This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized

by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the

information in books and make it universally accessible.

https://books.google.com
 WIDENER

HN 87S9 b
2240118

Bd. Nov 187

C10225.7

SI CO
GI LL
0 LL :
5

ECCLESIAE
6
CHRISTO

HAR VA
ANGL

吧 咖
RD

Λ
Ο
:

IN

The Gift of
The Rev
ere
nd

Elijah 16. Downing

of Thomastown .

Leake Co. , Miss .,

6.
, April
151857
R
ENE
"
1
 01. See Opposite.

02 .
Supplement to the Law
a
де
Suspension , etc. 1855.0
 EH. Downing

THE T AW
LAW

OF

SUSPENSION OF THE CLERGY

IN THE

PRIMITIVE CHURCH .

BY

A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH .

PHILADELPHIA :
PRINTED BY C. SHERMAN AND SON.

1855.
 THE LAW

OF

SUSPENSION OF THE CLERGY

IN THE

PRIMITIVE CHURCH .

BY

A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH .

PHILADELPHIA :

PRINTED BY C. SHERMAN AND SON.

1855.
C10225,7 1857. April. 6

swiftof
own ing
Rev. E
B..H.S

Thomast
own,Leake Co. Miss.
of
 PREFACE.

In a pamphlet printed in the autumn of last year, in reply to two

of the Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United
States , I endeavored to exhibit the legal doctrine of the Church, in
regard to suspension from clerical office ; and to prove by authori
ties drawn from the Canon Law, as it has prevailed in the Church
of England for eight hundred years, that a sentence of indefinite
suspension, or suspension sine die, was illegal and void. I also
endeavored to show that the meaning of the word suspension , in
the canons of our Church, must, by well-settled rules of legal criti
cism, be received and taken, in the absence of any special definition
by the General Convention, as the same that was settled in the
Church of England, from which we took our Book of Common
Prayer, and in general the language of our penal canons . That
argument I suppose to be unanswerable, so far as it regards the
Canonical Law of the Church of England, and the meaning of our
canons, if they speak in the sense of that law.
The discipline of the Primitive Church in this respect, was at
the same time averred by me to be precisely the same as that of
the Church of England ; while I gave my reasons for holding the
opinion, that if it had been different, the rules of discipline in the
Primitive Church had not the least authority in ours ; and as the
true character of that discipline was therefore an irrelevant matter,
I entered no farther into it, than to cite the authority of Bingham ,
who states the general rule of antiquity in precise conformity with
the Canon Law of England, and to expose, though with great

brevity, the mistake of one of the Bishops, who had confidently

 4

averred that the case of Melitius, cited by Bingham as an excep

tional case in the Council of Nice, was a case of indefinite suspen
sion.

Upon subsequent consideration, I have deemed it expedient to

trace the rule of the Primitive Church in regard to clerical suspen

sion, through the earliest canons and ecclesiastical authorities of

the Greek Church ; and also to explore the case of Melitius by the
light of original authorities, more full and explicit than Bingham.
Nothing can be more conclusive than this survey, to prove, that an
indefinite suspension of either Clergy or Laity did not exist in the
Primitive Church . The principle and the whole practice of that
Church were directly the other way ; and it will be found, that it
was not an accidental practice, nor a practice adopted solely in
deference to the principles of sound legislation and jurisprudence,
as it might well have been, but that the whole Primitive Church
followed in this behalf the Code of the Jewish Church, which took
for its guidance or administration on this point, a sentence of defi
nite suspension, pronounced by the MOST HIGH Himself. The Pri
mitive Church, it will be found, thought it their " DUTY," in defer
ence to this example, to suspend in every instance, whether of
Bishop, Priest, or Layman, FOR A DEFINITE AND LIMITED TIME.
So that on this head of suspension, as a clerical punishment,
多
short of deposition, there has been perfect uniformity both in the
Christian Church, and in the Jewish Church before it, for a period
of time, beginning nearly fifteen hundred years before the birth of
Christ.

This confirmation of my former remarks, and the bearing of the

whole upon the case of the late Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsyl
vania, as well as upon the administration of discipline in the Church,
will be obvious to every one.
A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH .
 SUSPENSION IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH .

Ir is not altogether impossible, that some other Bishops

of our Church, besides Bishops Meade and Hopkins, may
think that the practice of the Primitive Church authorized
a sentence of indefinite suspension from the ministry ; and
may also think that the punishment of suspension is not
so rigorously limited by the Canon of 1844 to definite
suspension , though for eight hundred years the law of
suspension has been so understood and adjudged by the
Church of England , before and since the Reformation , as
to preclude the adoption of a looser or larger meaning
from the practice of the Primitive Church, if such a
practice, in any instance, can be found.
The argument against the application to our Church,
of any portion of the mere discipline of the primitive
churches, which notoriously ruled this matter, in general
each church for itself, none of them being bound by what
was practised in another, unless it was prescribed by a
synod which represented them, is indeed perfectly con
clusive to every reasonable mind that will consider what
discipline is, as distinguished from doctrine, and to what
extent a reference to the discipline of the Primitive Church
to govern the administration of our own canons, would
destroy all certainty, and put our Bishops and Clergy
under rules which they know little or nothing of, and
cannot know more without becoming students of the most
useless of all the departments of Christian antiquities .
 6

What can be less wise , what indeed can be more absurd,

than to go for the meaning of an English word in one of
our canons of discipline , away from its uniform and settled
definition or interpretation , in the Church from which we
took our Book of Common Prayer, and our Offices for the
Consecration and Ordination of Bishops and Ministers, to
the early canons of the Christian churches, in a different
language or languages, both of which are dead, and one
of them, the most primitive of the two, not only dead in
the popular sense, but in matters of technical disciplinary
law, is actually dead and beyond recovery, except to the
few who devote themselves to the comparative anatomy of
words which have been buried for a thousand years ?
If, when the Canon of our General Convention in 1844
was on its passage, any one had asked the meaning of
admonition, suspension, deposition, the three punishments
prescribed by it, what answer could have been given, but
that it was the same meaning which was given to those
words in the language of our mother Church, not by virtue
of any authority in her to impose that meaning, but by
the usus et norma loquendi then prevailing, which are sup
posed to govern all persons in art and science, as well as
in popular language, unless they say at the time that they
mean otherwise ? And what could have been less in

structive than to answer, that they meant respectively

προθεσμία , παρακλησις , νουθεσία- αφορισμός- καθαιρεσις — in Church
Greek, or admonitio - segregatio, separatio, abstentio, sus
pensio―depositio, deordinatio, degradatio—in Church Latin ;
and that we must go to the Apostolical or some other
canons of the primitive Greek Church, or of the later
Latin Church to learn what those Greek and Latin words
meant ?

The argument for taking the accepted meaning in the

Church of England ought to be deemed conclusive . But as
the minds of all men are not affected alike by argument,
 7

however cogent, while yet there are comparatively few

who can resist the evidence of facts, and it is certainly a
more simple process to prove by facts that a thing was
not so, than to prove by reasoning that it could not be so,
it is worth while to go to the facts on this head in the
Primitive Church ; and by these it will be seen, without the
intervention of argument, that the suggestion which has
been made by two of the Bishops of our Church, that the
primitive churches, or any of them, authorized a sus
pension sine die, or an indefinite suspension , in any case,
or under any circumstances, is wholly without support ;
and that the case which Bishop Hopkins very confidently
referred to as of this character, turns out, upon further
investigation, to have been, as I inferred from Bingham's
account of it, quoted by the Bishop, a case of clear, plain,
formal, authoritative, and confirmed deposition from the
office of Bishop, and of exclusion from a return to the
ministry.
It is not my purpose to affect any learning great or small
in this matter . It is indispensably necessary to refer to
some extent to Greek and Latin authorities, that we may
have no latent question about words, in a controversy
which turns altogether upon words. Any man who re
tains his school-learning, and especially the Bishops and
Clergy, for whom this paper is mainly intended, may follow
and apprehend such words, as for greater certainty only I
shall cite in those languages ; and if I shall produce more
than are necessary on the very point, and particularly if I
advert to some that are not on the very point, but only to
show the universal practice of the primitive churches in
precisely limiting or defining the terms of suspension in
the case of the Laity, as well as of the Clergy, it is
because, as I have perhaps said before , I hold a sentence
of indefinite suspension in abhorrence, as the opprobrium
of justice, whether in Church or State, and am glad to
produce evidence that it was rejected by the earliest suc
cessors of the Apostles, as indeed it was by the Jewish
Church, and, for the guidance and government of that
Church, by the BIBLE, the first sentence of suspension re
corded in the Pentateuch having been prescribed for a
definite time by God Himself.
The propositions to which attention is now asked in
this relation, are the following :

1. That a sentence of suspension of the Clergy, in the

Primitive Church, was the same which has been used in
the Church of England from the beginning ; that is to say,
it was a temporary and limited separation of a Bishop or
minister from the exercise of his office, without generally
denying to him the personal privilege of the Eucharist,
and with reinstatement in the exercise of his office at the
expiration of the time .
2. That an indefinite suspension is necessarily so incon
sistent with the dignity and order of a church, that if
there were no ancient writings on the subject, we must
nevertheless conclude, from its manifest inconsistency with
the maintenance of order and dignity, that it was imme
morially rejected by the Church from the very beginning.

It is expedient to show at the outset, for the better

understanding of the quotations and remarks which follow,
that the Greek word used by the Primitive Church, to
signify what we call suspension, that is to say suspension
proper, not deposition, was apoptopos ; as the Latin word for
the same thing in the Latin churches, was either segregatio,
separatio, abstentio, or suspensio. The Greek word for de
position, was załapsos ; as the Latin word was depositio, de
ordinatio, or degradatio.
In the Apostolical Canons, the earliest collection we
 9

possess, and the only one that in the collections is called

apoptos,
" The Code of the Primitive Church," the word αφορισμος ,
or one of the derivatives of apoptopat, is used in some
thirty or forty instances, as the word xalapeσts , or some
derivative of załapew , is used about as often . In Ham
mond's translation of these Canons, the former word is
uniformly rendered by the word excommunication or excom
municated, as the latter is by the word deposed or deposi
tion. Other translations render the former word, by
"suspended from communion," as Johnson does in his
yman's Vade Mecum ; and the Latin of Dionysius
Exiguus renders it by segregatus, as another Latin version
in the Patres Apostolici of Cotelerius, does by " à commu
99
nione suspensus ." But the difference comes to nothing
when it is understood , that excommunication , when applied
by these and other canons to the clerical order, did not
mean the greater excommunication, that is to say, depri
vation of the privilege of receiving the Eucharist by the
suspended bishop or minister himself, but separation from
office, and from the privilege of administering the sacra
ment to others , or receiving it with the clergy, -in other
words, separation from ecclesiastical communion . With
this explanation, apoptopos, applied to a bishop or other
clergyman, was in the Primitive Church, the same thing
as suspension is now, and has immemorially been in the
Church of England .
Suicer, in his Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus, Vol . 1 , p . 600,
under the word ' Apopiw , says, " significat-suis limitibus cir
cumscriptum- discerno et derimo a cæteris-extermino—
excommunico-repudio- separo in malam partem." " Ergo
αφορίζω et αφορισμος notant excommunicationem minorem seu
leviorem ;" and he explains the minor excommunication
of clergymen, as being " privatio communionis ecclesiastica,
et suspensio eorum ab officio ."
This meaning he further illustrates by saying : "de hæc
 10

