Such are the delinquencies of clergymen, who are both clergy and subjects too; clerus Domini, and regis subditi: and for their delinquencies, which are in materia justiæ, the secular tribunal punishes, as being a violation of that right which the state must defend; but because done by a person who is a member of the sacred hierarchy, and hath also an obligation of special duty to his Bishop, therefore the Bishop also may punish him; and when the commonwealth hath inflicted a penalty, the Bishop also may impose a censure, for every sin of a clergyman is two.
But why of a clergyman only? Is not every sheep of his flock a part of the Bishop's charge, and of course the possible object of his censure? The clergy, you say, take the oath of obedience. Aye! but this is the point in dispute.
Ib.
p. 172.
So that ever since then episcopal jurisdiction hath a double part, an external and an internal: this is derived from Christ, that from the king, which because it is concurrent in all acts of jurisdiction, therefore it is that the king is supreme of the jurisdiction, namely, that part of it which is the external compulsory.
If Christ delegated no external compulsory power to the Bishops, how came it the duty of princes to God to do so? It has been so since — -yes! since the first grand apostasy from Christ to Constantine.
Ib.
s. xlviii. p. 248.
Bishops ut sic are not secular princes, must not seek for it; but some secular princes may be Bishops, as in Germany and in other places to this day they are. For it is as unlawful for a Bishop to have any land, as to have a country; and a single acre is no more due to the order than a province; but both these may be conjunct in the same person, though still, by virtue of Christ's precept, the functions and capacities must be distinguished.
True; but who with more indignant scorn attacked this very distinction when applied by the Presbyterians to the kingship, when they professed to fight for the King against Charles? And yet they had on their side both the spirit of the English constitution and the language of the law. The King never dies; the King can do no wrong. Elsewhere, too, Taylor could ridicule the Romish prelate, who fought and slew men as a captain at the head of his vassals, and then in the character of a Bishop absolved his other homicidal self. However, whatever St. Peter might understand by Christ's words, St. Peter's three-crowned successors have been quite of Taylor's opinion that they are to be paraphrased thus: