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long time, and where, according to tradition, he was bishop, and appointed a successor.

So CHRYSOSTOM, for instance, calls Ignatius of Antioch a "successor of Peter, on whom, after Peter, the government of the church devolved;* and, in another place, says still more distinctly, "Since I have named Peter, I am reminded of another Peter [Flavian, bishop of Antioch], our common father and teacher, who has inherited as well the virtues as the chair of Peter. Yea, for this is the privilege of this city of ours [Antioch], to have first (g) had the coryphæus of the apostles for its teacher. For it was proper that the city, where the Christian name originated, should receive the first of the apostles for its pastor. But, after we had him for our teacher, we did not retain him, but transferred him to imperial Rome.†

THEODORET also, who, like Chrysostom, proceeded from the Antiochian school, says of the "great city of Antioch," that it has the "throne of Peter." In a letter to pope Leo he speaks, it is true, in very extravagant terms of Peter and his successors at Rome, in whom all the conditions, external and internal, of the highest eminence and control in the church are combined.§ But in the same epistle he remarks, that the "thrice blessed and divine double star of Peter and Paul rose in the east and shed its rays in every direction;" in connection with which it must be remembered that he was at that time seeking protection in Leo against the Eutychian robber-council of Ephesus (449), which he had unjustly deposed, both himself and Flavian of Constantinople.

His bitter antagonist also, the arrogant and overbearing CYRIL of Alexandria, descended some years before, in his battle against Nestorius, to unworthy flattery, and called pope Cœlestine "the archbishop of the whole [Roman] world." The same prelates, under other circumstances,

*In S. Ignat. Martyr. n. iv.

† Hom. ii. in Principium. Actorum, n. vi .tom. iii. p. 70 (ed. Montfaucon). The last sentence (ἀλλὰ προσεχωρήσαμεν τῇ βασιλίδι Ρώμη) is by some regarded as a later interpolation in favour of the Papacy. But it contains no concession of superiority. For Chrysostom immediately goes on to say, "We have, indeed, not retained the body of Peter, but we have retained the faith of Peter; and while we retain his faith, we have himself.”

Epist. lxxxvi.

§ Epist. cxiii. Comp. Bennington and Kirk, 1. c. p. 91-93. In the Epist. cxvi., to Renatus, one of the three papal legates at Ephesus, where he entreats his intercession with Leo, he ascribes to the Roman see the control of the churches of the world (τῶν κατὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐκκλησιῶν τὴν ἡγεμονίαν), but cer tainly in the oriental sense of an honorary supervision.

| Αρχιεπίσκοπον πάσης τῆς οἰκουμένης (i. e. of the Roman empire, according to the well-known usus loquendi, even of the N. T., comp. Lu ii. 1), ariga SKK πατριάρχην Κελεστίνον τὸν τῆς μεγαλοπόλεως Ρώμης. Encom. in S. Mar. Diep (tom. v. p. 384). Comp. his Ep. ix. ad Coelest.

Decrees of Councils.

57

repelled with proud indignation the encroachments of Rome on their jurisdiction.

THE DECREES OF COUNCILS ON THE PAPAL AUTHORITY.

Much more important than the opinions of individual fathers are the formal decrees of the councils.

First mention here belongs to the council of SARDICA in Illyria (now Sofia in Bulgaria), in 343,* during the Arian controversy. This council is the most favourable of all to the Roman claims. In the interest of the deposed Athanasius and of the Nicene orthodoxy it decreed :

(1.) That a deposed bishop, who feels he has a good cause, may apply, out of reverence to the memory of the apostle Peter, to the Roman bishop Julius, and shall leave it to him either to ratify the deposition, or to summon a new council. (2.) That the vacant bishopric shall not be filled till the decision of Rome be received.

