may not answer for himself. And therefore Clement III. caused a clergyman to be punished, because "multis coram astantibus, verba quædam in depressionem officii et beneficii nostri protulit," "he spoke words in a public audience tending to his disparagement:" and the emperorse Theodosius, Arcadius, and Honorius, made a law, "si quis modestiæ nescius, et pudoris ignarus, improbo petulantique maledicto nomina nostra crediderit lacessenda," &c. " that if any man, forgetting shame and modesty, thought fit to dishonour the emperors, he should not presently be punished: for if the man were a fool or a light person, the thing was to be despised if he were a madman, he was to be pitied; if injurious or angry, he might be forgiven:" but "ad nostram scientiam referatur, ut ex personis hominum dicta pensemus, et utrum prætermitti an exquiri debeant censeamus:" the princes would have it referred to their cognizance and judgment, whether such persons should be punished or no. (5.) Let there be no doubtful speeches in public sermons scattered amongst the people concerning princes, for they are public seditions, not sermons. (6.) When it is necessary, or when it is prudent, that private addresses to princes be with a sacerdotal freedom, let it be in cases of great crimes, and evidently proved and evidently vicious, neither derived from uncertain rumours of the people, nor from trifling suspicions, nor yet be in matters of secret concernment and undiscerned reason. A prince may be reproved for notorious adultery, or evident murder against the forms of law; but not so freely in the question of wars or judicature: for the bishop's private opinion may be warrant enough for him to speak it when he is required, but not to reprove a prince upon pretence of duty, and by a spiritual authority, when the matter of fact or the question of right is uncertain.

RULE VIII.

Ecclesiastical Censures are to be inflicted by the Consent and Concurrence of the supreme civil Power.

1. By ecclesiastical censures I mean, the greater and lesser excommunication. This is a separation of a criminal (who is

e Tit. C. Si quis Imper. Maled.

delated and convict by witnesses, or by confession voluntary) from the peace and communion of the church, till he hath, by exterior signs, signified his internal repentance: this is called the lesser excommunication. The greater, is only of refractory and desperate persons, who will be subject to no discipline, make no amends, return to no goodness, and forsake no sin. These the church throws out from her bosom, and shakes the fire from her lap, and quits herself of the plague and this is called the greater excommunication, or the anathema. Both these are bound by the ecclesiastical power: but the first is bound, that he may be purged of his sins; the second, that the church may be purged of him. The first is bound, as a man is tied fast that he may be cut of the stone; the other is bound as a criminal, that is going to execution: he is bound, that he may be thrown into outer darkness. Not that the church hath power to damn any man; but when she observes a man confirmed in impiety, she does antedate the divine judgment, and secures the sound members, and tells what will befal him in the day of judgment. In the first case, the penitent is like a wandering sheep; in the second, he is turned a goat or a wolf; and by their own acts also, as well as by the power of the keys, they are both bound: the first consents to the medicine, and the reprobate hath, by his own act, incurred that death, which the church declares; and both are acts of discipline, and directly or indirectly consequent to that power, which Christ hath given to his church, of binding and loosing, and to the charge of the conduct of souls.

2. These two are, by the fifth Roman synod under Symmachus, distinguished by the names of excommunication' (meaning the lesser) and anathema.'

6

"He that breaks the

decrees of this synod, let him be deprived of the communion: but if he will not amend, anathemate feriatur,' let him be anathema." The same we find in the synod of Turon, which commands that all the curses of the 108th (alias 109th) psalm, be cast upon church-robbers, "ut non solum excommunicati, sed etiam anathematizati moriantur;" "that they may die not only excommunicate, but anathematized.""They which are never to be restored to the communion, but are to be accursed;" so Agapetus expresses it in his sixth epistle. This is called eradication;' while the lesser Cap. 25.

excommunicates are still members of the church, as St. Austin notes f.

3. There is yet a third sort of excommunication, brought in by zeal and partiality, a willingness to rule or to prevail; which is no part of the power given by Christ, but taken up as it happened; it is no part of jurisdiction so much as improper, not an act of the power of the keys: and that is a refusing to communicate with him, who is not excommunicate, a punishing one whom we have no power to punish, a doing that which we have no power to do at all, or to such a person over whom confessedly we have no authority or jurisdiction. For when this humour was got into the manners and customs of the church, they made a new distinction; and there was a 'communio cum fratribus,' and a ' communio cum omnibus Christianis.' He that might communicate with the people, might not, in some cases, communicate with the priests and bishops his brethren. The distinction we find in the forty-fifth chapter of the council of Auxerre; and in pursuance of it, we find one bishop refusing to communicate with another. Thus if a bishop came not to the synod of his province, it was decreed in the fifth council of Carthage 8, "ut ecclesiæ suæ communione debeat esse contentus," "that he should only communicate with his own diocess.” The like to which we find in the second council of Arles h, in the council of Tarracon, and the council of Agathok. Thus Epiphanius, bishop and metropolitan of Cyrus, refused to communicate with the bishop of Jerusalem, who was not his suffragan1.