segregatione intelligendus est canon 43, 54 , 56 , 57 ,

Apostol." and several others of the same canons, which use
that word, and the verb from which it is derived , in
several of its forms ; and also by quoting Theophylactus ,
who thus explains the principle upon which such separa
tion is a suspension from office-" ita enim apoptoletes non
99
possunt μηδε ολως ιερατικον τι ενεργειν. " They cannot perform
any sacerdotal office." Theophylactus in 1 ad . Timoth .
1 ad. v. 20, p. 753 .
Bingham , in his Antiquities of the Christian Church,
book xvii. chap . 1 , sec. 1 , vol . 6 , p . 340, of Pitman's edi
tion, derives the same doctrine from various authorities
cited by him. " Therefore," says he, " though some canons
take ' suspension from ecclesiastical communion,' for sus
pension of laymen from the communion of the Eucharist,
or the prayers of the Church, yet other canons, speaking
of the clergy and their punishment, take ecclesiastical
communion in a more restrained sense , for communicating
in the office of the clerical function . So that a clergyman
was said to be excommunicated, when he was deprived of
the power of exercising the offices of his function ; and
such an excommunication does not always imply that he
was wholly cast out of all communion with the Church,
but only communion as specified, with this limitation and
restriction ." In regard to clerical censures respecting
66
office and function , he says on the preceding page, “ clerical
communion and lay communion were always considered
1
as distinct things ; and a man might be deprived of the
former, while he was allowed to enjoy the benefit and
privilege of the latter."
Suicer adverts to another application of the word
apoptopos,
αφορισμος, but in connection always with an additional word
to give it completeness or perpetuity . He says at page
66
602 , “ αφορίζω et αφορισμός notant excommunicationem ma
jorem seu graviorem, quæ non tantum à perceptione sacra
 11

mentorum , sed etiam à consuetudine et societate fratrum, et

aliorum fidelium repellit, adeoque ab Ecclesia removet.
Hæc excommunicatio vocatur παντελης αφορισμός à Greg. Nys
""
seno.' This complete, perfect, or entire açopiopos, was there
fore a perpetual suspension, or deposition, the same as
xalatрsats ; and each expression is occasionally used in the
Apostolical Canons for deposition, but never apoptopos alone .
We have, therefore, derived from the Primitive Church
the two meanings of suspension , which we meet in the
treatises on Canon Law- the temporary and the perpetual
-the αφορισμός, and the παντελης αφορισμος , ΟΙ καθαίρεσις .

There is something more in this definition of Suicer,

which it is material to observe . He says that apoptopos
implies a circumscription by limits. It is " suis limitibus
circumscriptum ;" not marked on one side only, but cir
cumscribed, so as to be a full, complete, and definite sen
tence, like those brief maxims to which the word aphorism
is applied in our language, where every word is precise ,
and the whole sentence close and pertinent, leaving no
thing for doubt or explanation . Donnegan, in his Greek
and English Lexicon , under the word apopto , gives the
several significations, which together circumscribe all the
meanings of the word, and therefore its meaning in the
Apostolical and other canons : " to separate by marking
limits" —" to separate, to divide, to limit, circumscribe or as
sign limits"—" to mark out boundaries" — " to define” —“ to
determine ."

After these references to the meaning of the word

apoptopos, according to the authority of both church and
general lexicographers, showing that definiteness in penalty,
in point of term or condition, was of the very essence of
the word, I proceed to support the first position I have
taken, by a reference to church authorities.

I. That the sentence of suspension in the ancient

 12

churches pronounced against a clergyman, was the same

as it now is in the Church of England , is proved in the
first place by Bingham himself, in the work before men
tioned.
Bingham is to be regarded on the subject of which he
treats, the antiquities of the Christian Church , as of him
self an authority, and the highest of modern authorities.
Not only was his life devoted to the work, but he has
been faithful in recording, in every instance, perhaps, the
book and page of the original author upon whom he relies
for his facts ; and his accuracy is attested in the recent
edition by Pitman, which gives at the foot of the page the
authorities referred to, in the original languages . He has
moreover, combined and digested an immense mass of
Church canons and usages, many times different, and
sometimes discordant, so as to obtain fairly the general
bearing or character of the whole. It is vain for any
modern writer to pretend to more authority than Bingham
has, unless he can give equal proofs of diligence and learn
ing, and better proofs of accuracy.
Upon this subject of suspension of the clergy from
office in the ancient churches, he says : " Sometimes they
were suspended, not only from their revenues, but from
their office and function . And this was either temporary

and limited , or perpetual, and without any restriction .

The temporary suspension was only a depriving them of
the execution of their office for a certain term, and when
that term was over, they had liberty to resume their place,
and return to the execution of their office, in all the parts
and duties of their function ; but the perpetual suspension
was a total deprivation of them from all power and dignity
belonging to the clerical office, and a reduction of them to
the state and condition of laymen, without any ordinary
hopes or prospect of ever recovering their ancient station .
The former of these is commonly called by the ancients
 13

'abstention and suspension from communion ,' meaning

clerical communion only, and the latter vulgarly known
by the name of degradation, deordination , or deposition
from the office and order of the clerical function ." 6 Bing.
344-5, book 17, ch . 1 , sec. 5.
This is his general position ; and he proceeds to sustain
it in the 5th and 6th sections of the chapter by references
to the Epistles of Cyprian, and to the Councils of Epone,
Lerida, Carthage, Antioch, Ephesus, Arles, and Nice ; and
it in all respects corresponds precisely with the discipline
of the Church of England , as I have shown it to be, and
of the Church in the United States also, if we receive the
words of her canons of discipline in the English sense of
those words.

Bingham, however, having stated a large general pro

position, comprehending both suspension for a certain
time, and also perpetual suspension or deposition from all
power and dignity belonging to the clerical office, and
being aware that in matters of discipline the Churches of
ancient times were independent of each other, and ruled
this matter as they saw fit, unless some council or other in
which they were represented had ordered otherwise , pro
ceeds, in a following chapter, to notice some exceptions to
this general rule ; and he entitles his chapter, namely,
Chapter IV. of the same book, thus : " Of some other
special and peculiar ways of inflicting punishment on the
Clergy," the first section of which has this heading :
" Section I. Sometimes the Clergy were perpetually sus
pended from office, yet allowed to retain their title and
dignity." 6 Bing. 374 .
It is in this section, with this heading of Clergy per
petually suspended from office, in other words , deposed from
office, that Bingham records several cases of presbyters and
deacons who had sacrificed to idols, the case of the Nova
tian Bishops, and the memorable case of Melitius, referred
 14

to by Bishop Hopkins, of which more will be said here

after. They are all cases of perpetual suspension from
office, according to the author's own description, and not
one of them a case of indefinite suspension from office, or
suspension sine die. And after a pretty careful general
review of Bingham's work, I feel some confidence in the
assertion, and the greater because Bishop Hopkins has
found no case which he thinks of a different character but

the case of Melitius, that there is not a case of indefinite

suspension, or suspension sine die of a clergyman, by any
of the ancient churches, to be found in Bingham's twenty
three books ; for which reason I conclude my remark, as
he concludes his work, LAUS Deo !
He does, however, in the subsequent sections of the same
66
chapter, exhibit cases of clergymen, " degraded not totally,
but partially, from one order to another,"-" deprived of
a part of their office, but allowed to exercise the rest,"
" deprived of their power over a part of their flock, but
allowed it over the rest," -" confining them to the com
munion of their own church,” —" removing them from a
greater diocese to a less,"-" punished by a loss of their
seniority among those of the same order,"-" rendering
them incapable of being promoted to any higher order,"
and " denying them the public exercise of their office ,
whilst they were allowed to officiate in private."
The remaining sections of the fourth chapter, " of the
special and peculiar ways of inflicting punishment on the
Clergy," are devoted by Bingham to the cases of punish
ment by confining " in a monastery, to do penance in pri
vate," and by " corporeal punishment ;" but little as these
are likely to be referred to as precedents for discipline in
our Church, it is material to remark how the definiteness
――
in point of extent, the apoptapos-runs through the cases
of incarceration in a monastery, as it must necessarily
have done in the case of corporeal punishment. " In the
 15

fourth and fifth ages," says the author, " when monasteries
began to be settled in the world, nothing was more com
mon than to confine an offending Clerk to some monastery,
either for a certain term, or during his whole life, as the
nature of his temporary suspension, or his perpetual de
privation required , there to exercise himself in acts of
private repentance for his offences." 6 Bing. 386. And
the cases by which the author proves his position are two,
the first taken from one of the Novels of Justinian, which
→ ordered, that if a Presbyter or Deacon was convicted of
giving false evidence in a pecuniary cause, they should be
suspended from their ministry for three years, and be con
fined to a monastery during their suspension . The other
is from a canon of the second Council of Seville, which
decreed that a deserter from the Church, " desertorem
clericum," being stript of the girdle or badge of his honor
and office, " cingulo honoris atque ordinationis sui exutum,'
shall be confined in a monastery for some certain time, “ ali
quo tempore monasterio relegari convenit," and at the end
of that time be reinstated in the exercise of the ministry,
"sicque postea in ministerio ecclesiastici ordinis revocari ."
A very remarkable proof, this, of deference to the uni
versal rule of definiteness in suspension, in a canon which
enacted only a special punishment in a particular case ;
for not only does the aliquo show, from its partitive nature,
that offenders were to be respectively relegated, each for
some part or particular portion of time, but the postea
shows that the decree was to include a return to office
after that time had elapsed.
Thus then does Bingham conclude his view, and the
whole of his view, of the " special and peculiar ways of

inflicting punishment on the clergy," after stating the

general and normal method ; and neither in the general
nor in the peculiar methods, is there the least approach to
an indefinite suspension.
 16

But what would the peculiar ways amount to in point

of authority, if they had included such a sentence ? Why
did any peculiar ways exist in certain of the churches ?
Simply and solely, because the ancient churches respec
tively regulated such matters according to their own no
tions of expediency. In general, no church had any
authority, in matters of discipline, over any other church .
Every one who has read a history of the ancient churches ,
must have learned this . Up to the beginning of the
third century a bishop's diocese was a parish, and that
was the name it bore―лароizia — as may be seen in the
Apostolical Canons. In the Greek Canons, napoxia always
denotes what we now call diocese . Each was independent
of all . The agreement of the dioceses in fundamental
doctrines, was for the most part uniform ; and when dif
ferences in doctrine were important, councils , of many
dioceses, settled what was the true doctrine of the Church.
Such councils sometimes settled points of discipline, for
the government of the churches represented in it ; but
where these had not spoken, the respective dioceses regu
lated discipline as they saw fit, without any disturbance
of the general religious union , prevailing among all . And,
therefore it sometimes happened, that absurd, and worse
than absurd, peculiarities of discipline existed in certain
of the churches, which were of no authority out of them ,
and could not be rescinded except by the churches them
selves which had instituted them. Pretty authority would
such ancient peculiarities be for our united American
Church, which were none to any other church in Chris
tendom, in their own day and generation ! But such as
they were, these " peculiar ways," their uniform congruity
with the sentences of all other churches, in definiteness
and certainty of limitation, is a most powerful proof that
the universal reason , or the religious principles of all the
churches in ancient times, or to use the best phrase, eccle
 17

siastical prescription, rejected an indefinite suspension as a

thing not to be practised under any circumstances what
ever. It was against the common law of all the churches.

