the Church doth subsist by virtue of Christ's own appointment, and that Church is to have peculiar officers to instruct and govern it, it must follow, that even in a Christian kingdom, the Church is a society distinct from the commonwealth » - BISHOP STILLINYFLFEET, Sermon at a Public Ordination, March 5,th 1684-5, Works, Vol. 1. p. 366. 15. The learned Hickes, in answering the infidel Toland, for in this matter we find infidels banded with schismaticks of all denominations in dealing out the same false criminations against the Church of England, writes as follows. « The Church is not a private voluntary society', as he dreams, but, as I hope I have shewn it to be, a public society of Christ's institution for the whole world, and under officers and governors of His own appoinment, of which universal society all men, to whom the Gospel is revealed, are bound to become members, under pain of eternal damnation. Secondly, that those officers and governors derive their power and jurisdiction from Christ, and that in our Church they exercised it about a thousand years before the late laws, from which he takes his arguments, were made or perhaps so much as thought of by former Christian states. Thirdly, that the same officers and governors in other countries, do now by authority derived from Christ, exercise their powers of legislation and jurisdiction; and have formerly exercised them in making canons, censuring unruly members, constituting and ordaining Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, without such restraining laws. Fourthly, that those restraining laws do no more prove the ec clesiastical power to be derived from the civil, than, if the like laws were made to restrain the exercise of the paternal power, it would prove that fathers had not their power and au hority from God. The state or commonwealth, if it pleases, may declare that fathers and husbands have no manner of domestic jurisdiction, but by and under the King's Majesty, as the only Supreme Head of all families, to whom by holy Scripture power and authority is given to hear and determine all manner of domestic causes; and that all authority of paternal and conjugal jurisdiction is drawn and deducted from the King'; and if they please, they may also forbid fathers and husbands to exercise all or any part of their paternal or conjugal au hority, without a licence from the King. And upon supposition of such laws, I would fain know of our author, whether in his own way of arguing it would follow, that parents had no antecedent Divine authority over their children, nor husbands any antecedent authority over their wives, nor either of them auy power from God of legislation or jurisdiction in their families, prior to these laws. » ... <<The Parliament, when it pleases, may make penal laws to forbid fathers, not to mention other things, to read the Scriptures, or pray in their families, or catechize their children; and the Clergy not to pray, or preach, or catechize, or baptize, or administer the Holy Eucharist publicly without the King's express commission under the broad seal; but would it follow from thence, that the paternal or sacerdotal power or duty, to do those things, commenced with those laws, or that they had no antecedent authority from God to do them before those penal laws were made? Those restraining laws therefore, which our author hath so pom pously cited to prove that Bishops have no power of legislation or jurisdiction, but mediately from the Parliament, and immediately from the King', only prove that, under pain of such and such severe and terrible penalties, they cannot without the King's leave and licence first obtained exercise the power and authority they have originally from God, or exert it in other manner, or upon other persons, than the laws have appointed: and the Church's obedience and submission to such laws (I do not say with my author above cited, till some better times deliver us from them') is no argument against the Divine original of her power, which she derived from the Apostles, the Apostles from Christ, and Christ from God ». ¢ « What I have here said shews the vanity of his argument, by which he would prove that the Bishops in consecrating other Bishops act ministerially by virtue of the Royal authority'; for they act as their predecessors did in all Christian countries before such laws were made, as God's ministers, who have power from Him to consecrate other Bishops; which power as to circumstantials, and particularly as to persons, they exercise and bring into act as the magistrate by law appoints; but if the magistrate either refuses to have any more Bishops consecrated, or will have them consecrate none but unqualified or unworthy persons, in such sad cases they owe no obedience to him, or other submission to his laws than with exemplary patience and meekness to undergo the penalties; and in such ruptures and persecutions, it is their duty to exercise that original power they derived from God prior to all human laws, and, trusting in Him, to provide as well as they can, for the being and preservation of the Church. » HICKES on the Christian Priesthood, Oxf. 1847, « When we speak of the independent power of the Church, we only mean that it hath a power and policy of its own different from that of the Empire, upon which it must subsist in all countries, be it united with or disunited from the commonwealth, be it in a state of peace and union, or of persecution and rupture, from the Civil Government; and that this independent power of the Church is not a co-ordinate power, and repugnant to the Empire, but subordinate to it, the Church being a society which gives to Cæsar all the things that are Caesar's, which subjects her people and Priests to his authority, be he believer or unbeliever, friend or foe, protector or persecutor; and which exempts none of her sciety from his obedience or tribunals, or pretends to depose him, or dispose of his deminions, though he turn apostate, heretic, or tyrant; or to lift up any hand against him, except in prayer to heaven; but on the contrary she teaches her people to suffer evil from him patiently; and let me tell him, that this pure, holy, and peaceable doctrine of not resisting the magistrate, is that which keeps the Church from thwarting the State, or clashing with it, even when it clashes with the Church. » Ibid. pp. 249, 250. « But though in his book he (Tindal) hath made Kings no better than the servants of the people, yet inconsistently with himself and his noble scheme of government, he magnifies their supremacy in Spirituals, and would make them CIVIL POPES to the Church, who have power to exempt her subjects from their spiritual obedience and subjection to her, to inflict all her spiritual censures, and execute all her spiritual offices, and in short, to be the reverse of the Pope to the Clergy, and plainly to be the Hierarchs of the Church, as the Pope pretends to be to them. This Papal-like power to devour and swallow up the power of the Church, and destroy her jurisdiction and tribunals, he gives to our Monarchs over the Church of England, especially in Parliament, which he will not allow them over any other Church or religious society of his own making, in which the peasant is equal in authority to the Prince'. But he is free and prodigal in giving our Princes as great power, and as destructive over the national Church and her Clergy, as the Popes claim over them; and the true reason why he is so free to give what no human power on earth can give them, is, that when this Civil Demogorgon, as he would make the magistrate, had devoured the Church; his Polyphemus of the people, in virtue of their natural rights, might swallow up the magistrate; and then our Princes and Priests would soon know by what tenure they hold their Crowns and Mitres, and the masters whom they had the happiness and honour to serve.» Ibid. pp. 252, 253, |