not only own them, but every diocesan Church in them to be complete bodies under their several bishops, though neither they, nor the national Church consisting of them, when there are more Churches, is the whole Catholic Church, of which Christ alone is the head; indeed, no more than all the companies or sodalities of London, each of which is a complete society in itself, is the whole body of the city, of which my lord mayor is head. Here I cannot but note his expression, "say they;" the "whole Church, say they, composes such a body;" and who are they that say so? Even the whole Church that composes such a body hath ever said it, whatever he saith to the contrary now. But still he will go on"; "Christ's headship," saith he, "makes Christians no more one body politic with respect to ecclesiasticals than to civils. His precepts equally extend to both, and the whole earth is God's and Christ's kingdom; and yet the kingdoms of the earth are distinct and independent of one another, and so are all national Churches." Here is still the same assertion again in other words, with some show of proof, viz., that national Churches are as distinct and independent of one another as so many several worldly kingdoms and commonwealths. In answer to which I must observe, first, that as to the notion of the Catholic Church, and Christ's headship over it, it is purely accidental, a Rights, p. 380. b [Ibid.] together make one Church; not so nations. 295 whether the particular Churches which are members of it be national or not national, or whether any one of them be in one and the same nation or dominion or in several: for as the parochial churches often happen to be in two civil jurisdictions, as in London and Westminster, and dioceses in two or three different counties, so the same provincial, nay, diocesan Churches, may be in different nations, and the particular Churches, which make up the whole Catholic Church, be they national or not national, in one or several countries or kingdoms, they are all parts of the same body of which Christ is the head. Secondly, I must observe that all the parts of the whole Catholic Church, of which it is made one body, are parts of the same name and nature with one another and with the whole; or that the Catholic Church is one homogeneous body, consisting of parts of the same name and nature with one another and with the whole; in which respect it differs vastly from the kingdoms, states, and republics of the earth, which have different names, and different civil natures, and constitutions perfectly independent of each other, and which for that reason are not incorporate or united into one body, as particular Churches national or not national are, as having the same priesthood, the same fundamental laws, the same discipline, the same privileges and rights, and the same rewards and punishments one as the other; which the several kingdoms, states, and republics of the world have not; and therefore though they all have God, God I say, for their sovereign Lord and Head in heaven, as several independent kingdoms and other dominions have the kings of Spain for their earthly sovereign, yet as he speaks, they are not thereby united with respect to civils, but notwithstanding the supreme dominion and headship of God over them, they all still remain distinct and independent sovereignties vastly different from each other in their respective constitutions and rights. But it is not so in the Churches that are in the world, which being only lesser societies or parts of the same nature and constitution, are perfectly united and incorporated together into the one whole great body politic of the Catholic Church, under their one common Lord and Head, Christ. Having given the reason, from the sameness of nature in UNITY OF CHURCH. |