If a bishop of our Church is so rash as to say, that he has

a right to inflict such a sentence, because it was done in
the Primitive Church, he errs, therefore, both in fact and
in principle . The Primitive Church, in point of fact,
never imposed such a sentence ; and if any one of the
ancient churches had imposed it arbitrarily by her inde
pendent authority, the authority of our Church,—our
united , and as it were, confederated Church- has never
been given by the constitutional body : for if she refers
by her canon to any ancient rule at all, for the interpreta
tion of her language, it must be to a general or normal
rule certainly, not to such exceptional, eccentrical, or
sporadical cases, as can only be set down as the crotchets
of ill-governed churches.
It ought to be unnecessary to say more upon this sub
ject, after citing and fully exhibiting this plain and con
clusive authority against the practice or existence of in
definite suspension, as a punishment of clergymen in the
Primitive Church, or within the scope of the several cen
turies which Bingham comprehends in his survey. In
deed, I incur some danger of reproof for attempting to
cite authorities in support of it, which Bingham has not
cited . But there are two or three, upon this particular
point of defining the time of every suspension, which
bring the ancient and modern churches so perfectly into
harmony on this head, that they will be noticed . I think
they will show, not only that indefinite suspension was
never used by the Primitive Church, but that there was a
vigilant, jealous, and traditional repugnance to it.
Although the date and authorship of that work which
bears the name of The Apostolical Constitutions have been
much questioned- Dr. Lardner assigning its date to the
2
 18

close of the fourth century, or the beginning of the fifth , and

not to the age of the Apostles-and Cotelerius himself, who
translated it, rejecting the authorship of St. Clement, to
whom it was extensively attributed -and, therefore, for this
and for other reasons, its authenticity has been impugned ,
yet there is no doubt that it is entitled to great respect
and consideration, as the work of one or more of the
ancient fathers ; and it would be unreasonable to suppose,

that in its injunctions as to episcopal censures of either

the clergy or the laity, it does not contain a true account
of what was practised in the Church at the time it was
written, and then had the sanction of general episcopal
usage. Historically, therefore, it may be received as a
true account of what was then, and had been previously
recognized and required as a rule or principle in the exer
cise of those censures . In this respect, the 16th chapter

of the 2d book of the Apostolical Constitutions, will be

found to be both pertinent and striking. I cite it from
vol. 1 of the Patres Apostolici of Cotelerius, folio ed . ,
Amsterdam, 1724 , p . 227. The title of the 2d book is,
66
Περι επισκόπων πρεσβυτερων και διακόνων ;” and the 16th chapter
is entitled Περι μετανοιας , &c.— " Of penitence, and the man
Пept μstavotas,
ner of it, and how it may be made effectual ."
I must premise that in the matter of suspension or
segregation from church privileges, the churches of the
Apostolic age were so uniform in affixing a moderate term ,
that it may be inferred from authorities cited by Cotele
rius, that the term of suspension prescribed by the 17th
(24th) Apostolical Canon , was an addition to the collection
made by some later hands, because for a certain offence it
orders, " αφοριζέσθω
apoptεow ἔτη
en τρια”
τpia"-" let him be suspended for three
years ;" since few or none before the heresy of Montanus,
towards the close of the second century, were suspended
from communion for more than seven weeks . And Cote
lerius seems to be of that opinion , inclining however to
 19

think, that the limited times mentioned in the 16th chap

ter, must have been formulary, and not prescribed in
rigor for all offences . Coteler. Pat. Apos. vol. 1 , p . 226 ,
note 8.

This 16th chapter of the 2d book, is equally directed

against severity, and against non-infliction of punishment
altogether ; and it gives what may be called a formula of
suspensions or segregations, perhaps mainly in regard to
the offences of the laity, though under the name of
huapτnzora, faults or sins, it includes those in any order who
have committed offences ; and to express the spirit in
which the censure should be imposed , it declares that " it
should be for a week, or two, or three, or five, or seven,
according to the nature of the offence ;" and then, refer
ring to what is recorded in the Book of Numbers, at the
14th verse of the 12th chapter, as being said by God to
Moses, in regard to the sedition of Miriam, " Let her be
shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her
be received in again," -it proceeds with these remarkable
""
words : 66 Ουτως ουν και ημας δεον εστι ποιεινή -so also it is our duty
66
to do— “ αφορίζειν χρονον ωρισμένον κατα την αναλογιαν του αμαρτηματος,”
-to suspend for a definite time, proportioned to the offence
" and afterwards to receive them penitent, as a father
his children ."

I call them remarkable words, because they assert the

duty of the superior to suspend or segregate definitely, ac
cording to the example set in the case of Miriam . They
do not permit this duty to remain in doubt, by leaving
any uncertainty whether it was not segregation generally
that was referred to, instead of definite or limited segrega
tion, for they adopt a pleonasm to emphasize the necessity
of limitation — αφορίζειν χρονον ωρισμένον . Of itself, apoptteiv , as
I have shown, implies a limited suspension or segregation,.
and this will hereafter be illustrated by a reference to
canons of the Primitive Church ; but the words which
 20

follow are used, we should say, redundantly, if their object

had not been to rivet the duty of limitation, and to prove
that to be a main part of the duty. Xpovo pravov, a time
limited , definite, specified , is added to the apopite , as if it
had said, " our duty is to inflict a limited suspension for a
definite time." That is precisely the force of the original
in this part of the sixteenth chapter of the Apostolical
Constitutions . Indeed , the reader obtains in this place
the derivation of the word αφορισμος in the ωρισμένον , which
accompanies it, and separates the party like a boundary,
ορισμα .
Without these references to the original I could not get
the proper force of the language, especially in reference
to a canon which I am hereafter to cite . The Latin trans
lation of Cotelerius does not possess the same force, though
it renders the meaning sufficiently-" per tempus propor
tione delicti definitum segregare.'
Now, in my humble judgment, the whole law of clerical
and lay suspension by the ancient Church, is given in this
Apostolical Constitution ; and it is precisely as Bingham
has stated it, suspension for a certain term, and upon that
term being over, to resume their former place . But the
rule is laid down, moreover, as a declaration or obligation
on the part of the Bishop, derived , at least ostensibly,
from the example set in the case of Miriam-both for
suspension of some length in every case of adequate
offence, though an immediate remission be solicited with
out any suspension at all, as Moses himself had implored
of God, and also of suspension for a definite time ; and
if any one shall choose to think that such an example as
that in the Book of Numbers is not sufficient to establish

the obligation of conformity in the Church, he is welcome

to his opinion . The Jewish Church thought otherwise,1
the whole Christian Church from the beginning has

thought otherwise . The fact of such an example is an

 21

irrefragable authority of itself for limitation in every case

of suspension short of excision . But human reason is
competent to apprehend the underlying principle, that
there is no certainty, and therefore no moral adaptation to
the correction of human infirmity, in an indefinite sus
pension.
There is another patristic authority to the same pur
pose, and of not less weight, especially as the sentiment it
expresses is given in a most natural manner, not didac
tically, as if the writer were treating of the matter of
ecclesiastical law, but by way of illustration , as a thing
that was universally understood .
Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, in Syria, and one of the
most valuable of the Fathers, advises, in one of his
epistles to Eulalius, Bishop of Persian Armenia, about the
manner in which he was to treat persons, who, under a
persecution on account of the Christian faith , so common
until the accession of Constantine , had lapsed into idolatry ;
and the counsel of Theodoret is this : " that they should
be restricted from a participation in the sacred mysteries,
but not prohibited from praying with the catechumens,
nor from the hearing of the Scriptures, nor from the in
structions of the teachers, and that this restriction from
full communion should be μη μεχρι θανατου , not until death ,
but for some definite or specified time, αλλα χρονον τινα ρητον ,
that they might know their disease, and seek for health ."
Epist. Theodoret lxxvii, p. 945.
66
“My pɛypi Oɑvatoʊ” may as fairly mean " not indefinitely" as
"not until death," its literal meaning ; and more properly
in this place, since it is here put in opposition to " χρονον
povov
pntov," which can mean nothing else than "time stated ,
declared, or defined ."
Nothing was less necessary than to state this definite
limitation in the letter of Theodoret to Eulalius , for his
object would have been attained by saying, that such per
 22

sons as had lapsed into idolatry should not be cut off for
ever from all church privileges, but, short of that, should
be for a season excluded from the sacred mysteries ; for
this would have been a general disposition of the matter ;
but as if the limitation of a segregation from communion
was a thing that could not be pretermitted by the pen of
a Bishop, if he mentioned segregation at all, Theodoret
introduces the qualification , by -the -bye , μη μεχρι θανατε , αλλά τινα
χρόνον ρητον-ρητον being of the same effect as ωρισμένον, to signify
a specified time, and wα having the same partitive force as
aliquid, together " some certain time." And this was pre
cisely the apoptopos of the Apostolical Constitutions and
1
Canons. Accordingly, Suicer, in his Thesaurus, refers to
this Epistle of Theodoret, and the passage I have cited, as
an instance of the lesser excommunication of the Laity,
which was deprivation of the communion for a certain
time . 1 Suicer's Thesau . 601 .

But a conclusive authority is to be found in the tenth

of the Apostolical Canons, according to the division of
Cotelerius, the twelfth and thirteenth in Dr. Hammond's
translation . And I feel excused , indeed, for the reason
before mentioned , bound to give this Canon in the
original Greek, partly because the English translations
vary somewhat, though not materially, in rendering the
word açopieσ0wσa›, and partly that the ipsissima verba of
the original canon may be under the eye of any one who
shall please to note the conclusions I draw from its lan
guage. It will surprise me, if the enactment of this
canon , which uses words that had become technical in

the canonical discipline of the Primitive Church , is not

thought to be decisive of the whole question.
The Apostolical Canons, in the original Greek, with the
Latin version of Dionysius Exiguus, and another by Cote
lerius, are to be found in the Patres Apostolici of the latter,
vol. i, p. 442 .
 23

The tenth canon is as follows :

“ Ει τις κληρικος η λαικος αφορισμένος , ήτοι αδεκτος, απελθων εν ετερα πολει ,

δεχθη ανευ γραμματων συστατικων, αφοριζέσθωσαν οι δεξαμενοι, και ο δεχθείς .
Ει δε αφορισμένος η, επιτεινεσθω αυτω ο αφορισμός , ως ψευσαμένω και απατησαντι
εκκλησίαν θεού .”

The translation of Cotelerius is in these words :

" Si quis clericus aut laicus segregatus, vel non receptus,

abiens ad aliam civitatem, sine literis commendaticiis ,
receptus fuerit, segregentur qui receperunt, et qui receptus
est. Si autem fuerit segregatus , prorogetur ei segregatio, ut
qui verbis fefellerit ac deceperit ecclesiam Dei ."

That of Dionysius is thus :

" Si quis clericus aut laicus, à communione suspensus , seu

communicans, ad aliam properet civitatem, et suscipiatur
præter commendaticias literas, et qui susceperunt, et qui
• susceptus est, communione priventur. Excommunicato
vero, proteletur ipsa correptio, tamquam qui mentitus sit,
et Ecclesiam Dei seduxerit."

Dr. Hammond's English translation of Canon X (Canons

XII, XIII, in his division) is thus :

" If any one of the Clergy or Laity who is excom

municated, or not to be received , shall go away, and be re
ceived in another city, without commendatory letters, let
both the receiver and the received be excommunicated .

But if he be excommunicated already, let the time of his

excommunication be lengthened ."

