A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

And shall also swear and subscribe, that they shall inviolably maintain and preserve the settlement of the true Protestant religion, with the government, worship, discipline, right, and privileges of the Church of Scotland, as then established by the laws of that kingdom. (The foregoing authorities are quoted from Burn.)

By the Church of England, the sovereign is thus regarded as being over all persons, and over all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, supreme. On this head an objection is raised against the Church of England, as if her ministers derived their authority from the Crown. This objection is thus answered by Palmer: 1. We must insist upon it that the principles of the Church of England, with reference to the authority of the civil magistrate in ecclesiastical affairs, cannot be determined in any way by the opinions of lawyers, or the preambles of acts of parliament. We nowhere subscribe to either one or the other. 2. The opinion of the temporal power itself as to its own authority in ecclesiastical affairs, and its acts in accordance with such opinions, are perfectly distinct from the principles of the Church of England on these points. We are not bound to adopt such opinions, or approve such acts of temporal rulers, nor even to approve every point of the existing law. 3. The clergy of England, in acknowledging the supremacy of the king, A.D. 1531, did so, as Burnet proves, with the important proviso, “quantum per Christi legem licet;” which original condition is ever to be supposed in our acknowlegment of the royal supremacy. Consequently we give no authority to the prince, except what is consistent with the maintenance of all those rights, liberties, jurisdictions, and spiritual powers, “which the law of Christ confers on his Church.” 4. The Church of England believes the jurisdiction and commission of her clergy to come from God, by apostolic succession, as is evident from the ordination service, and has been proved by the Papist Milner himself (“Letters to a Prebendary,” Let. 8); and it is decidedly the doctrine of the great majority of her theologians. 5. The acts of English monarchs have been objected in proof of their views on the subject. We are not bound to subscribe to those views. If their acts were wrong in any case, we never approved them, though we may have been obliged by circumstances to submit to intrusions and usurpations. But since this is a favourite topic with Romanists, let us view the matter a little on another side. I ask, then, whether the parliaments of France did not, for a long series of years, exercise jurisdiction over the administration of the sacraments, compelling the Roman bishops and priests of France to give the sacrament to Jansenists, whom they believed to be heretics? Did they not repeatedly judge in questions of faith, viz. as to the obligation of the bull “Unigenitus?” Did they not take cognizance of questions of faith and discipline to such a degree, that they were said to resemble “a school of theology?” I ask whether the clergy of France in their convocations were not wholly under the control of the king, who could prescribe their subjects of debate, prevent them from debating, prorogue, dissolve, &c.?

Did they not repeatedly beg in vain from the kings of France, for a long series of years, to be permitted to hold provincial synods for the suppression of immorality, heresy, and infidelity? Is not this liberty still withheld from them, and from every other Roman Church in Europe? I further ask whether the emperor Joseph II. did not enslave the Churches of Germany and Italy? Whether he did not suppress monasteries, suppress and unite bishoprics? Whether he did not suspend the bishops from conferring orders, exact from them oaths of obedience to all his measures present and future, issue royal decrees for removing images from churches, and for the regulation of Divine worship down to the minutest points, even to the number of candles at mass? Whether he did not take on himself to silence preachers who had declaimed against persons of unsound faith? Whether he did not issue decrees against the bull “Unigenitus,” thus interfering with the doctrinal decision of the whole Roman Church? I ask whether this conduct was not accurately imitated by the grand duke of Tuscany, the king of Naples, the duke of Parma; whether it did not become prevalent in almost every part of the Roman Church; and whether its effects do not continue to the present day? I again ask, whether “Organic Articles” were not enacted by Buonaparte in the new Gallican Church, which placed everything in ecclesiastical affairs under the government? Whether the bishops were not forbidden by the emperor to confer orders without the permission of government; whether the obvious intention was not to place the priests, even in their spiritual functions, under the civil powers? And, in fine, whether these obnoxious “Organic Articles” are not, up to the present day, in almost every point in force? I again inquire whether the order of Jesuits was not suppressed by the mere civil powers, in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, &c.; whether convents, monasteries, confraternities, friars, and monks, and nuns, of every sort and kind, were not extinguished, suppressed, annihilated by royal commission, and by the temporal power, in France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Sicily, Spain, Portugal, &c., and in opposition to the petitions and protests of the pope and the bishops? I again ask, whether the king of Sicily does not, in his “Tribunal of the Monarchy,” up to the present day, try ecclesiastical causes, censure, excommunicate, absolve? Whether this tribunal did not, in 1712, give absolution from episcopal excommunications; and whether it was not restored by Benedict XII. in 1728?

