4.
1. In the first place, it would seem quite certain that, as, on the one hand, Councils were held in the primitive Church, so, on the other, those Councils enacted certain Canons. When, then, a Collection presents itself professing to consist of the Ante-Nicene Canons, there is nothing at all to startle us; it only professes to set before us that which we know anyhow must have existed. We may conjecture, if we please, that the fact that there were Canons may have suggested and encouraged a counterfeit. Certainly; but though the fact that there were Canons will account for a counterfeit, it will not account for those original Canons being lost; on the contrary, what is known to have once existed as a rule of conduct, is likely to continue in existence, except under particular circumstances. Which of the two this existing Collection is, the genuine or the counterfeit, must depend on other considerations; but if these considerations be in favour of its genuineness, then this antecedent probability will be an important confirmation.
Canons, I say, must have existed, whether these be the real ones or no; and the circumstance that there were real ones existing must have tended to make it difficult to substitute others. It would be no easy thing in our own Church to pass off another set of Articles for the Thirty-nine, and to obliterate the genuine. Canons are public property, and have to be acted upon by large bodies. Accordingly, as might be expected, the Nicene Council, when enacting Canons of its own, refers to certain Canons as already existing, and speaks of them in that familiar and indirect way which would be natural under the circumstances, just as we speak of our Rubrics or Articles. The Fathers of that Council mention certain descriptions of persons whom "the Canon admits into holy orders;" they determine that a certain rule shall be in force, "according to the Canon which says so and so;" they speak of a transgression of the Canon, and proceed to explain and enforce it. Nor is the Nicene the only Council which recognizes the existence of certain Canons, or rules, by which the Church was at that time bound. The Councils of Antioch, Gangra, Constantinople, and Carthage, in the same century, do so likewise; so do individual Fathers, Alexander, Athanasius, Basil, Julius, and others.
Now here we have lighted upon an important circumstance, whatever becomes of the particular Collection of Canons before us. It seems that at the Nicene Council, only two centuries and a quarter after St. John's death, about the distance of time at which we live from the Hampton Court Conference, all Christendom confessed that from time immemorial it had been guided by certain ecclesiastical rules, which it considered of authority, which it did not ascribe to any particular persons or synods (a sign of great antiquity), and which writers of the day assigned to the Apostles. I suppose we know pretty well, at this day, what the customs of our Church have been since James the First's time, or since the Reformation; and if respectable writers at present were to state some of them,—for instance, that it is and has been the rule of our Church that the king should name the bishops, that Convocation should not sit without his leave, or that Easter should be kept according to the Roman rule,—we should think foreigners very unreasonable who doubted their word. Now, in the case before us, we find the Church Catholic, the first time it had ever met together since the Apostles' days, speaking as a matter of course of the rules to which it had ever been accustomed to defer.
If we knew no more than this, and did not know what the rules were; or if, knowing what they were, we yet decided, as we well might, that the particular rules are not of continual obligation; still, the very circumstance that there were rules from time immemorial would be a great fact in the history of Christianity. But we do know, from the works of the Fathers, the subjects of these Canons, and that to the number of thirty or forty of them; so that we might form a code, as far as it goes, of primitive discipline, quite independent of the particular Collection which is under discussion. However, it is remarkable that all of these thirty or forty are found in this Collection, being altogether nearly half the whole number, so that the only question is, whether the rest are of that value which we know belongs to a great proportion of them. It is worth noticing, that no Ecclesiastical Canon is mentioned in the historical documents of the primitive era which is not found in this Collection, for it shows that, whoever compiled it, the work was done with considerable care. The opponents to its genuineness bring, indeed, several exceptions, as they wish to consider them; but these admit of so satisfactory an explanation as to illustrate the proverb, that exceptio probat regulam.
Before going on to consider the whole Collection, let us see in what terms the ancient writers speak of those particular Canons to which they actually refer.
(1.) Athanasius speaks as follows:—"Canons and forms," he says, when describing the extraordinary violences of the Arians, "were not given to the Churches in this day, but were handed down from our fathers well and securely. Nor, again, has the faith had its beginning in this day, but has passed on even to us from the Lord through His disciples. Rouse yourselves, then, my brethren, to prevent that from perishing unawares in the present day which has been observed in the Churches from ancient times down to us, and ourselves from incurring a responsibility in what has been intrusted to us."—Ep. Encycl. 1. It is remarkable, in this extract, that St. Athanasius accurately distinguishes between the Faith which came from Christ, and the Canons received from the Fathers of old time: which is just the distinction which our divines are accustomed to make.
(2) Again: the Arians, by simoniacal dealings with the civil power, had placed Gregory in the see of Alexandria. Athanasius observes upon this:—"Such conduct is both a violation of the Ecclesiastical Canons, and forces the heathen to blaspheme, as if appointments were made, not by Divine ordinance, but by merchandise and secular influence."—Ibid. 2.
(3) Arsenius, bishop of Hypsela, who had been involved in the Meletian[373] schism, and had acted in a hostile way towards Athanasius, at length reconciled himself to the Church. In his letter to Athanasius he promises "to be obedient to the Ecclesiastical Canon, according to ancient usage, and never to put forth any regulation, whether about bishops or any other public ecclesiastical matter, without the sanction of his metropolitan, but to submit to all the established Canons."—Apol. contr. Arian. 69.
(4) In like manner, St. Basil, after speaking of certain crimes for which a deacon should be reduced to lay communion, proceeds, "for it is an ancient Canon, that they who lose their degree should be subjected to this kind of punishment only."—Ep. 188. Again: "The Canon altogether excludes from the ministry those who have been twice married."
(5) When Arius and his abettors were excommunicated by Alexander of Alexandria, they betook themselves to Palestine, and were re-admitted into the Church by the bishops of that country. On this, Alexander observes as follows:—"A very heavy imputation, doubtless, lies upon such of my brethren as have ventured on this act, in that it is a violation of the Apostolical Canon."—Theod. Hist. i. 4.
(6) When Eusebius declined being translated from the see of Cæsarea to Antioch, Constantine complimented him on his "observance of the commandments of God, the Apostolical Canon, and the rule of the Church,"—Vit. Constant. iii. 61,—which last seems to mean the regulation passed at Nicæa.
(7) In like manner, Julius, bishop of Rome, speaks of a violation of "the Apostles' Canons;" and a Council held at Constantinople, A.D. 394, which was attended by Gregory Nyssen, Amphilochius, and Flavian, of a determination of "the Apostolical Canons."
It will be observed that in some of these instances the Canons are spoken of in the plural, when the particular infraction which occasions their mention relates only to one of them. This shows they were collected into a code, if, indeed, that need be proved; for, in truth, that various Canons should exist, and be in force, and yet not be put together, is just as unlikely as that no collection should be made of the statutes passed in a session of Parliament.
With this historical information about the existence, authority, and subject-matter of certain Canons in the Church from time immemorial, we should come to many anti-Protestant conclusions, even if the particular code we possess turned out to have no intrinsic authority. And now let us see how the matter stands on this point as regards this code of eighty-five Canons.