the nation," saith Tacitus ". For the priests were έπíσкoπоι, 'bishops,' and judges of controversies, and by the law appointed to inflict punishment upon criminals; said Josephus". But, in the gospel, there was no such thing. The Jewish excommunications were acts of power and a mixed empire; ours are securities to the sound part, and cautions against offenders. Their preachings were decrees sometimes; ours can be but exhortations and arguments to persuade and invite consent. 9. But neither can it be denied but that the apostles did, sometimes, actions of a delegate jurisdiction. Thus St. Peter gave sentence of death against Ananias and Sapphira; St. Paul inflicted blindness upon Elymas the sorcerer, and delivered Hymenæus and Alexander and the incestuous Corinthian to be buffeted by Satan; and St. John threatened to do the like to Diotrephes. That this was extraordinary, appears by the manners of animadversion which were by miracle and immediate divine judgment; for those which were delivered to Satan, were given up to be corporally tormented by some grievous sickness or violence of an evil spirit, as St. Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and divers others of the fathers do affirm. But therefore this was an act of divine jurisdiction, not of apostolical: it was a miraculous verification of the divine mission, seldom used, not by ordinary emission of power, but by an extraordinary spirit: for so St. Paul threatened some criminals in the church of Corinth, that if he did come, he would not spare them: but it was because they made it necessary by their undervaluing of his person and ministry: Since ye do so, since ye do look for a sign and proof of Christ speaking in me, you shall have it.' It is not St. Paul's ordinary power, nor his own extraordinary, but dоkin Xpiorov, an experiment of Christ's power,' who was pleased to minister it by St. Paul, as well as by any other apostle: something like those words of our blessed. Saviour, "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and the sign of the prophet Jonas shall be given them." But then there was great necessity; and some prodigious examples were to be made to produce the fear of God and b Histor. v. 8. Oberlin. Lond. ed. vol. 2. p. 331. d 1 Corinth. homil. 15. e De Pœnit. lib. 1. cap. 17. 1 S. August. contr. Epist. Parmen. lib. 3. cap. 1. 8 2 Cor. xiii. 2. the reverence of religion, that the meanness and poverty of the ministers might not expose the institution to contempt: and because the religion was destitute of all temporal coercion, and the civil power put on armour, not for it, but against it, therefore God took the matter into his own hand, and by judgments from heaven verified the preachings apostolical. Thus when the Corinthians did use the Lord's supper unworthily, God punished them with sickness and with death, as the Apostle himself tells them: for to denounce them after, and to pronounce them before, were equal actions of ministry, but equally no parts of jurisdiction. This way continued in the church, though in very infrequent examples, till the emperors became Christians, and by laws and temporal coercions came to second the word of ecclesiastical ministry. For St. Cypriani tells of some persons, who being afflicted with evil spirits, were cured at their baptism, who afterward, upon their apostasy from the faith, were afflicted again, and again fell into the power of the devil: "recedente siquidem disciplina recessit et gratia;" when they forsook Christ, himself took the matter into his own hand, and was not wanting, by an act of his own jurisdiction, to declare that he was their Lord, and would be honoured by them or upon them. 66 ""the 10. And this was "the rod," that St. Paul threatened to the schismatical Corinthians; not any emanation of the ordinary power of ministry, but a miraculous consignation of it: for these things, as St. Chrysostom'observes, St. Paul calls signa apostolatus mei," " the signs of his apostleship," wrought among them in signs and miracles and powers: this was effected in healing the sick, and in striking the refractory with the rod of God; in giving sight to the blind, and making them blind, that would not see; in raising the dead to life, and causing them to die that would not live the life of righteousness. But this was not done idía dvváμs, not by any power of their own,' but by that power to which they only ministered,-by the power of Christ; who (blessed be his holy name for it) keeps this power only in his own hands. In these their power was no more a power of jurisdiction than Elias had, who, as St. James said, "prayed that it might, and prayed that it might not, rain ;" and called for h 1 Cor. xi. 30. i Epist. 75. k 2 Cor. xii. 12. 1 Homil. 14. in 1 Cor. homil, 29. in 2 Cor. homil. 5. in 1 Tim. fire from heaven. And just so the apostles, being moved by an extraordinary spirit, did, when the spirit saw cause, minister to the divine judgment. But that was not their work; they were sent of another errand, and were intrusted with other powers. 11. But after all this, it is certain that there were in the church some images and similitudes of jurisdiction in their spiritual government. The soul is not, cannot be, proper to any jurisdiction but that of God. For jurisdiction is the effect of legislation, and is in the mixed empire as the other is in the mere. Now none can give laws to souls but God; he only is Lord of wills and understandings; and therefore none can give judgment or restraint to souls but God. But as, by preaching, the ecclesiastic state does imitate the legislation of God; so by the power of the keys, she does imitate his jurisdiction. For it is to be observed, that, by the sermons of the gospel, the ecclesiastics give laws to the church, that is, they declare the laws of God; and, by the use of the keys, they also declare the divine jurisdiction: for as the church can make no law of divine worship or divine propositions, of faith or manners, but what she hath received from Christ and his apostles: so neither can she exercise any judgment but the judgment of God. To that she ministers by threatenings and denunciations, by comforts and absolutions, as she ministers to the legislative of God by preaching and publishing, by exhortation and command. 