Is there a Roman Church on the continent of Europe, where the clergy can communicate freely with him whom they regard as their spiritual head; or where all papal bulls, rescripts, briefs, &c. are not subjected to a rigorous surveillance on the part of government, and allowed or disallowed at its pleasure? In fine, was not Gregory XVI. himself compelled, in his encyclical letter of 1832, to utter the most vehement complaints and lamentations, at the degraded condition of the Roman obedience? Does he not confess that the Church is “subjected to earthly considerations,” “reduced to a base servitude,” “the rights of its bishops trampled on?” These are all certain facts: I appeal in proof of them to the Roman historians, and to many other writers of authority; and they form but a part of what might be said on this subject. Romanists should blush to accuse the Church of England for the acts of our civil rulers in ecclesiastical matters. They should remember those words, “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

But it will be objected, all this was contrary at least to the principles of the Roman Church, while English theologians, on the contrary, exaggerate the authority of the civil magistrate in ecclesiastical affairs. We admit unequivocally, that some of our theologians have spoken unadvisedly on this subject. But what of that? Can they have gone further than the whole school of Gallican writers, of modern canonists, and reforming theologians, in the Romish Church, whose object is to overthrow the papal power, and render the Church subservient in all things to the State? Do Romanists imagine that we are ignorant of the principles of Pithou and the Gallican School, of Giannone, Van Espen, Zallwein, De Hontheim, Ricci, Eybel, Sioch, Rechberger, Oberhauser, Riegger, Cavallari, Tamburini, and fifty others, who were tinged with the very principles imputed to us? Do they forget that their clergy in many parts have petitioned princes to remove the canonical law of celibacy? In fine, is it not well known, that there is a conspiracy among many of their theologians, to subject the discipline of the Church to the civil magistrate? It is really too much for Romanists to assail us on the very point where they are themselves most vulnerable, and where they are actually most keenly suffering. Our Churches, though subject to some inconvenience, and lately aggrieved by the suppression of bishoprics in Ireland, contrary to the solemn protests of the bishops and clergy, are yet in a far more respectable and independent position than the Roman Churches. Those amongst us who maintain the highest principles of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, have reason to feel thankful that we have not yet fallen to the level of the Church of Rome.

