punishment of sinners, she must be willing to receive those who sincerely repent. Accordingly the apostle exhorted the Corinthian church to receive him whom she had excommunicated: "Ye ought rather to forgive him and comfort him.... Wherefore, I beseech you, that ye would confirm your love toward him. . . . To whom ye forgive any thing, I forgive also "."

b

The sincerity of the offender's repentance was the only condition essentially necessary to readmission to the church and its privileges. It was as a test of this sincerity, that the primitive churches adopted such lengthened courses of penitence, which, however, were gradually diminished, and various other tests introduced. Whenever the church judges repentance to be sincere, she is to restore the penitent to christian privileges.

To deny the church the power of absolving the penitent, who had fallen into sin after baptism, was the heresy of Novatian, which the catholic church condemns. The power of absolution is proved by the words of St. Paul above cited, and by the following : "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness "." When our Lord Jesus Christ, speaking of the power of the church to remove an obstinate offender from her communion, adds, " Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven," &c. and where He declares to His ministers, "Whosesoever sins ye remit they are remitted, and whosesoever sins ye retain they are retained," we see the power of absolution and remission conveyed. And this absolution being the reversal of excommunication, it brings an individual who has been anathematized rightly as far as we can

b 2 Cor. ii. 7, 8. 10.

Gal. vi. i.

judge, from the state of a heathen man and a publican, into the visible kingdom of God.

SECTION IV.

ON CENSURES OF CHURCHES BY OTHER CHURCHES.

Since all particular churches are but portions of one body, and are not by their constitution designed to be independent of each other, but to co-operate in brotherly love, it is certain that no church can, on pretence of its independency, teach a strange doctrine different from that of Jesus Christ. In case any church becomes heretical, the rest of the church is bound, after due admonition, to reject it from the christian community by anathema. But when the offence is not so great, churches have been content to rebuke and admonish other churches, by withdrawing one or more of the signs of fraternal communion, without denouncing the extreme sentence of the greater excommunication.

The signs of external communion between churches, from the earliest period, were chiefly the transmission of letters of communion, the fraternal reception of brethren who came with commendatory letters, the assembling together in councils, and in later times, mention in the diptychs of the principal bishops to whom many churches were subject. When churches have had serious contentions, not actually concerning the christian faith, they have sometimes imitated, in some degree, the example of Paul and Barnabas, when "the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other;" and have with

Du Pin, De Antiq. Eccl. Discipl. Diss. iii. p. 253.

b Acts xv. 39.

drawn several of the signs of external communion, without actually pronouncing anathema. It is in this manner that communion has been interrupted between the eastern and western churches".

OBJECTIONS.

I. The tares are to be left "until the harvest":" therefore it is unlawful for the church to expel offenders from her communion.

Answer. Our Lord speaks not in this place of those who are manifest offenders, but of those who are false and hypocritical members of the church, and do not openly resist God's law. The church cannot excommunicate such: but when the offence is manifestly proved, the scripture empowers her to excommuni

cate.

II. Our Lord did not excommunicate Judas Iscariot. Answer. He was not a manifest, but a secret offender: and the church was not fully established till after the death of our Lord.

III. The church at first could discover miraculously the truth of any alleged crime; therefore her acts then can afford no precedent for later ages, when this power of discerning has ceased.

Answer. There is no proof that all churches had this power at first; and the church may be sufficiently assured of the truth of any alleged fact by good testimony.

IV. Ecclesiastical excommunications are injurious to the authority of the civil magistrate. They may interfere with the laws of the land.

Answer. Excommunication, as such, does not affect temporal rights, properties, privileges, &c. but merely

с

See above, Part I. c. iv. s. 2, 3.

d

Matt. xiii. 30.

spiritual or christian privileges, which are not at the disposal of temporal magistrates.

V. "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, exercise authority upon them. among you," &c. Therefore all is unlawful.

e

and they that are great But it shall not be so authority in the church

Answer. The assumption of authority in the sense of domination or earthly jurisdiction is unlawful: but authority, in the sense of power conferred by Christ himself, is lawful; and Christ Himself gave His church the power of excommunicating or expelling obstinate offenders.

VI. The ecclesiastical courts inflict excommunications for insufficient causes, or in order to support their own authority in matters essentially temporal.

Answer. It is probable that such excommunications are null in point of internal effect, because the greater excommunication should never be inflicted, except in case of disobedience to the law of Christ.

CHAPTER XVII.

ON THE POWERS OF UNIVERSITIES IN THEOLOGICAL QUESTIONS.

THE right of universities, which possess a faculty of theology, to determine theological questions, and censure theological propositions, arises from the very fact

e Matt. xxv. 26.

f The council of Trent prohibited all ecclesiastical judges from employing excommunications to enforce their ordinances,

See

whenever they can be enforced by temporal constraints. Fleury, Inst. au Droit Eccl. part iii. c. 20.

of their being authorized to teach theology, and confer degrees in that faculty. This privilege at once invests them with the right of determining what doctrines shall, and what shall not, be taught by their members, and of enforcing their determination, either by refusing degrees to those who will not undertake to maintain the doctrines approved by their university, or by censuring, degrading, or expelling from the society those who assert doctrines contrary to its decrees.

These are privileges and powers which have been exercised for many centuries by all the universities of Europe, which possessed theological faculties. Nor is there any unreasonable assumption of authority in exercising them; for the bishops, and all the western church, from the thirteenth century, approved, sanctioned, and recommended such proceedings: and universities did not pretend by their censures to determine controversies with the authority of the church, or to expel offenders from christian communion; but to declare their own judgments, and to remove offenders from their own societies and peculiar privileges, leaving them finally to the judgment of the church.

Thus we find in 1277, the bishop of Paris, with the advice of the masters in theology at Paris, condemning various errors in faith". Du Boulay mentions other censures of the university of Paris, in the thirteenth century, made either conjointly with the bishop of Paris or separately. In the succeeding centuries these censures were very numerous, and were held of

a Bulæi Hist. Univers. Parisiensis, t. iii. p. 397. 433.

Ibid. p. 24. 548, &c. Thomassin says that the doctrinal judgments of the university with

VOL. II.

out the bishops, became common in the fourteenth century. Vet. et Nov. Ecclesiæ Disciplina, pars ii. lib. i. c. 101.

X