And Mr. Johnson's, in the 2d volume of his Clergyman's

Vade Mecum, is the following :

" If any clergyman or layman, being suspended from

communion, or excommunicated for some gross crime and
not yet admitted to penance, go out of his own city, and
be received in another without commendatory letters, let
 24
T

them who receive him be suspended from communion , and

he (him) who is so received ; but if he were before sus
pended, let the time of his suspension be lengthened ."
I will advert presently, to Mr. Johnson's reason for
4
translating to adextos, by the words " excommunicated for

some gross crime and not yet admitted to penance," which

will be found material ; Dr. Hammond's translation , “ not
to be received," is simply literal, and he does not advert
to other canons as Mr. Johnson does, in a note, to show
the nature of that condition . The translation by Diony
sius Exiguus, " seu communicans," is difficult to under
stand, without further explanation , which I will endeavor
to give.
Now this tenth of the Apostolical Canons, and there
are more than forty others in which the same thing occurs,
uses in various forms, of the substantive, the verb, and
the participle, that single word apoptopos, as meaning all
that is expressed by the words of the different transla
tions, segregatus, à communione suspensus, excommunicated,
and suspended from communion ; and it is the word which
Suicer, in his Thesaurus, defines or interprets as meaning,
when applied to a clergyman, suspension from office, it
being the " lesser excommunication" of the clergy ; and I
refer to this canon as conclusively proving, that the sen
tence of suspension of a clergyman from office in the
Primitive Church by the word apoptoμos, or by the kindred
verb, did include a specified limitation of time or condi
tion, in precise conformity with the canon law, as it has
been immemorially observed in the Church of England .
The mandate of the tenth canon is, that if a clergyman,
who was already suspended, should go to another city
without commendatory letters , and be received to commu
nion, the time of his suspension should be LENGTHENED :
επιτεινεσθω αυτω ὁο αφορισμος— “ Let his αφορισμος be lengthened”
or prolonged . No possible argument could make it clearer
 25

than these words do, that apoptopos or suspension from

office, necessarily contained a limitation of time. How
otherwise could it be lengthened or prolonged ? A limi
tation of time is necessarily implied in the very term.
The canon has no meaning and no penalty at all, in
regard to one already suspended, if this was not the case ;
and to suppose that indefinite suspension was known to the
Church, and yet that the apostolical age of the Church, or
the ages that immediately succeeded it, the second and
perhaps the third, for these Apostolical Canons, were, ac
cording to Johnson, composed by several Synods in the
second and third centuries, and were afterwards collected
as the rule of discipline of the Primitive Church- should
have had no other canon to punish a suspended clergyman,
who foisted himself into communion with the church of
another diocese, is incredible. The casus omissus of an
indefinite suspension, if such a thing had been known,
would have been immediately noticed and supplied . The
canon, therefore, considering the origin and extended use
of this code, is conclusive proof that there was no casus
omissus in this particular, and that the canon compre
hended all cases of apoptopos, because all were necessarily
limited in point of time.
Nay, further ; what does the canon say is to be length
ened ? Not the time of the apoptopos,
αφορισμός , but the apoptopos itself.
The apoptopos was therefore in its own nature extendible
or capable of extension, which a thing of indefinite length
is not. It consequently included a definite term or limita
tion . A definite limitation was of its very essence. It

could never be indefinite, without losing its nature and

essence.

Upon first reading Dr. Hammond's translation of this

canon, I thought myself a discoverer of this interpreta
tion ; but I soon afterwards found it was not new, and
that nearly a century and a half ago, Johnson , the author
 26

of The Clergyman's Vade Mecum, and also of that collec

tion of canons and ecclesiastical laws concerning the
Church of England, which is frequently cited as authority
in her ecclesiastical courts, presented the same view of it.
In a note to Canon X, of the division he follows, John
son says : " From this canon, it appears that the word
apoptopa signifies in these canons, only to be suspended for
some certain time ; for if the person going to another city,
had before been excommunicated indefinitely, how could
the time of his excommunication be lengthened ?" Cler.
Vade Mecum, vol . 2 , p . 10 .
There is a further implication from all these canons
where the word is used, that unless the canon expressly
appoints the time, it is to be determined by the sound dis
cretion of the bishop, or by usage ; and one or the other
must have been the case in all the churches which took
the Apostolical Canons as their rule ; for there is no in
stance but one in this code, in which the term of the sus
pension is expressly directed, that is to say, the 17th
(24th according to Hammond ) , which punishes a layman
who mutilates himself, by suspension for three years. And
it is from this specification , as I have already remarked ,
that Cotelerius infers that the punishment was an interpo
lation and surreptitious ; and he cites Morinus as of the
same opinion. Cotel. Pat. Apost . 1 vol . 444 , note 4. In
later times, the terms of suspension were often limited by
the canons, sometimes for an express term, beyond which
the suspension was not to extend, and sometimes the
canons gave express power to the bishops to shorten and
even to lengthen them, as will be seen hereafter,—a re
markable attestation to the principle, that limited time
was always a part of the suspension . But the precise
limitation by a canon itself is not the question , nor is such
limitation necessary . The definiteness of the sentence is
the material thing, either by the terms of the canon, or

!
 27

by the language of the judge ; and all church antiquity

seems to have required certainty in one of these forms, as
of the essence of suspension .
It is proper before I notice some of the canons, which
direct specific suspensions, that I should advert to one of
the Apostolical Canons, for the purpose of showing, that
although a limitation was always required in sentences of
suspension from office, it is not to be understood that the

limitation was always express. In some instances, the

time was limited by necessary implication only. It is the
same thing in point of legal certainty, if an offender be
suspended until he perform a prescribed duty, which it is
in his own power to perform, as it is to suspend him for an
express and definite time. He may determine the limita
tion whenever he pleases . It is , therefore, certain as to
him, because he can make it certain . Of this kind is the

29th of the Apostolical Canons ( 36th of Dr. Hammond) .

" If any person, having been ordained bishop, does not
undertake the ministry and the care of the people com
mitted to him, let him be excommunicated, until he does
undertake it . In like manner a presbyter or deacon ."
The words, " let him be excommunicated until he does
undertake it,” are in the original , τουτον αφορισμένον τυγχάνειν εως
66
αν καταδέξηται— “ let him incur αφορισμός , until he does accept
it." This is sufficient certainty, because the offender can
when he
make it certain, and put an end to his αφορισμος
pleases.
I have remarked that Johnson translates rot adextos in
the 10th ( 12th) Apostolical Canon , ás, " excommunicated
for some gross crime and not yet received ;" —whereas Dr.
Hammond translates the words almost literally, " or not
to be received," and Dionysius Exiguus by " seu commu
nicans," without more.
The difference between Johnson and Hammond is easily
explained by a reference to the 11th of the Nicene Canons,
 28

and to the 81st canon of St. Basil, by which it appears,

that those who, after being communicants , had sacrificed
to idols, were not to be received to the communion , until
they had passed a specified period of time amongst that
class of penitents called the hearers, another specified
period among the prostrators, and a third specified period
as co-standers. The word adextos, therefore, in this canon ,

was used technically, to signify such as had committed

this or other great crime, and were held back from re
newed communion for a limited time . Hence the pro

priety of comprehending such a class in the punishment

of αφορισμος .
It is not impossible that Dionysius was one of those
who held that the word communicans, indicated a special
class of persons under definite separation by church cen
sure-a fifth order of penitents permitted to communicate
without the oblation . Bellarmine , it would seem , accord

ing to Bingham , asserted the existence of such a class ;

and Dr. Cave , in his Primitive Christianity, expressly calls
them " communicantes." Prim. Chris. part 1 , ch . 8, p.
139. But Bingham has shown that there was no such
order of penitents in the Church ; and that the name com
municantes, belonged to those in full communion. 6 Bing.
446 , bk. 18 , ch . 1 , sec . 1. The translation of Dionysius
Exiguus, would therefore be erroneous in this sense , for
the word adextos clearly means a person under censure, and
limited censure too , which is the material consideration .
But how striking is all this, to show that the mandate of
the Apostolical Canon to lengthen the time of suspension
of an adextos, who had passed himself off to another diocese
as being in full communion, had regard to a person under
limited censure, in like manner as a clergyman or layman
under αφορισμος !
The ancient canons are full of these limited penalties,
and to such an extent as to prove, that an indefinite sen
 29

tence must have been a matter of universal exclusion

the result of a pervading legislative or judicial habit . I

will refer to some of them in the case of laymen and
clergy, respectively.
The проlεσμα, or warning given to offenders to repent
and turn from their sin, the admonition in fact, was itself
limited in point of time . Bingham calls it the warning,
or “ time given” them to repent, " limited sometimes to the
space of ten days," sometimes to one day, sometimes to a
$
few hours. 3 Bing. 468, book xvi, ch . ii , sec . vii . Habert,
in his Archieraticon, says, " illud tempus прobεσμa dicitur."
When the lesser excommunication was inflicted upon
the laity- it was also for a limited time. The Council of
Eliberis, for absence from church three Sundays , ordered
three weeks suspension from the Eucharist. For another
offence, which the reader by referring to the book may
ascertain for himself, there was so much indulgence shown
by the same council, that while suspension from commu
nion for one year, was the penalty prescribed , it ordered
restoration at the end , " sine poenitentia ." Labbe, Collectio
Conciliorum, vol . 1 , p. 972.
St. Basil, for trigamists, or persons that were married a
third time, ordered by his Canon IV, as follows : " They
that marry a second time, used to be under penance a
year or two. They that marry a third time, three or four
years. But we have a custom, that he who marries a third
time, be under penance five years, not by canon, but by
tradition . Half of this time they are to be hearers,—after
wards co-standers ; but to abstain from the communion of
the good thing, until they have shown some fruit of re
pentance ." Canons of St. Basil, 2 Clerg. Vade Mecum ,
229. There was then a traditional or customary time, by
uniform practice derived from a prior age ; and therefore,
in suspensions, what may be called the common law of
the Church, embodied time in them as an inseparable ele
ment.
 30

The same council of Eliberis made a canon which for

bad laymen to play at dice, under the penalty of suspen
sion from communion for a year. "Post annum poterit
reconciliari communione." Concil . Illiber. clxxix ; Labbe,
Collectio Concil . vol . 1 , p . 979. The Apostolical Canons
interdicted this to the clerical order, and punished it by
açopiapos or limited suspension, of course at the discretion
of the superior, or according to usage. Can. 35 (42-43 . )
For keeping dogs or hawks for hunting, the Council of
Agde, by Canon IV, after a general positive prohibition, in
flicted upon an offending bishop, three months suspension
from the communion , upon a presbyter two months, upon
a deacon a whole year. Labbe, vol . 4 , p . 1392 .
The utmost precision of time was observed in the
regimen of the different orders or classes of penitents
among the Laity, who, with a view to this periodical dis
cipline, were divided into four orders, one year for each,
according to the institutions of St. Basil . "There is fre
quent mention," says Bingham, " made of these in the
ancient canons, prescribing how long penitents were to
continue in each station, a year, or two, or three, according
as their offence required ." 6 Bing. 450 , bk. xviii, ch . i,
sec. 4. Unless the offence was so gross and enormous as
to receive excommunication for life, or unto death, which
was ordered only for certain heinous offences, the time
was always limited, though by way of training, or, as it
were, schooling, ten years and more were consumed in the
several stages of penance ; ib . 501 ; and we might infer
this from the fact that some of the councils in the ancient