SUPREMACY, PAPAL. The fourth Lateran Council, in the year 1215, is the first of those called general which recognised the authority of the Roman see as supreme over the Church. In the fifth canon the Roman Church is said to have “a principality of power over all others, as the mother and mistress of all Christian believers;” and all other patriarchs are required to receive their palls from the Roman pontiff. The titles of universal pope and universal patriarch, first used by the bishops of Constantinople, and afterwards applied indifferently to the bishops of Rome and Constantinople, as appears by the letters of the emperor Constantine Pogonatus, in Labbe and Cossart, vol. vi. pp. 593, 599, were titles of honour, and did not imply universal jurisdiction. There was no allusion to it in any former general council; so that, up to 1215, it was free for a man to think how he pleased concerning it. And not only were men free to deny the papal supremacy, they were bound to resist and reject it, in all places where it could not be proved to have been from the beginning. For so it was decreed by the third general council, which was assembled at Ephesus, A. D. 431, “that none of the bishops, most beloved of God, do assume any other province that is not, and was not formerly, and from the beginning, subject to him, or those who were his predecessors. But if any have assumed any church, that he be forced to restore it, that so the canons of the fathers be not transgressed, nor worldly pride be introduced under the mask of this sacred function. The holy general synod hath therefore decreed, that the right of every province, formerly, and from the beginning, belonging to it, be preserved clear and inviolable.” This decree was passed on the occasion of an attempt by the patriarch of Antioch to usurp authority over the churches of the island of Cyprus, which had not been formerly under his jurisdiction, and is worthy of notice to the members of the Churches of England and Ireland. For as it is beyond denial, from the conduct of the British and Irish bishops, that the Churches in these islands knew no subjection to Rome up to the close of the sixth century, it is certain that every exercise of jurisdiction which the bishop of Rome practised afterwards for a time in this kingdom, was in violation of the decrees of the Catholic Church, and that the Churches here were merely acting in obedience to those decrees, when, after having made trial of that cruel bondage, they were enabled to release themselves from it. There is one other thing not unworthy of notice as concerns this point. By the creed of Pope Pius, all communicants in the Church of Rome are required to acknowledge as part of that “faith without which no man can be saved,” “the holy Catholic, Apostolic Roman Church, for the mother and mistress of all Churches.” It should be known that the Fathers assembled in the second general council, Constantinople, A. D. 381, gave the title which is here claimed for Rome to the Church of Jerusalem, as appears from their synodical epistle. “We acknowledge the most venerable Cyril, most beloved of God, to be bishop of the Church of Jerusalem, which is the mother of all Churches.”—See Conc. ii. 866. Thus then it appears, that in order to obtain communion in Rome, it is necessary to record an opinion directly at variance with that of a general council universally acknowledged.

The following has been abbreviated from Mr. Sanderson Robins’s very able treatise on the Evidence of Scripture against the Claims of the Church of Rome.

“The earlier popes knew nothing of the modern view which makes Peter and his alleged successors to be the supreme pastors, and all other bishops subordinate and deriving authority from them. Launoy cites no fewer than forty who employ the term fellow-bishop, and fellow-priest; which utterly contradicts the opinion of Bellarmine and his school. The very formula which indicates the invasion of episcopal independence, ‘By the grace of the apostolic see,’ is not to be traced farther back than the middle of the thirteenth century. Yet Duval argues that because the jurisdiction of bishops can be limited or taken away by the pope, it is not derived immediately from Christ. The converse is the true proposition; because it is derived immediately from Christ, it cannot be limited or taken away by the pope.

“The interpretation which assigns supreme power to the pope as Peter’s successor, would make him universal bishop, and leave nothing but vicarial power to all other bishops, which is exactly the conclusion so strenuously resisted by Gregory the Great, when he feared the growing importance of the see of Constantinople. Bellarmine admits the title to be antichristian and profane; but when he attempts to draw a distinction in favour of the powers claimed for the bishop of Rome, he reasons illogically, as Launoy has abundantly proved.

“The witness of the Bible remains, in spite of all efforts to conceal or pervert its meaning by those who are interested in defending an adverse system. It represents the office of Christ as incommunicable and unapproachable. He is the Root, from which the branches derive life and strength; the Shepherd, who knows his sheep, and is known of them; the heavenly Bridegroom, to whom the Church is espoused. So, again, he is ‘the Head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.’ When the title is ascribed to another, there is insurmountable difficulty involved. If Peter, or the bishop of Rome, is the head, then the Church must in the same sense be his body, which no one ventures to say. The distinction, again, between a visible and an invisible head has not the least show of Scripture proof, and is no better than an invention to meet an obvious difficulty. Nor is it of any avail to speak, as some do, of Christ as the essential, and Peter as the ministerial head, because whatever relation to the Church is represented by the figure, can exist only under the former, that is, by the union of believers to Christ, which is maintained through the ministry of the word and sacraments.