(3.) That the Roman bishop, in such a case of appeal, may, according to his best judgment, either institute a new trial by the bishops of a neighbouring province, or send delegates to the spot with full power to decide the matter with the bishops.t

Thus was plainly committed to the Roman bishops an appellate and revisory jurisdiction in the case of a condemned or deposed bishop, even of the east. But, in the first place, this authority is not here acknowledged as a right already existing in practice. It is conferred as a new power, and that merely as an honorary right, and as pertaining only to the bishop Julius in person. Otherwise, either this bishop

That this is the true date appears from the recently discovered Festival Epistles of Athanasius, published in Syriae by Cureton (London, 1848), in an English translation by Williams (Oxford, 1854), and in German by Larsov (Leipzig, 1852). Mansi puts the council in the year 344, but most writers, including Gieseler, Neander, Milman, and Greenwood, following the erroneous statement of Socrates (ii. 20) and Sozomen (iii. 12), place it in the year 347. Comp. on the subject Larsov, Die Festbriefe des Athanasius, p. 31; and Hefele, Conciliengesch. i. p. 513, sqq.

† Can. 3, 4, and 5 (in the Latin translation can. 3, 4, and 7), in Mansi iii., 23, sq., and in Hefele i., 539, sqq., where the Greek and the Latin Dionysian text is given with learned explanations. The Greek and Latin texts differ in some points.

So the much discussed canones are explained not only by Protestant histo rians, but also by Catholic of the Gallican school, like Peter de Marca, Quesnel, Du-Pin, Richer, Febronius. This interpretation agrees best with the whole connection; with the express mention of Julius (which is lacking, indeed, in the Latin translation of Prisca and in Isidore, but stands distinctly in the Greek and Dionysian texts: 'Laval rỡ izionózy Púμns, Julio Romano episcopo); with the words, "Si vobis placet" (can. 3), where by the appeal in question is made dependent first on the decree of this council; and, finally, with the

would not be expressly named, or his successors would be named with him. Furthermore, the canons limit the appeal to the case of a bishop deposed by his com-provincials, and say nothing of other cases. Finally, the council of Sardica was not a general council, but only a local synod of the west, and could therefore establish no law for the whole church. For the eastern bishops withdrew at the very beginning, and held an opposition council in the neighbouring town of Philippopolis; and the city of Sardica, too, with the whole præfecture of Illyricum, at that time, belonged to the western empire and the Roman patriarchate; it was not detached from them till 379. The council was intended, indeed, to be ecumenical; but it consisted at first of only a hundred and seventy bishops, and after the secession of the seventysix orientals, it had only ninety-four, and even by the two hundred signatures of absent bishops, mostly Egyptian, to whom the acts were sent for their approval, the east, and even the Latin Africa, with its three hundred bishoprics, were very feebly represented. It was not sanctioned by the emperor Constantius, and has, by no subsequent authority, been declared ecumenical.* Accordingly, its decrees soon fell into oblivion, and in the further course of the Arian controversy, and even throughout the Nestorian, where the bishops of Alexandria, and not those of Rome, were evidently at the head of the orthodox sentiment, they were utterly unnoticed. The general councils of 381, 451, and 680, knew nothing of such a supreme appellate tribunal, but unanimously enacted, that all ecclesiastical matters, without exception, should first be decided in the provincial councils, with the right of appeal-not to the bishop of Rome, but to the patriarch of the proper diocese. Rome alone did not forget the Sardican decrees, but built on this single precedent a universal right. Pope Zosimus, in the case of the deposed presbyter Apiarius of Sicca (A.D. 417-418) made the significant mistake of taking the Sardican decrees for Nicene, and thus giving them greater weight than they really possessed; but he was referred by the Africans to the genuine

words, "Sancti Petri apostoli memoriam honoremus," which represent the Roman bishop's right of review as an honorary matter. What Hefele urges against these arguments (i. 548, sq.), seems to me very insufficient.

*Baronius, Natalis Alexander, and Mansi have endeavoured indeed to establish for the council an ecumenical character, but in opposition to the weightiest ancient and modern authorities of the Catholic church. Comp. Hefele, i. 596, sqq.

† It is also to be observed, that the synodal letters, as well as the orthodox ecelesiastical writers of this and the succeeding age, which take notice of this council, like Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Basil, make no mention of those decrees concerning Rome.

Difference between the Greek and Protestant Views. 59

text of the Nicene canon. The later popes, however, transcended the Sardican decrees, withdrawing from the provincial council, according to the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, the right of deposing a bishop, which had been allowed by Sar-. dica, and vesting it, as a causa major, exclusively in themselves.