12. For there is an empire in preaching; there is a power of command which the bishops and ministers of the church of God must exercise. To this purpose St. Chrysostom" discourses excellently; "There are some things which need teaching, some which need commanding if therefore you invert the order, and had rather command where it is necessary for you to teach, you are ridiculous; and as bad if you go about to teach where you rather should command. That men should do no evil, you need not teach, but to forbid it with the force of a great authority: and so you must command them, that they should not give heed to Jewish fables. But if you would have them give their goods to the poor, or keep their virgin, here you have need of doctrine and exhortation. Therefore the Apostle said both, Command and teach. Homil. 13. in 2 Tim. Thus you see that a bishop must not only teach, but sometimes, it is necessary, that he should command." But then this, being a doctrinal precept, or commanding by the force of a clear confessed doctrine, hath in it no empire, but that it is a commanding in the name of God,-and means this only, that some things are so clear and obvious, so necessary and confessed, that he who neglects them, is condemned by himself; he need not be taught, but only commanded to do his duty: but, if he will not,-God, who gave him the law, hath also jurisdiction over him and to this also the church does minister; for the bishop commands him in God's name; and if he will not, he can punish him in God's name,—that is, he can denounce God's judgments against him; and that is our ministerial jurisdiction: he can declare him to be out of the way of salvation, and unworthy to receive the holy mysteries and pledges of salvation. This is our coercion. 13. But the use of the keys does differ from proper jurisdiction in this great thing,-That if the keys be rightly used, they do bind or loose respectively; but if they err, they do nothing upon the subject, they neither bind nor loose. Now in proper jurisdiction it is otherwise: for, right or wrong, if a man be condemned, he shall die for it; and if he be hanged, he is hanged. But the church gives nothing but the sentence of God, and tells upon what terms God will, or will not, pardon. If the priest minister rightly and judge according to the will and laws of God, the subject shall find that sentence made good in heaven by the real events of the other world, which the priest pronounces here upon earth. But if the priest be deceived, he is deceived for himself and for nobody else; he alters nothing of the state of the soul by his quick absolution, or his unreasonable binding. For it is not true here which the lawyers say of human jurisdictions, "Quod judex errans pronunciavit, ob auctoritatem jus dicentis transit in rem judicatam." The priest hath no such authority, though the civil power have. The error of the judge does not make the sentence invalid; his authority prevails above his error: but in the other, it is the case of souls; and therefore is conducted by God only as to all real and material events, and depends not upon the weakness and fallibilities of men. And therefore the power of remitting sins, given to the church, is nothing but an authority to minister that pardon, which God gives by Jesus Christ. "The church pardons sins, as the Levitical priest did cleanse the lepers," said St. Jerome ; that is, he did discern whether they were clean or no, and so restored them to the congregation: but "apud Deum non sententia sacerdotum, sed reorum vita quæritur:" "God regards not the sentence of the priest, but the life of the penitent."-For "the priest aliquid est ad ministrandum ac dispensandum verbum ac sacramenta, ad mundandum autem et justificandum non est aliquid;' 'is something as to the ministry and dispensation of the word and sacraments, but nothing as to the purifying and justification of a sinner: for none works that in the inward man, but he, who created the whole man:" they are the words of St. Austin.-This therefore is but verbum reconciliationis;' the word of reconciliation is intrusted to us:' but we properly give no pardon, and therefore inflict no punishment. 14. Indeed the power of the keys is, by a metaphor, changed into a sword; and St. Paul's wish, 'I would they were even cut off, that trouble you,' seems to be the warrant; and, by excommunications, evil persons are cut off from the congregation of the Lord. And it is true, that the ecclesiastical authority is a power of jurisdiction, just as excommunication is a sword. But so is the word of God, "sharper than a two-edged sword;" and so is a severe reproof, it cuts to the bone.-"Ne censorium stylum, cujus mucronem multis remediis majores nostri retuderunt, æque posthac, atque illum dictatorium gladium pertimescamus," said Cicero". "The censor's tongue was a sword, but our ancestors sometimes did not feel it smart; and we fear it not so much as the sword of the dictators."-But how little there is of proper jurisdiction in excommunication, we can demonstrate but by too good an argument. For suppose Julian robbing of a church, striking the bishop, disgracing the religion, doing any thing for which he is 'ipso facto' excommunicate: tell him of the penalty he incurs, cite him before the bishop, denounce it in the church; what have you done to him that shall compel him to do his duty? Suppose he will not stay from the church, that he will go to another, to a strange country or that he despises all this :-Have you made him afraid? have you troubled him? have you grieved him? have n Orat. pro Cluentio. cap. 44. no. 123. Weiske, pag. 90. |