4. Concerning which way of proceeding;-1. It is evident, that there is no authority in it, or any thing that is like to jurisdiction; and,-2. Sometimes there may be duty, but,— 3. Most commonly there is danger. (1.) There is evidently no authority for if the authority were competent, and the cause just, they might proceed to excommunication. But this was sometimes done by equals to equals, as by bishop to bishop, by church to church, as by Victor to the churches of Asia, by Stephen to the churches of Africa, and by angry or zealous bishops to them, that were not of their humour or opi

f Hom. 50. in Psal. ci.

i Can. 6.

& Can. 10.

k Can. 35.

k Can. 19.

1 Vide distinct. 18. cap. Placuit, &c. si quis autem, et cap. Si quis Episcopus.

nion. Sometimes it was done by inferiors to their superior, the people withdrawing themselves from their pastor; so the Samosatenians refused to communicate with their bishop, that was thrust upon them after the expulsion of Eusebius. So that evidently, in this matter, there is no authority to verify it.

5. (2.) Sometimes there may be duty: as if a bishop be a heretic or an open vicious person, his brother that is a bishop, may use that liberty to him, as the people might do to a brother that walks disorderly; that is, withdraw from his society, that he may be ashamed: and if his communicating with him will give countenance to his heresy, or of fence to his people, he is bound then to abstain and to refuse it: and so are the people tied not to communicate with their priest or bishop, if the condition of his communion be a sin, or the countenancing of a sin. And thus we find in the annals of Spain, that a daughter of an Arian king of Spain suffered death rather than receive the communion from the hands of an Arian bishop. In her case her refusal was duty, and her suffering was martyrdom; because her father imposed his command of communicating with the heretical bishop, as a secret allowance of the heresy, which, in that case, she was to refuse, and obey God unto the death.

6. But when this does accidentally become a matter of duty, the charity of our communion is no further to be refused than we are obliged by our duty; we are not to refuse it to that person, but for that cause; and therefore, in other cases, and upon all other accounts, we are tied to do the charity of Christians. I will not communicate with a Roman priest in his worship of images, or in his manner of praying for the dead, or invocation of saints; but I may not refuse to say the Lord's prayer and the Credo' with him, unless, by chance, it give an offence to some weak uninstructed person. I will not receive the communion from the hands of him, who was ordained by a presbytery without a bishop; because his hand is a dead hand, and reaches me nothing: but because he is my brother, I will not refuse to give him the communion, if he will require it at my hand, which was made sacred by the Holy Ghost, invocated by the prayer and the lifting up of the bishop's hand. I will not come to their communions but if they would use good forms of liturgy,

:

and preach well, I would not refuse to communicate in such assemblies; unless, as I said before, I be accidentally hindered by some other duty drawing me off awhile.

7. But then, (3.) When it is not an express and a clear duty, it is always a great danger, an occasion of schisms and divisions in the church, and consequently may be an infinite breach of duty, a certain violation of one virtue, for the uncertain preservation of another: it is commonly the daughter of spiritual pride, an accounting of ourselves more holy than our brethren, whom, by such means, we oftentimes provoke to jealousies and indignation; and so sometimes altars are erected against altars, and pulpits turn to cockpits, and seats of scorners and of proud and illiterate declamations. Upon this account Christendom hath bled for many ages. The division of the east from the western churches,-and in the west, the division of Rome from divers churches, the Protestants and Reformed, came in at this door; while one church either pretends the singularity of truth, or the eminency of authority over other churches: by which two things the church of Rome hath been author of the permanent and greatest schisms of Christendom. For indeed, little better can be expected, when the keys of the church, which were given for the letting in or shutting out of single criminals or penitents respectively, are used to oppose multitudes. A man may lock his chamber-door, but he cannot put a lock upon the ocean; and it was wisely said of St. Austin", that "to excommunicate a single person cannot make a schism, unless the multitude favour him :" intimating, that a multitude is a dangerous thing to be involved in censures. The king nor the people are not to be excommunicated,' is an old rule. For if the whole multitude be excommunicate, with whom shall we communicate? If great parts of them be, they plainly make a schism, if they unwillingly suffer the censure; and therefore that one church should do this to another, is very hardly possible to be done with wisdom, or charity, or necessity. For when St. Paul bade his flock to abstain from the society of fornicators, he told them he meant it only in the numbers of the brethren, where, it may be, one or two in a diocess, or city, of that religion, might be criminal; for he would not have them to go out of the world' to keep that in Contr. Epist. Parmen. lib. 3. cap. 2.