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regard to their wishes and rights. He had learned by experience that only through the civil power could reforms be either initiated or maintained. To this extent his work tended to stateestablishment. The spring of his allegiance to Rome is to be sought less in any dogma than in a sense of gratitude for the help that had come to him from the papal commission and from the prestige of the Roman name, and still more in the conviction that the established order of the Roman Church must interpenetrate Germanism if its untutored strength was to be disciplined for civilization. Boniface was not a great originator but pre-eminently a child of his time. His talent lay in organization, in winning loyalty by loyalty, in doggedly persistent, yet intelligent service of the ideals of his age and nation, of the papacy and the Karlings. And yet between Gregory I and Gregory VII it is hard to name a Churchman more significant in achievement than he. Benjamin W. Wells.

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The Scope or Field of Episcopal

Jurisdiction

N intelligent Englishman, a member of the Church of

England, sojourning in this country, not long ago propounded to the writer the following question, viz: Assuming that in a given area there can be only one organization authoritatively representing the Catholic Church, it follows that any other Christian organization within the same area must be at least schismatical, even if not heretical, and as such to be avoided by good Catholics. In cases where there are two or more organizations in the same area, each claiming to be a part of the Catholic Church, by what criterion are their claims to be judged? Must not lawful claim to jurisdiction be based on either purity of doctrine, or priority of settlement in the district?

This inquiry, made by a man who was evidently troubled with religious scruples about his position in a city where there were

at least three Christian organizations, each of which was governed by a bishop and professed to represent the Catholic Church, prompted the writing of the following article, for which also an editorial that appeared a few years ago in The Church Times (London) has supplied several suggestions.

At the outset it is to be noted that the assumption that there can be but one Catholic Christian organization in any city or diocese is not historically true. Normally, indeed, there would be but one; yet abnormal conditions such as caused a breach of the rule have existed in past ages and abound at the present day. The question of the relation of Christian people to this or that bishop is a question of jurisdiction; and the question here examined is the necessity of that method by which a bishop's jurisdiction is limited by territorial bounds within which no other ordinary Episcopal jurisdiction may lawfully be exercised.

By Episcopal jurisdiction we mean the power or right of exercising authority or rule in the Church of God. Christ gave to the Apostles authority and power to rule and govern his Church; and it is an historical fact that the said apostolical power and authority have been handed on continuously, through all the ages, solely by men whose office and rank in the Church has been that which we term Episcopal. Whether he exercise them or not, every bishop, by virtue of his ordination and consecration to the Episcopate, possesses the power of order, namely, the power of ordaining men to the sacred ministry, and the power of jurisdiction. The power of order belongs solely to the Episcopate; and no one save a bishop, or a bishop's deputy, can exercise that fullness of jurisdictional authority which is vested in the Episcopate. To a limited extent the jurisdictional power of the bishop is imparted by him to the priest to whom he commits the immediate cure of some Christian people; and by virtue of this authority the parish priest is a constituent member of the diocesan synod; but the bishop is ever the chief pastor, and bishops alone are the constituent members of provincial and general councils.

The power of rule possessed by bishops and exercised by a bishop in the place to which he has lawfully been sent is the authority of the whole Episcopate, of which each bishop has an individual share. A bishop exercises the authority of all the bishops only as he rules in agreement with the common judgment of the whole Episcopate: He cannot lawfully exercise jurisdictional power as if it were his own, nor can he lawfully impose any ruling which is against the common law of the Church of God.

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The jurisdictional power of a bishop is necessarily exercised in some place, but not necessarily to the exclusion of exercise of similar power within the same region. We deem it needless here to discuss and refute the papal contention that the bishop of Rome possesses by divine right "absolute and universal jurisdiction, no person, region, or person, region, or ecclesiastical matter, excepted;" and that all other bishops exercise their jurisdictional power only as subject to papal authority. That contention has been most ably and conclusively refuted by many authors, notably by Father Denny in his exhaustive treatise on Papalism. The statement that the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction does not necessarily involve an exclusion of exercise of similar powers within the same same region, conflicts with a principle that for many centuries was widely believed to be essential to the well-being of the Church; namely, that each bishop exercising jurisdiction should be locally separated from other bishops exercising jurisdiction, and that each of such bishops should have his own place within the limits of which no other bishop should attempt to rule. Able authors have asserted or assumed, that from the outset each bishop exercised his jurisdictional power over all Christian people who dwelt within that certain area or territorial limit which had been allotted to him; and that, within such limits, no other bishop could lawfully rule, save as in the exercise of the authority which such other bishop held in solidum, or jointtenure with his fellow-bishops.

