it were, if ever any thing should be either begun, proceeded in, or brought unto any conclusion by them; deliberations and councils would seldom go forward, their meetings would always be in danger to break up with jars and contradictions. In an army, a number of captains, all of equal power, without some higher to oversway them; what good would they do?. In all nations where a number are to draw any one way, there must be some one principal mover. Let the practice of our very adversaries themselves herein be considered; are the presbyters able to determine of church-affairs, unless their pastors do strike the chiefest stroke, and have power above the rest? Can their pastoral synod do any thing, unless they have some president amongst them? In synods, they are forced to give one pastor pre-eminence and superiority above the rest. But they answer, That he who being a pastor according to their discipline, is for the time some little deal mightier than his brethren, doth not continue so longer than only during the synod. Which answer serveth not to help them out of the briers: for by their practice they confirm our principle, touching the necessity of one man's pre-eminence, wheresoever a concurrency of many is required unto any one solemn action: this nature teacheth, and this they cannot choose but acknowledge. As for the change of his person to whom they give this pre-eminence, if they think it expedient to make for every synod a new superior, there is no law of God which bindeth them so to do; neither any that telleth them, that they might suffer one and the same man being made president, even to continue so during life, and to leave his pre-eminence unto his successors after him, as by the ancient order of the church archbishops, president amongst bishops, have used do. The ground therefore of their pre-eminence above bishops, is the necessity of often concurrency of many bishops about the public affairs of the church; as consecrations of bishops, consultations of remedy of general disorders, audience judicial, when the actions of any bishop should be called in question, or appeals are made from his sentence by such as think themselves wronged. These, and the like affairs, usually requiring that many bishops should orderly assemble, begin, and conclude somewhat; it hath seemed, in the eyes of reverend antiquity, a thing most requisite, that the church should not only have bishops, but even amongst bishops some to be in authority a chiefest. Unto which purpose, the very state of the whole world, immediately before Christianity took place, doth seem by the special providence of God to have been prepared. For we must know, that the countries where the gospel was first planted, were for the most part subject to the Roman empire. The Romans' use was commonly, when by war they had subdued foreign nations, to make them provinces, that is, to place over them Roman governors, such as might order them according to the laws and customs of Rome. And to the end that all things might be the more easily and orderly done, a whole country being divided into sundry parts, there was in each part some one city, whereunto they about did resort for justice. Every such part was termed a diocess. Howbeit, the name diocess is sometime so generally taken, that it containeth not only more such parts of a province, but even more provinces also than one; as the diocess of Asia containing eight; the diocess of Africa seven. Touching diocesses according unto a stricter sense, whereby they are taken for a part of a province, the words of Livy do plainly shew what orders the Romans did observe in them. For at what time they had brought the Macedonians into subjection, the Roman governor, by order from the senate of Rome, gave charge that Macedonia should be divided into four regions or diocesses. Capita regionum ubi concilia fierent, primæ sedis Amphipolim, secundæ Thessalonicen, tertiæ Pellam, quartæ Pelagoniam fecit. Eo concilia suæ cujusque regionis indici, pecuniam conferri, ibi magistratus creari jussit." This being before the days of the emperors, by their appointment Thessalonica was afterward the chiefest, and in it the highest governor of Macedonia had his seat. Whereupon the other three diocesses were in that respect inferior unto it, as daughters unto a mother-city; for not unto every town of justice was that title given, but was peculiar unto those cities wherein principal courts were kept. Thus in Macedonia the mother-city was Thessalonica; in Asia, Ephesus; in Cic. ad AtAfrica, Carthage; for so Justinian in his time made it. The tic. lib. v. a Si quid habebis cum aliquo Hellespontio controversiæ ut in illam dioxnow. Cic. Fam. Ep. 53. lib. xiii. The suit which Tully maketh was this, that the party, in whose behalf he wrote to the proprætor, might have his causes put over to that court which was held in the diocess of Hellespont, where the man did abide, and not to his trouble be forced to follow them at Ephesus, which was the chiefest court in that province. b Sancimus ut sicut oriens atque Illyricum, ita et Africa prætoriana maxima potestate specialiter a nostra clementia decoretur. Cujus sedem jubemus esse Carthagi Ep. 13. Item, 1. observ. D. de officio proconsulis et legati. 8, 9. governors, officers, and inhabitants, of those mother-cities were termed for difference' sake metropolites, that is to say, mother-city men; than which nothing could possibly have been devised more fit to suit with the nature of that form of spiritual regiment, under which afterward the church should live. Wherefore, if the prophet saw cause to acknowledge unto the Lord, that the light of his gracious providence did shine no where more apparently to the eye, than in preparing the land of Canaan to be a receptacle for that church Psal. xxx. which was of old, "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt, thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it, thou madest room for it, and when it had taken root it filled the land;" how much more ought we to wonder at the handy work of almighty God, who, to settle the kingdom of his dear Son, did not cast out any one people, but directed in such sort the politic counsels of them who ruled far and wide over all, that they throughout all nations, people, and countries, upon earth, should unwittingly prepare the field wherein the vine which God did intend, that is to say, the church of his dearlybeloved