Church give power to the Bishop to shorten the term, or to

add to it for a new offence, or for obduracy in continuing
to commit the old one. Ib. 523.
Perhaps the most striking proofs of the definiteness of
sentence in the case of suspension from communion , are
seen in the Ancyran Canons, passed at a synod in Galatia,
 31

ten years before the Council of Nice. The object of the

Synod was to regulate the penance of those who had lapsed
in the time of persecution .
Clergy, as well as Laity, who were steadfast unto the
end, and against their will had been involuntarily defiled
by having meat offered to idols forced into their mouths,
these were without sin , and if they had been repelled by
any, were to be admitted forthwith. Canon 3.
As for those who had sacrificed and eat their dinner
before idols through force-they who were haled away,
but went with a cheerful air, and in a festival habit, and
did take share of the feast with unconcernedness, they

were decreed to be hearers one year, prostrators three

years, communicators in prayers, and without the oblation,
for two years.-Canon 4. But if they came down in a
mourning habit, and lay down and eat and wept during
the whole entertainment, after they have been prostrators
three years, let them be received without the oblation.
If they did not eat, let them be prostrators two years . In
the third, let them communicate without the oblation, that
in four years they may come to perfection. -Canon 5.
And the same canon orders that the Bishops should have
power under certain circumstances, to increase or abate the
time. 2 Johns . Clerg. Vade Mecum, 65 ; 2 Bing. 523,
book xviii, ch . iv, sec. ii.
These Canons of Ancyra, which provide so many dif
ferent terms of suspension and penance for those who, in
their lapse to idolatry, had manifested different degrees of
resistance or accommodation to it, are the highest historical
evidence that indefiniteness did not in a single instance
belong to a sentence of suspension . Taken in connection
with the express power given to the Bishops to shorten or
to lengthen the time, it is perfectly conclusive. It shows
that the form of definiteness was maintained, even when
the power of lengthening the time, theoretically a most
dangerous one, was given .
 32

It should be remembered, however, that these long

terms, which might be abated or lengthened, were not
terms of punishment, so much as of preparation or training.
They were not generally applied to the Clergy, but to a
people living under a government of established idolatry,
and constantly enticed by its seductions, or impelled by its
violence, to desert their true king. They are referred to,
not for the purpose of showing the general character of
suspension, nor especially of clerical suspension, but as
proofs of the precision and definiteness which accompanied
all church discipline in that age.
The Nicene Canons are to the same effect. The 11th

Canon prescribes to those who had lapsed under the

tyranny of Licinius, three years among the hearers, seven
among the prostrators, and two years communicants with
the people in prayer, but without the oblation ; and the
12th Canon, in regard to more aggravated cases, required
1
them to be hearers and prostrators ten years, with power
to the Bishop to shorten the period when the circum
stances should justify the favor ; but if not, then the
offenders were " to fulfil their time, even to a minute." 2
Johns. Vade Mecum, 54 .
It is not clear that the power of lessening the time of
penance was not regarded as a part of the Bishop's official
power. St. Basil has it, according to Bingham's version
of the 74th Canon , that " he that has the power of bind
ing and loosing, may lessen the time of penance to a peni
tent that shows great contrition ." 6 Bing. 520, book
xviii, ch . xiv, sec. 8. But this, nevertheless, may not
be the declaration of a principle, but the language of in
stitution or enactment. The Council of Lerida expressly

gives that power to the Bishops, -" Maneat in potestate

Pontificis, either to shorten the suspension of the truly
contrite, or to segregate the negligent a longer time from
the body of the Church ." Bingham , ib.
 33

Finally, St. Cyprian , in his 16th Epistle, states it as an

universal principle, that for lesser sins, sinners do penance
"for an appointed time." St. Cyprian , Epist. , vol . 2, p . 41 .
And whereas, in the Canons of Ancyra, there are minute
appointments as to the time in the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th,
9th, 20th, 21st, 23d, 24th, and 25th, nearly one-half of
the twenty-five canons of this code of the universal
church, the African code, of the eastern and western
churches, framed by the Council of Carthage in the begin
ning of the fifth century, does not contain a single speci
fication of time ; but in its 43d canon it gives the Bishop ,
by express terms, the power to appoint in every case.
"That the time of penance be limited by the Bishop, ac
cording to the quality of the offence." 2 Johnson's Vade
Mecum, 186. Such a canon amounts to a demonstration,
that, in the judgment of the ancient churches, express and
limited time was of the essence of all temporary discipline.

After this copious citation of authorities, what more is

necessary to show, that indefinite suspension in the Primi
tive Church , in the case of either clergy or laity, was un
known ; and that it was equally against the technical lan
guage of the canons, and the traditional policy of the
Church ? The technical term for suspension , included
definite time ; and when the canons did not specify or
limit it, either the official or the instituted power of the
Bishop, was looked to for the limitation . To go back to
the illustration of the principle, which I cited from the
Apostolical Constitutions, this definiteness of suspension
from church privileges, belonged to the Jewish Code, and
had its origin in the sentence inflicted upon Miriam , for
speaking against Moses, because of the Ethiopian woman
he had married. " Let her be shut out from the camp,"
not " until she has learned to behave better,"— not " that
she may have as much segregation as shall be found neces
3
 34

sary for her reformation ," but "for seven days ; and after
that, let her be received in again." As this proceeded
from the Divine reason, it would be impious to deny that
such definite discipline is consistent with the proper object
of discipline . But our natural reason suggests that none
but definite discipline is consistent with its proper object,
because an indefinite sentence, which keeps the judge and
the offender in constant suspicion of each other, a state of
jealousy and scrutiny on the one side, and of counteraction
and stratagem on the other, is as inapplicable to the infirm
and morbid nature of man , since the fall, as it is repug
nant to the nature of judicial action . It should be suffi
cient for the Church, however, that it is against all prac
tice in the Church of God, from the earliest day.
Precisely as the Christian Church has always had sus
pension for a definite time, and if this failed , deposition or
complete exclusion, so had the Jewish Church immemo
rially. " For they say," says Bingham, " the Jews had
three degrees of excommunication- niddui-cherem - and
shammatha. Niddui was the lowest degree of excommu
nication, being only a suspension of the sinner from the
synagogue and society of his brethren for thirty days, if he
repented ; if not, the time was doubled to sixty days ; and
if he still continued obstinate it was prolonged to ninety
days . Then if he persisted impenitent still, he was pun
ished with a more solemn excommunication called cherem ,
which answers to anathema or cursing,' because the sin
ner was cast out with solemn execrations out of the law of

Moses . The third species called shammatha, was the most

severe ; when a sinner, after all human means had in vain

been tried upon him, was consigned over totally and finally
to the Divine judgment, as a desperate and irrecoverable
sinner." Bingham's Antiq . 5 vol . 504, book xvi, ch . 2 ,
sec. 16. Whether the Christian Church had anything
1
 35

analogous to shammatha, is a point discussed by Bingham ,

in the succeeding section of the same chapter . And it
was from this very source, the Jewish Synagogue, that
the discipline of admonition , suspension , deposition, " was
adopted," according to Dr. Cave, " into the Christian
Church, practised by the Apostles and the churches founded
by them, but brought to greater perfection in subsequent
times." Cave's Primitive Christianity, part 3, ch . 5, p . 450,
ed. 1702. " "Twas variously expressed by the ancient
writers," says he, " though much to the same purpose.
Such persons are said abstineri, to be kept back, a word
much used by Cyprian and the Synod of Illiberis ; açopičeodai,
to be separated, or to be separated from the body of Christ,
as St. Augustine often expresses it," &c., ib. So that defi
nite segregation or suspension , is as old as the Pentateuch ,
and indefinite suspension unknown from the beginning. So
much of this 5th chapter of the 3d part of Dr. Cave's
work, as is devoted to the origin and administration of
ancient church censures, is full proof of the universal and
unexceptional infliction of the sentence of suspension or
apoptopos
αφορισμος of both clergy and laity, for a limited and definite
time only. See pp. 450 , 454 , 457, 459 .
There is not the least reason to suppose that Bishop
Gibson had any distinction in his mind , between the law
of the Church of England in his own time, and the ancient
or primitive law, when he said that the temporary suspen
sion from office or from church privileges, as contradis
tinguished from perpetual suspension , " terminated at a
certain time, when inflicted for that time, or upon satis
faction to the judge, when inflicted until something he
hath enjoined shall be performed . " This language ex
pressed Bishop Gibson's apprehension of the uniform im
memorial law of suspension and interdict in the Christian
Church . 2 Gib's Codex. 1047.

I submit, therefore, that my first proposition is proved

 36

conclusively by the highest authorities, ancient and 1

modern .
But I will not conclude the point, without remarking
upon the folly and danger of an indefinite sentence of sus
pension, if it is recommended in consequence of its keep
ing the eye of the judge or superior upon the person under
such suspension , to shorten or lengthen it in consequence
of the offender's own conduct.
The ancient church had something of this supervision ,
in the case of penance, and possibly in the case of suspen
sion also, and it may be useful to recur to the fate of it.
A " penitentiary priest," was an institution of the early
church ; and his office was to bring the offenders under
censure to confession, that he might learn whether they
were fit, at the expiration of their sentence, to return to
the communion . The institution lasted for a considerable

time ; but in consequence of gross public scandal , it was

abolished by Nectarius, the predecessor of St. Chrysostom,
in the See of Constantinople, and Nectarius was followed
by nearly all the bishops of his day ; though not perhaps
by the Bishop of Rome. The office may have sown the
seed of auricular confession in that Church, as indefinite
punishments dependent for abridgment or enlargement
upon the offender's confessions, must inevitably do in any
church in which such sentences are used . And they must
also do what is almost equally bad- they must bring the
conscience of offenders under the torture of opposing
forces-fear and hope-the dread of shame, and the un
conquerable longing for relief-and may, if not must,
make them respond, according to the weight of the domi
nant motive and feeling, but with little actual conformity
to the offender's true and real condition. The only wise,
safe, and practicable course, is that which Dr. Cave says
the bishops determined to take in substitution of the peni
tentiary priest-" to leave every one to the care and liberty
 37

of his own conscience." Cave, Prim. Chris . 464. The

work of Bingham treats the same subject in vol . 6, p .

492-4 .