Nevertheless it does not appear to be certain that Episcopal jurisdiction was at once and everywhere exercised on the basis

of local separation. There is, however, abundant evidence that by the fourth century the territorial system had become so thoroughly established that it was usually regarded as a necessary feature of Church-order. The final clause of the eighth canon of the Council of Nicaea (A. D. 325), namely, "that there may not be two bishops in one city," recognizes the principle of local separation; but it is to be noted, as Dr. Bright has pointed out, that "the principle is not so much enforced as assumed by the Council." So strongly did this principle take hold of men's minds that, early in the year 357, when the Emperor Constantine's edict was read, proclaiming liberty to Liberius, the exiled bishop of Rome, to return to the city on condition that he should rule jointly with Felix (who had been uncanonically consecrated and put in Liberius' place), the Roman people assembled in the circus cried out, in scornful indignation, "One God, One Christ, One Bishop!"

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The custom of having but one bishop exercising jurisdiction in one district, whether that district were large or small, had for its purpose the preservation of unity. As vicars of Christ the bishops represent Christ and the unity in Christ. Saint Ignatius, of Antioch, says, "As many as are of God and Jesus Christ, they are with the bishop." And Saint Cyprian says, "They are the Church who are a people united to the bishop. The bishop is in the Church, and the Church is in the bishop; and if any be not with the bishop, he is not in the Church." As representing the unity of the Church, and constituted as the official agent for the preservation of unity in the Church, a bishop must have no rival. Such, then, was the ideal, and such was the usual practice, that bishops exercising jurisdiction should be locally separated, and each be supreme in his own district. There might indeed be many auxiliary bishops, or "country-bishops," performing certain episcopal functions, within a single district; yet normally but one bishop exercising jurisdictional power in that district.

Nevertheless it must be maintained that the presence of two or more bishops ruling within the same territory does not necessarily oppose any essential principle of the Christian

Church. In past ages there have been exceptions to the rule of local separation, and there are notable exceptions at the present day. For example, there is the theory that in the early ages there existed occasionally, for a time, in the same city, two bishops, one of whom presided over Gentile converts and the other over Christians of the Jewish race. We cannot prove this, but it explains, as nothing else does, certain inconsistent accounts. Euodias and Ignatius are thought to have occupied jointly the see of Antioch, each exercising a racial rather than a territorial jurisdiction, until the death of Euodias; after which Ignatius succeeded in bringing both sections under his own rule. It is possible that Saint Peter and Saint Paul may have ruled jointly in like manner in the see of Rome. In Alexandria there appears to have been, for a time, some sort of collegiate government rather than that of a monarchical or diocesan episcopacy. In the latter half of the fourth century at one time there were four bishops in the city of Antioch, each exercising jurisdiction over his own flock; namely, Saint Meletius and Paulinus, each of whom held the orthodox faith; Euzoius, an Arian; and Vitalis, an Apollinarian. The critical comment that one alone had the right to exercise jurisdiction involves not only some satisfactory answer to the question, which bishop possessed that sole right, but also the making due allowance for the fact that the flock of the banished Eustathius over which, after thirty years had passed, Paulinus (a priest of the said Eusthathians) was consecrated bishop, had a status in their recognition by Saint Athanasius and the West generally; and furthermore, that the said Eustathians and the people who adhered to Meletius lived apart peaceably, awaiting a settlement of their difficulties, until the breach was widened by the uplifting of Paulinus to the episcopate. In this connection it is to be remembered that, according to a credible account, Saint Meletius shortly before his death entered into an agreement with Paulinus, whereby it was stipulated that "so far as they could bring it about, whenever either of them should be removed by death, the survivor should be regarded as the sole bishop of Antioch.'

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