Finally, in regard to the four great ecumenical councils, the first of NICE, the first of CONSTANTINOPLE, that of EPHEsus, and that of CHALCEDON, we have already presented their position on this question in connection with their legislation on the patriarchal system. We have seen that they accord to the bishop of Rome a precedence of honour among the five officially co-equal patriarchs, and thus acknowledge him primus inter pares, but, by that very concession, disallow his claims to supremacy of jurisdiction, and to monarchical authority over the entire church. The whole patriarchal system, in fact, was not monarchy, but oligarchy. Hence the protest of the Roman delegates, and of Pope Leo, against the decree of the council of Chalcedon in 451, which coincided with that of Constantinople in 381. This protest was insufficient to annul the decree, and in the east it made no lasting impression; for the subsequent incidental concessions of Greek patriarchs and emperors, like that of the usurper Phocas in 606, and even of the sixth ecumenical council of Constantinople in 680, to the see of Rome, have no general significance, but are distinctly traceable to special circumstances and prejudices.

It is, therefore, an undeniable historical fact, that the greatest dogmatic and executive authorities of the ancient church bear as decidedly against the specific papal claims of the Roman bishopric, as in favour of its patriarchal rights and an honorary primacy in the patriarchal oligarchy. The subsequent separation of the Greek church from the Latin proves to this day that she was never willing to sacrifice her independence to Rome, or to depart from the decrees of her own greatest councils.

Here lies the difference, however, between the Greek and the Protestant opposition to the universal monarchy of the papacy. The Greek church protested against it from the basis of the oligarchical patriarchal hierarchy of the fifth century; in an age, therefore, and upon a principle of church organisation, which preceded the grand agency of the papacy in the history of the world. The evangelical church protests against it on the basis of a freer conception of Christianity, seeing in the papacy an institution, which indeed formed the legitimate development of the patriarchal system, and was necessary for the training of the Romanic and Germanic

nations of the middle ages, but which has virtually fulfilled its mission and outlived itself. The Greek church never had a papacy; the evangelical historically implies one. The papacy stands between the age of the patriarchal system and the age of the Reformation, like the Mosaic theocracy between the patriarchal period and the advent of Christianity. Protestantism rejects at once the papal monarchy and the patriarchal oligarchy, and thus can justify the former as well as the latter for a certain time and a certain stage in the progress of the Christian world.*

ART. III.-Arithmetical Criticism.

Egypt's Place in Universal History. By Chevalier BUNSEN. 1840-60.
The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically Examined. By the Right
Rev. JOHN WILLIAM COLENSO, D.D., Bishop of Natal. 1862.

A Key to Bishop Colenso's Biblical Arithmetic. By THOMAS LUND, B.D. 1863.

The Exodus of Israel: its Difficulties examined, and its Truths confirmed. By the Rev. T. R. BIRKS, M.A. 1864.

An Examination of Bishop Colenso's Difficulties with regard to the Pentateuch. By the Rev. ALEXANDER M'CAUL, D.D. (People's Edition.) 1864.

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recent times, a favourite point of attack on the reality of Old Testament history has been the numbers, to which the sacred writers pledge their faith. More than one master

* We are sorry to say a word in the way of protest against the sentiments of our excellent contributor; but admiring as we do the whole preceding sketch, we cannot allow the concluding sentences to pass, without indicating our entire dissent from the views which they suggest. Dr Schaff, we are aware, only echoes the sentiment propounded by many, especially in Germany, who have written on the History of Doctrines, when he speaks of the papacy as having been "necessary for the training of the Romanic and Germanic nations." Only in so far as providence overrules evil for good, and "maketh the wrath of man to praise him," can we allow that the papacy has "fulfilled its mission;" and only in the sense in which the liberties of Great Britain at the period of the Revolution implied a previous state of despotism and misrule, can we admit that "the evangelical church historically implies a papacy." We cannot subscribe to the idea that the papacy, whose coming, the Scriptures assert, was "after the working of Satan," and which bore, in the whole of its progress, such manifest traces of human ambition, avarice, treachery, artifice, and deception, as well as ignorance and superstition, can be likened, with any propriety, to the divinely contrived and appointed system of "the Mosaic theocracy." We pen these lines after having perused, with feelings of no common delight, the splendid oration of Mr Gladstone, on demitting his office as rector of Edinburgh University; in which the providential training of the world through the Grecian mythology is eloquently traced. --ED, B. § F. E. Review.

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