Son, was to take root? For unto nothing else can we attribute it, saving only unto the very incomprehensible force of Divine Providence, that the world was in so marvellous fit sort divided, levelled, and laid out beforehand. Whose work could it be but his alone to make such provision for the direct implantation of his church? Wherefore, inequality of bishops being found a thing convenient for the church of God, in such consideration as hath been shewed; when it came secondly in question, which bishops should be higher and which lower, it seemed herein not the civil monarch only, but to the most, expedient that the dignity and celebrity of mother-cities should be respected." They which dream, that if civil authority had not given such pre-eminence unto one city more than another, there had never grown an inequality among bishops, are deceived. Superiority of one bishop over another would be requisite in the church, although that civil distinction were abolished. Other causes having made it necessary, even amongst bishops, to have some in degree higher nem; et ab ea, auxiliante Deo, septem provinciæ cum suis judicibus disponantur. Lib. i. Tit. 27. l. 1. sect. 1, 2. 3 Τοὺς καθ ̓ ἑκάστην ἐπαρχίαν ἐπισκόπους εἰδέναι χρὴ τὸν ἐν τῇ μητροπόλει προεστῶτα ἐπίσκοπον, καὶ τὴν φροντίδα ἀναδέχεσθαι πάσης τῆς ἐπαρχίας διὰ τὸ ἐν τῇ μητροπόλει παντα χόθεν συντρέχειν πάντας τοὺς τὰ πράγματα ἔχοντας, ὅθεν ἔδοξε καὶ τῇ τιμῇ προηγεῖσθαι αὐ Tov. Concil. Antiochen. cap. 9. than the rest, the civil dignity of place was considered only as a reason wherefore this bishop should be preferred before that which deliberation had been likely enough to have raised no small trouble, but that such was the circumstance of place, as being followed in that choice, besides the manifest conveniency thereof, took away all show of partiality, prevented secret emulations, and gave no man occasion to think his person disgraced, in that another was preferred before him. de statu Thus we see upon what occasion metropolitan bishops became archbishops. Now while the whole Christian world, in a manner, still continued under the civil government, there being oftentimes, within some one more large territory, divers and sundry mother-churches, the metropolitans whereof were archbishops, as, for order's sake, it grew hereupon expedient there should be a difference also among them; so no way seemed, in those times, more fit than to give pre-eminence unto them whose metropolitan sees were of special desert or dignity. For which cause these, as being bishops in the chiefest mother-churches, were termed primates, and at the length, by way of excellency, patriarchs: for ignorant we are not, how sometimes the title of patriarch is generally given to all metropolitan bishops. They are mightily there- Vilierins fore to blame which are so bold and confident, as to affirm primitivæ that, for the space of above four hundred and thirty years ecclesiæ. after Christ, all metropolitan bishops were in every respect equals, till the second council of Constantinople exalted certain metropolitans above the rest. True it is, they were equals, as touching the exercise of spiritual power within their diocesses, when they dealt with their own flock. For what is it that one of them might do within the compass of his own precinct, but another within his might do the same? But that there was no subordination at all, of one of them unto another; that when they all, or sundry of them, were to deal in the same causes, there was no difference of first and second in degree, no distinction of higher and lower in authority acknowledged amongst them is most untrue. The great council of Nice was after our Saviour Christ but three hundred and twenty-four years, and in that council certain metropolitans are said even then to have had ancient pre-eminence and dignity above the rest; namely, the primate of Alexandria, of Rome, and of Antioch. Threescore years c. 8. Socr. l. iii. after this, there were synods under the emperor Theodosius; which synod was the first at Constantinople, whereat one hundred and fifty bishops were assembled: at which council it was decreed, that the bishop of Constantinople should not only be added unto the former primates, but also that his place should be second amongst them, the next to the bishop Can. 28. of Rome in dignity. The same decree was again renewed concerning Constantinople, and the reason thereof laid open Can. 39. in the council of Chalcedon: at the length came that second of Constantinople, whereat were six hundred and thirty bishops, for a third confirmation thereof. Laws imperial there are likewise extant to the same effect. Herewith the bishop of Constantinople being overmuch puffed up, not only could not endure that see to be in estimation higher, whereunto his own had preferment to be the next, but he challenged more than ever any Christian bishop in the world before either had, or with reason could have. What he challenged, and was therein as then refused by the bishop of Rome, the same bishop of Rome in process of time obtained for himself, and, having gotten it by bad means, hath both upheld and augmented it, and upholdeth it by acts and pracNovel. tices much worse. But primates, according to their first institution, were all, in relation unto archbishops, the same by prerogative which archbishops were being compared unto bishops. Before the council of Nice, albeit there were both metropolitans and primates; yet could not this be a means forcible enough to procure the peace of the church: but all things were wonderful tumultuous and troublesome, by reason of one special practice common unto the heretics of those times; which was, that when they had been condemned and cast out of the church by the sentence of their own bishops, they, contrary to the ancient-received orders of the church, had a custom to wander up and down, and to insinuate themselves into favour where they were not known; imagining themselves to be safe enough, and not to be clean cut off from the body of the church, if they could any where find a bishop which was content to communicate with them: whereupon ensued, as in that case there needs must, every day quarrels and jars unappeasable amongst bishops. The Nicene council, for redress hereof, considered the bounds of every archbishop's ecclesiastical jurisdictions what they had been in former times; and accordingly appointed unto each cxxiii. 22. |