2. My second position , that indefinite suspension is ne

cessarily fatal to the order and dignity of the Church,
can be maintained with equal clearness, and with greater
brevity. It is in truth an absurdity in point of order, and
that is the reason why no church, ancient or modern, has
practised or permitted it.
What, I may ask, is Bishop H. U. Onderdonk's present
position in regard to all the discipline of the Church that
comprehends his order ? Is he not subject to it fully and
generally ? Has he not been so for all the eleven years
that have elapsed since his suspension ? Doubtless . No
one can question it . All clergymen, whether suspended ,
or in the exercise of office, are subject to discipline gene
rally, and equally subject to it . For a new offence, a
suspended Bishop may be as lawfully and as readily
punished as an officiating Bishop . But if the suspension
be indefinite, or sine die, then the sentence itself is, while
it lasts, an immunity to all such offences as can be pun
ished only by suspension ; for the Judge can add nothing,
either definite or indefinite, to a sentence that has no
limitation of time. He may depose, it is true, and this is
the real effect of an indefinite suspension upon the order
and dignity of the Church, —that an offender so suspended
is dispunishable except by deposition ; and if he commits
any offence whatever, which canonical rule or Christian
feeling would be shocked at visiting with degradation from
the clerical order, the Church has no alternative but to
break him absolutely, or to let him go free. Indefinite
suspension wants no other touchstone than this . If the

public criminal code, which imprisons the offender's body,

and thus restrains him from outward sin, were to adopt
 38

such a punishment as indefinite imprisonment, it would

be inhuman and tyrannical, but not absurd ; but that a
Church Judiciary, all whose aims and methods ought to
be moral and rational, should so frame a sentence of sus
pension as to leave the body free, and the soul more than
commonly exposed to temptation, by prohibiting employ
ment in clerical offices, and beyond further correction for
any offence, but by absolute cutting off or death - that a
Church judiciary should do this, and find advocates for it
in any class of men, is truly surprising.
There is no cause for wonder then, that a case of in
definite suspension has not been cited by any one from the
history or canons of the Church, in any age. The wonder
is, that Bishop Hopkins should have regarded the case of
MELITIUS as a case of that description .
As represented by Bingham, whose account of that case
is very short, and was intended only to illustrate a pecu
liarity in perpetual suspension, which had occurred in
ancient times, it was as follows : Bingham's only reference
to it is in the first section of the fourth chapter of the
eighteenth Book of the Antiquities, which is introduced
with the heading or title already referred to : " Section I.
Sometimes the Clergy PERPETUALLY SUSPENDED from their
office, yet allowed to retain their title and dignity."
After mentioning the presbyters who had sacrificed to
idols, but afterwards returned and became confessors, and
were allowed by the Council of Ancyra to keep their
dignity and title of presbyters, and sit among the rest in
the presbytery, but not to preach, nor offer the Eucharist,
nor perform any other office of the sacred function, -and
also the case of Deacons who had lapsed into idolatry, and
were ordered to cease from all administration of the sacred

office, unless the Bishop, in consideration of their great

pains, humility, or meekness, should think fit to allow
them more or less of their office at his discretion, and also
 39

the case of the Novatian Bishops , whom the Council of

Nice degraded to the order of presbyters, but permitted
them to retain the title of Bishops, if the Bishop of that
place thought fit to allow it,-Bingham proceeds to say,
" and the same was determined in the case of Melitius, by
the same Synod, that he might retain the bare name and
honor of a Bishop, but never after officiate in his own
church, or any other." And for this he refers to the
Synodal Epistle of the Council of Nice, according to Theo
doret's Ecclesiastical History, book i , ch . ix . 6 Bing. 375,
book xvii, ch. iv, sec. 1.
And this is all that Bingham says of Melitius . But
there was more in the case, and more that is worthy of
notice in this connection, not only for the use that has
been made of it, as being supposed to exhibit a case of in
definite suspension by a Synod of the ancient Church , but
more pertinently for the example it gives of the great
gentleness with which one of the most powerful of the
ancient Synods proceeded in the suppression of a wide
spread and most dangerous schism, which had prevailed
for twenty years in an important district of the Church .
Melitius was Bishop of Lycopolis, in Upper Egypt, and
was DEPOSED ( Theodoret says zaŋpson) about the year of
our Lord 306 , by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, and claim
ing to be metropolitan of all Egypt.
Johnson, in his translation of the 6th Canon of the
Council of Nice, says that the deposition by Peter took
place in a Synod of the province ; Johns . Vade Mecum,
2d part, p . 47 ; and Dr. Burton , in his " History of the
Christian Church," says the same expressly, describing the
Synod and the deposition as the first of Peter's acts upon
his return to Alexandria, after his flight and concealment
in the time of Maximinus, one of the Cæsars created upon
the abdication of Dioclesian . Ch . xvii, p . 362 .
The crimes of which Melitius was accused and con
 40

victed, and his guilt or innocence, are of no moment in

this account of him. One of his imputed offences was
consenting to or joining in sacrifices to idols ; and there
can be little doubt of its truth ; for while Peter, the
metropolitan of all Egypt was forced to seek safety by
concealment, for refusing to concur in the idolatrous ser
vices imposed upon the Christians in Egypt by the Cæsar,
Melitius lived in ease and honor in his diocese, and was
permitted to usurp powers in derogation of the metropolitan
authority. Burton, 357.
Melitius despised the censure of deposition by his
metropolitan, and continued to perform all ecclesiastical
functions, even the ordaining of ministers . He is described
as a man of venerable appearance, of great gravity and
eloquence, and skilful in the management and direction of
men, but of a factious and headstrong temper. From

such qualities it resulted , that he made a strong party for

his support, which distracted the Church to a great degree,
and became a moving consideration with the Emperor
Constantine, in connection with the more important
heresy of Arius, for convening a general Council of the
Church at Nice, in Bithynia, in A. D. 325.
The Melitian schism figures little in the history of this
Council, compared with the Arian heresy, to which, though
important in itself, it was quite subordinate ; but from the
Synodal Epistle of the Council, and from its sixth canon,
it is apparent that the schism had much agitated the
Church, and that if any defence of Melitius was made
before the Council, it must have been on the ground that
the metropolitan authority of the Bishop of Alexandria
did not extend to Lycopolis ; for if it did, the schismatical
contumacy of Melitius in exercising his office, and ordain
ing ministers in Lycopolis, as he had done for twenty
years, was without excuse, and was the highest evidence
of a turbulent spirit, inconsistent with the dignity and
 41

order of the Church, and very dangerous to its peace, as

J more than one Bishop had sided with him.
It became necessary, therefore, that the Council of Nice
should endeavor to put down the schism, and to obliterate
all future cause for it, by a decision as to the metropolitan
authority of the Bishop of Alexandria : at the same time,
that the large body of ministers who had received ordina
tion at the hands of Melitius, should not be absolutely
cast off from the Church, but dealt with gently, to heal
and not to aggravate the division ; and this the Council
endeavored to bring about in the following manner.
First. They permitted the persons ordained by Melitius
to come into communion with the Church, upon receiving
" a more holy ordination" by the Bishop of Alexandria ;
μυστικωτερα χειροτονια βεβαιωθεντες— and then to retain both their
title and their ministry.
Secondly. But they were to come into it only under
censure, and to be inferior to all in the same diocese and

church, and to do nothing without the consent of the

Bishop ; but if any of the ministers of the Church who
were free from this schism, should die, the Melitian schis
matics were made capable of succeeding to that dignity,
if they were worthy, and should be duly chosen by the
people, and should be approved by the Bishop of Alexan
dria.

Thirdly. As to Melitius himself, the Synod held that in

strict justice he deserved no pardon ; but they determined
to exercise so much clemency towards him, as to permit
66
him to enjoy the mere name or title of a bishop, " Tihov Ψιλον de το
to
ονομα της τιμης κεκτησθαι,” but that he should remain in his own

city, and have no authority to ordain , nor to select persons

for ordination, nor to appear in any other place for such a
purpose that is to say, instead of allowing him the right
to the ministry, or the power of restoration to it, which
the Council had given to those whom he ordained, they
 42

qualified the permission to possess the title, by the express

restrictions just stated, in consequence of his rash and
headstrong temper, that no power of any kind should be
left in him, lest he might again excite such disturbances .
The language of the epistle is very forcible both in the
original, as it is given by Theodoret in his Ecclesiastical
History, and also in the translation by Valesius . " De
Melitio vero, ob primam ejus contumaciam, et ob temera
rium ac præceps hominis ingenium, aliter placuit decernere,
ne potestas auctoritasque ulla tribuatur homini qui easdem
rursus turbas excitare possit . " They permitted him to
possess the nude name of his honor-his nude title ; and ,
whereas, they had permitted his presbyters to be restored
to the Church, and to retain their honor and ministry,
they thought fit to decree otherwise as to Melitius himself,
Ινα μηδεμια εξεσια αυθεντίας αυτω δωθη ανθρωπω δυναμενω παλιν τασαυτας
αταξιας monoa
aražias ποιησαι ;; lest any power, or so that no power whatever,
should be attributed to a man, who might a second time
be able to excite the same disturbances. They thus ex
cluded his return to the ministry.
Fourthly. The final and consummating measure of the
Council of Nice, was a canon, " De primatibus Episcoporum
Metropolitanorum," which ordained that " Mos antiquus
perduret in Egypto vel Lybia et Pentapoli, ut Alexan
drinus Episcopus horum omnium habeat potestatem , quo
niam quidem et Episcopo Romano parilis mos est." " Let
the ancient custom be maintained which is in Egypt, and
Lybia, and Pentapolis, according to which, the Bishop of
Alexandria has authority over all these places . For this
is also customary to the Bishops of Rome :" Hammond , 34 :
that is to say, the same authority that the Bishops of Rome
had over the suburbicarian churches of that diocese. See

Johnson's note to the 6th Nicene Canon, and the authori

ties there cited . 2 Johnson's Vade Mecum, 48 .
The result of the whole was, therefore, this, that the
 43

DEPOSITION Of Melitius by the metropolitan of Alexandria,

was confirmed, by confirming the metropolitan authority
of the Bishop of Alexandria over all Egypt ; but that
Melitius, possibly to soften his schismatical ministers,
possibly to assuage the feelings of numbers of the Church

who had sympathized with him, was permitted to possess

the title of Bishop , but with the declaration that it was a
nude title-Filov ovopa- without any substance ; and to pre
vent the title from being abused to the acquisition of some
authority present or future, he was expressly denied the
power of even going out of his own city.
This account has been compiled from Theodoret's Eccle
siastical History, by Valesius, p . 29. Mosheim's Eccl. Hist.
vol . i , 343, 371 , and Dr. Maclain's notes at those pages .
Johnson's Vade Mecum, part ii, p . 47. Dr. Burton's History
of the Ancient Church, chap. 17. Hammond's Translation
of the Canons, p. 25, 34, 41 ; and the Synodal Epistle of
the Council of Nice in the same work, p . 20 .
There is not in the decree of the Council, in regard to
Melitius, any trace of Apoptopos, segregatio, or suspension of
any kind, definite or indefinite . Bingham was quite right
in saying, that the Council determined that " he might
retain the bare name and honor of Bishop, but never after
officiate in his own church or any other ;" but he does not
mention the previous deposition by the Bishop of Alexan
dria, which the Council in effect confirmed, and therefore
he fails to present the ground upon which the Council
decreed that he should never after officiate , which was
'done to prevent his acquiring any future power, from the
courtesy of leaving him the title and name of a Bishop.
6 Bing. Ant. 375. For any other purpose the restriction
was unnecessary, because he had been actually deposed
already, * the power of the deposing authority was con
firmed by the Council of Nice, and in no degree did they
vacate the substance of the sentence.
 44

The Council of Nice left him an empty name in the

place of authority, guarded against his abuse of it to ac
quire power anew, and distinguished his case from that of
his presbyters, whom they permitted, upon certain terms, to
return to the ministry, by declaring in regard to him, that
on account of his rash and headstrong temper, aliter pla
cuit decernere.

The case of Melitius, therefore, has not any the least

resemblance to the case, or pertinency to the purpose , for
which it was cited by Bishop Hopkins ; and it was conse
quently rather an ill-considered triumph that Bishop Hop
kins permitted himself to proclaim when he cited it.

Upon indisputable authorities, then , ancient as well as

modern, a sentence of indefinite suspension must fall to
the ground, having no support whatever in the institutions
of the Ancient Church, any more than in those of the
modern. It is a sentence without law and against law,
against the order and dignity of the Church, against
humanity and general convenience, and against prece
dent and prescription of the very highest antiquity and
sanctity.

Having thus established the law of the Primitive

Church, upon the subject of indefinite suspension, and ex
posed the error of representing the case of Melitius as a
case of that kind, I must refer, in connection with the
general subject of Church discipline, to another principle'
of the Primitive Apostolic Church, not less worthy of ob
servation, and not less observed by the Church in that
and subsequent ages, than the principle of definite suspen
sion, namely, the moral limitation of punishments gene
rally. Limitation of time was, as has been shown , of the
essence of suspension ; but a moral limitation also , that is
 45

to say, a proportion between the wrong and the chastise

ment-a guard against superfluous pain after the remedy
was complete- this too was an Apostolic principle, mani
fested in various canons I have cited, which authorized
the Bishop to shorten the time of suspension and penance,
but more emphatically in a great Apostolic example, which
I must be permitted to present, and to dwell upon.
And this was in the true spirit of Christian discipline.
How much suffering should be appointed to accomplish
a reformation, must undoubtedly be left to the sober and
conscientious judgment of men, who have the appoint
ment in such matters ; but there is an awful responsibility
upon those who remember only the means and forget the
end-the means being suspension from full communion,
the end being reform and restoration .
In the primitive age of the Church, discipline was
paternal, and punishments were moderate . That the

Church did better afterwards, when her enactments became

more severe, cannot be proved . The tendency of a severe
code is to formality in administration, and to connivance
at escape . Moderate punishments, faithfully enforced ,
have ever been, and ever will be found to be the most
effectual for both the wrongdoer and the public.

This is not to say, however, that punishments extend

ing even to the immediate cutting off of the offender, are
not necessary. On some occasions they may be the best,
and indeed the only means, which our imperfect know
ledge enables us to apply. But occur when they may,
they are in some sort a reproach to the hand that inflicts
them, as surgery has been said to be a reproach to the
science of medicine . We cut off, because we know not
what other probable means to apply ; and when the offence
of a minister is rank and indubitable, and admits of no
hope of reformation , there seems nothing left to such wis
dom as ours, but to separate the offender at once from all .
 . 46

connection with the body of the Church, instead of tam

pering with dangerous expedients ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ dangerous to the
Church, and promising little to the offender. It is true
kindness, indeed, to all parties , to depose such a minister,
instead of essaying the method of long suspensions, which ,
by way of training or instructing a half-reclaimed heathen ,
or an uneducated people, may sometimes have been useful,
but with a minister of the Church, and in these days espe
cially, have not a reasonable argument in their favor.
These long terms of suspension have never been so used
with the superior clergy ; and to make suspension do the
work of deposition in any case, as it would seem it is now
doing in our Church, would have been in complete incon
gruity with any system of discipline, that has ever been
known in the Church. The wisdom and tenderness of an
Apostle, did make deposition, or total excommunication ,
do the work of suspension ; that is, he applied the moral
limitation , after the reform was accomplished, to that
which, in form, was without limitation . But to make
suspension, or the lesser excommunication, which was
limited in its form and purpose, do the work of total ex
clusion and separation - that perversion never seems to
have occurred in the first eighteen centuries of the Chris
1
tian era .

The spirit of the Apostolic discipline, was reformatory

and restorative ; and this being its nature, how infinitely
distant do we run from it, if we engraft upon a sentence
of suspension, accidentally or ignorantly indefinite, an un
ending punishment of the very worst kind for the party
and the Church ! How totally forgetful are we of the
Apostolic injunction, when in a case of acknowledged re
formation, we hesitate to accord the relief, which he im
plored and commanded, even after a sentence of total ex
communication !
The momentous consideration which underlies the ex
 47

ample I am to refer to, dispenses with the support of

canons, and of judicial authorities in construction of them .
It extends to, and rules every case of remedial discipline ,
whether of bishop, priest, deacon, or layman. I am aware
that the Ancient Church did not often apply this principle
to the order of the ministry, after total degradation to the
condition of a layman, perhaps because the reformation of
a minister, receiving and deserving so extreme a mark of
reprobation, but rarely occurred ; but neither ancient nor
modern has ever held it to be inapplicable when the pun

ishment was simply corrective, and was in the course of

application, to even the highest order of the ministry.
The Church could not so hold it, without denying that
there was any moral limitation to remedial punishments,
after their end had been completely obtained . Nay, if she
had held to the doctrine of non-remission , as one of our

V bishops has taught it, she must have excluded the punish
ment of temporary suspension of her ministers, altogether
from her code of discipline.

Ten years suspension of Bishop H. U. Onderdonk, at

the outset, would have been deemed excessive by every
body. It would have been thought, at that time, equiva
lent to suspension for his entire life, certainly for the whole
*
of the effective years of his remaining life, in which he
might be expected to gain the bread of his large fami
I verily believe it would have shocked the whole Church,
a very few excepted . He has lost these precious years,
in the view of discipline uselessly lost them, when one
tenth of the time would have served, and has effectually
served , to restore him to general esteem. But is not this
loss sufficient without more ? Is not the past suffering for
all that period , in his own person, and through those still
dearer to him, sufficient, and " more than sufficient ?"
Does the American Church mean to repudiate the teach
ing as well as the discipline of St. Paul- to give it out
 48

that there cannot be " more than sufficient suffering," for

any degree of intemperance in a bishop, though so in
stantly, effectually, and perfectly reformed at first bidding,
that persons of any large experience are compelled to
doubt the original fault, and altogether to deny its alleged
aggravations ? This is the peculiar character of the ex
traordinary case, which cannot be too much pondered in
all its bearings : a peculiarity which, without looking at
the evidence, draws the existence of the habit into more
than doubt, and reduces it, even when left in its largest
dimensions, to an apprehension merely. Cannot there be
" more than sufficient suffering" for such a case as this ?
Let us see what an Apostle thought of a case a thousand
fold more flagrant, and , in his judgment, more than suffi
ciently punished by one-tenth of the infliction : and such
an Apostle too !
The great Apostle of the Gentiles , is the highest human
authority to the Church, for the vigor and energy of his
discipline . His example is of equal weight for the loving
spirit in which he administered it. There is, indeed , no
name in history more deserving of respect, love, confi
dence, and deference, than that of St. Paul. There was
in his nature, a spirit of courage and love, of discernment
and command, that, if he had not been inspired at all,
would probably have raised him to the first rank among
the uninspired men of his age and nation . Even what
we know of his Jewish errors, may be fairly attributed to
the misdirection of these qualities ; and on account of
them, perhaps, he was miraculously turned into the true
path, and specially selected for the work of his Master.
After his conversion, his quick insight into the nature and
tendency of human errors and frailties, and his profound
knowledge of the true method of treating them for the
welfare of men, as well as for the honor of God and His
Church, together with his unconquerable resolution in the
 49

performance of his duty, and that spirit of Christian love

or charity, which regulated it from first to last, make him
an especial authority, for all parts of church discipline, the
beginning, the middle , and the end .
In no recorded case were these more conspicuous, than
in that of the Corinthian convert, referred to in the first
Epistle to the Corinthians, who had offended against even
Gentile decency, by taking his father's wife in his father's
lifetime . His energy in the correction of this gross

offence was terrible ; but in the forgiveness of it, when

repented of and put away, there was a tenderness blended
with sorrow, like that of woman . Some of the Church

at Corinth may have tossed up their heads at the offender,

thanking God, it may be, that they were not as he was,
and for this or some other cause, forgetting their Christian
profession and brotherhood , in their pride and conceit.
But St. Paul confronted the fault in him, and in them
also :

" And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned,
that he that hath done this deed might be taken away
from among you . "

" For I verily, as absent in the body, but present in

spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, con
cerning him that hath so done this deed,"
“ In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are
gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our
Lord Jesus Christ,"

" To deliver such an one unto Satan, for the destruction

of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the
Lord Jesus."

" Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little

leaven leaveneth the whole lump."

" Therefore put away from among yourselves, that

wicked person ."
Nothing can be more terribly energetic than this lan
 50

guage, more deeply imbued with the knowledge of the

nature and proper treatment of moral infection , or more
irremissible to communion with sin, or to a mere phari
saical disdain of it. Yet after the lapse of a single year
-for that is the supposed interval between the first and
second epistle- when the Church had excommunicated the
offender, and he had repented of his sin, and put away
the no doubt heathen woman, for she is not even noticed
in the rebuke, with what earnestness does St. Paul, in his
second epistle, impart his direction to the Church to for
give and to restore ; -with what delicacy has he directed
the whole proceeding from beginning to end, not mention
ing in either epistle the offender's name , but only, “ put
away that wicked person,"" "sufficient to such a man is this

punishment ;" — and with what deep insight into the

human heart, does he touch and rebuke the evil of over
strained punishments !
" SUFFICIENT to such a man is this punishment, which
was inflicted of many ."
" So that contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him,
and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swal
lowed up with overmuch sorrow.”
“ Wherefore I BESEECH YOU that ye would confirm your
love towards him."
And this language, in the original, imports, to ratify by
authority his restoration to the Church, in like manner as
they had directed his expulsion ; the Apostle's motive to
forgiveness under these circumstances, being, as he after
wards declares, " LEST SATAN SHOULD GET AN ADVANTAGE
OF US."

This is a great lesson in church discipline. It is a

standing admonition against long-continued severity, after
reformation , - severity even for a most gross offence ,

worthily punished by excommunication from the Church.

It was designed as such by the Apostle. The commen
 51

tators so understand it. Macknight, Doddridge, and others ,

exhibit his language, and dwell upon it in this special re
lation . The Primitive Church so regarded it, and obeyed
it. The Church of England so observes, and has always
observed it . She did observe it, in what some persons , at
present not her over-friends, are disposed to call her best
days, and at the very time when the ferocity of the penal
law of England, defiled her whole island with blood . It is
4 marvellous that persons high in church office, and belong
ing to an age in which Christians and men of the world,
have united in the effort to breathe the breath of love and
life into the grim body of the old penal law, should tread,
or seem to tread under foot, the great principle with which
St. Paul has crowned the structure of church discipline ;
the same with which God himself has crowned His own
work of Justice and Mercy to sinful man.
I repeat, it is a great lesson in church discipline ; and it
was worthy, if anything can be worthy, to be the sequel
of that divinely instituted first step-" Moreover, if thy
brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his
fault between thee and him ALONE." Within this area , so

beginning and so ending, there is no discipline that can

miss its aim. It must heal the wounded Church , even
though an obdurate offender should baffle it . Beginning
in accommodation to human infirmity with private and
loving admonition, and ending in accommodation to the
same infirmity with loving remission , before the more than
sufficient suffering has brought recoil and desperate harden
ing, the Church cannot have too much of such discipline .
But St. Paul clearly appears to have thought, that the
more than sufficient punishment, inducing this conse
quence, brought defeat and reproach, and perilous respon
sibility upon those who persisted in it. To the eye of a
calm and unprejudiced observer, it converts discipline into
an act of resentment, by necessary relation ; and almost
gives countenance to the final defiance of an offender, in
 52

the grief of considerate men for an overstrained sentence.

The doctrine which one bishop of our Church has pro
claimed, that the sin of a suspended bishop ought not to
be remitted by the Church, upon any terms, is unsupported
by any other orthodox bishop of the Christian Church,
from the time of the Apostles ; and so may it ever be !
 SUPPLEMENT

ΤΟ

THE LAW

OF

SUSPENSION OF THE CLERGY

IN THE

1
PRIMITIVE CHURCH.

BY

A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH.

PHILADELPHIA :
PRINTED BY C. SHERMAN & SON.

1855.
 l
1857. Apri . 6 .

Gift of

Ber
...E. H.
ing
Sown

of
. Thomastown, Leake Co. Miss .

>
 SUPPLEMENT

TO

" THE LAW OF SUSPENSION ."

THE Episcopal Recorder of the 27th October last, under

its " Book Table " head, notices the pamphlet entitled
" The Law of Suspension of the Clergy in the Primitive
Church ," and concludes its brief reference with the fol
lowing remark : " The difficulty however that strikes us
at the root of the argument, is a confusion of the right of
restoration to communion, with the right of restoration to
office. "
It would be reasonable to ask what the Recorder means

by this distinction ; for any one who has read the pamphlet
must know, that the term communion, had at least two
meanings in the law of the Primitive Church, and that
one of them is inapplicable to the law of suspension , and
the other is inseparable from it ; and therefore, that if the
writer of the pamphlet had distinguished between restora
tion to office and restoration to communion in one of its
meanings, he would have made a distinction that is con
trary to the law of suspension ; and if he had distinguished
office from communion in the other meaning, he would
have distinguished between things that are identical.
This can be very easily shown.
And in order to show it, it is deemed best to place in
 4

one view, three different punishments of clergymen by

the ecclesiastical law, which will bring out all that it is
material to know in reference to communion.

Be it observed, that we speak of clergymen- bishops,

priests and deacons- not of laymen .
1. Suspension from office :
In this censure, the privilege of receiving the Lord's
Supper, has not been from the foundation of the Church,
and is not now, suspended or withheld for a day or hour
from the suspended person . He always could and may
receive that communio n after suspension, as freely as any
lay member of the Church who has never been under
censure.

If the pamphlet had distinguished between restoration

to office and restoration to communion, in this sense, the
sense of the Lord's Supper, it would have spoken of resto
ration to communion , when the censure does not interrupt
it for a day. The distinction does not exist in the case.
It is contrary to the law of suspension , universally and
immemorially .
But a suspended minister cannot consecrate the elements,
and distribute the sacrament to others . He cannot receive
the eucharist in his official character, nor perform any of
the functions of the office from which he is suspended,
either in connection or association with his clerical
brethren, or in execution of his official powers . Such
acts belong to and constitute what in the Primitive
Church was known as clerical communion ; and the sus
pension of this was, and still is, the whole effect of sus
pension from office . They were interdicted by what was
called the lesser excommunication of the clergy.
Suspension from office, and suspension from communion
of this sort, meant the same thing in the Primitive Church .
In the Latin Church, the punishment of suspension of a
clergyman from office, was inflicted by the words - let him
 5

be suspended from communion . In the Greek Church , it

was inflicted by the words-let him be segregated . In our
Church, and in the Church of England , the words used ,
importing the same effects precisely, are-let him be sus
pended from office.
There has been universal consent on this head among
all churches-primitive and derivative . But in the modern
Canon Law, the phrase clerical communion is dropt, though
the thing exists ; and the term communion is applied in its
two divisions of the lesser and greater excommunication ,
the one to signify exclusion from divine service , and the
use of the sacraments, the other from these, and also from
the communion of the faithful.

Now it is clear, that if the writer of the argument in the

pamphlet, had distinguished between office and clerical
communion, in the ancient application of the words, he
would have distinguished between things identical .
But further : In suspension from office, there is no re
moval from office- no ouster- and never has been in the

Church . The bishop or minister suspended from office,

is as much a bishop or minister afterwards, as he was
before suspension . He is not out of office for a moment.
He is merely restrained from the exercise of his office .
When his suspension ends, the exercise of office accrues,
and with it of course the enjoyment of clerical communion.
When in the Latin Church he was in terms " suspended

from communion ," and the term of the suspension was at

an end, his enjoyment of clerical communion accrued ,
and of course his exercise of office, for it was the same
thing.
There is no restoration, or right of restoration to either
office or communion in clergymen who are suspended .
That is not the language of law, and never was ; nor is it
properly applicable to the case of suspension . No man
can be restored to that which has not been taken away.
 6

But neither office nor communion is taken away by sus

pension . The enjoyment or exercise only is restrained for
a time.

If, therefore, the pamphlet had distinguished the right

of restoration to office from the right of restoration to com
munion, he would have distinguished between identical.
things, and also attributed impossible qualifications to
each of them.
2. Deposition from office :
This is removal from office,-ouster of office, —or taking
it away absolutely. The deposed minister becomes a lay
man, under our Canon of 1832 .
But though, the clergyman be ousted , and his office
taken away absolutely, the privilege of receiving the
Eucharist as a layman, is not taken away by the sentence,
nor the enjoyment of it restrained or suspended for a day
or hour.
3
In this respect, suspension from office, and deposition
from office, are on the same footing. The sentence in
either case, does not touch membership of the Church .
3. Excommunication :
This is a lay censure, as well as a clerical one. It has
in modern Canon Law the two significations already men

tioned , and is administered without distinction to lay

men and clergymen. It is wholly independent of office ;
and though it may be administered to a clergyman after
suspension from office, and also either after deposition
or before, yet it has no legal connection with either
suspension or deposition from office . As has already
been remarked, the phrase clerical communion , which
is described as being the thing interdicted by the lesser
excommunication of clergymen in the Primitive Church ,
is no longer used . It meant nothing more than the
interruption of the clerical office, which takes place in
the suspension of a clergyman, and equally in deposition
 7

from office. Excommunication in the Church of England,

as has been said, is divided into the lesser and the greater;
the former interdicting the use of the sacraments and
divine worship, and is commonly employed to punish
contumacy to ecclesiastical mandates, and is taken off
when the offence is purged by appearance or submission . *
The greater includes the lesser, and cuts the offender off,
both from divine worship and the use of the sacraments,
and also from the society and conversation of the faithful.
In canons and other legal proceedings which order ex
communication simpliciter, or without qualification , the
greater excommunication is meant. The ancient Church

was remarkable for not permitting this excommunication

to be used for mere pecuniary matters and temporal causes ,
as was constantly allowed by the Church of England .
But in neither the ancient nor the modern , does deposi
tion from office, and still less suspension, include this or
any other privation of divine worship, or the use of the
sacraments. The Ancient Church did in some cases
include both deposition and anathema, by one expression
or other of equal force , as ριπτεσθαι της εκκλησίας, εκχηρύττεσθαι της
duvodou, extos elval, or the like ; but this was not the proper
phrase for mere deposition ; and the distinction is shown
in a striking manner, in one of the Apostolical Canons ,
which after ordering deposition for certain offences,
xataιpsiσ0w, prohibits excommunication for the same. Canon
18 (25) .
In the Church of England, and in our Church, deposi
tion is always ordered eo nomine, singly and solely. Ex
communication is no part of it. The two pains or penal
ties are inflicted by different ceremonies, and with entirely
different results. In the Canons of 1603 , if a minister,

after signing the articles, refuses to perform certain parts

* Supplied, and the whole proceeding by excommunication much

altered, by Stat. 53, G. 3, c. 127 ; and Stat. 2 and 3, W. 4, c . 93.
 8

of the service, he is ordered first to be suspended , and if

he does not submit and conform in a month, then to be ex
communicated, and if he does not submit and conform in
another month, then to be deposed from the ministry, Art.
38. In this case excommunication precedes deposition.
If deposition were ordered for a flagrant offence , not re
pented of, excommunication would probably follow. But

they are distinct things . Our House of Bishops can only

pronounce deposition eo nomine. Whether they can pro
nounce excommunication , afterwards or before, it is not
necessary to inquire . They have never yet pronounced it
in the exercise of their judicial functions.
Deposition is an ouster from office, or as our Canon of
1832 ordains, an ouster from the ministry, entirely, and
not from a higher to a lower order of the same. But it
does not cast a bishop or other minister out of the Church ;
and as a member of the Church , he retains the right to
divine worship, and the use of the sacraments, and to the
society and conversation of the faithful . His office has
gone absolutely, and the clerical communion in that
office, which is the same thing, is gone absolutely . He
has no right to either, and therefore no right of restora
tion to either.

If, therefore , the pamphlet had treated of deposition , as

it did not, but of suspension in the Primitive Church only,
and the argument had distinguished between the right of
restoration to office, and the right of restoration to commu
nion, meaning clerical communion , it would have distin
guished between rights, when there was no right on either
side ; and if the eucharistical communion was meant, it
would have distinguished between a right of restoration
to office, and a right of restoration to communion, when
on one side there was no office, because it was absolutely
gone, and on the other, no communion to be restored to,
because none was taken away or even suspended .
 9

But if the pamphlet had treated of deposition, accom

panied or followed by excommunication in the sense of
our Church , then a distinction something like that which
is suggested by the Episcopal Recorder, would have been
noticed, because it really exists : like it, but not the same,
because the distinction suggested in the Recorder, is in
terms or language that cannot be used in any case.
In such a case there might be a claim of restoration to
office, and also a claim of restoration to communion , that
is, to membership of the Church, and to the consequent
privilege of the Eucharist . There would be no right in
either case . And the claim of restoration to office, might
be very little entitled to favor, and commonly has been so
considered in the Church, while the claim to restoration
to the communion might be, and , under penitence and
reformation, always has been favored. The first has
always been refused at discretion . Under any circum
stances it is in fact prohibited in our Church, by the
Canon of 1832. The other cannot, in the circumstances
supposed, be refused without great responsibility.
If this last case then was in the view of the Episcopal
-
Recorder, and there is no other possible censure of a
minister that could justify the suggestion-then something
like the distinction would have been proper in any discus
sion of it. But as the case of suspension from office, and
that also of deposition from office, without excommunica
tion , are not of this kind , so it is impossible that any con
fusion in not noticing the distinction , could be found at the
root of the argument in that pamphlet ; because the root
of the argument, and every branch of the argument, re
lated to a case of suspension from office ; and not to the
only case that admits of the distinction , or anything like it.
But it cannot be supposed that the Editors of the
Episcopal Recorder, had any of these matters in view,
when the distinction was suggested ; for the illogical cha
 10

racter of the distinction would have been apparent to persons

of their powers of discrimination . They must, therefore,
have had something else in mind , besides the root of the
argument, or the argument itself; and there is no great
difficulty in ascertaining what it was.
The authorities in the pamphlet conclude to the nullity
of a sentence of indefinite suspension . The Primitive
Church did not authorize that sentence . The modern or
derivative churches, do not authorize it . Our own Canon I

does not authorize it. Consequently it is illegal, null, and 1

void. And the further conclusion is, that as it has been
inflicted on the late bishop of this diocese, it ought to be
rescinded . It is an act of mere power- power unlawfully
exercised ; and as the General Convention has enabled the
House to put an end to it, the duty of so ending it, results
of necessity.
This is both the legal and the moral conclusion that
follows from the premises .
But the sentence has de facto been in operation for
eleven years, and has been followed by severe suffering, ļ

and attended by all the reformation and penitence , that

could attend or follow in any case of definite suspension,
if originally inflicted for the unparalleled term of eleven
years ; and hence, if it is regarded as the case of a lawful
and definite sentence of suspension , which is all that any
moral being can ask for, whatever be the law, then the
moral limitation of all disciplinary punishments known to
the Church, especially the case of the Corinthian convert,
and the teachings of St. Paul, are decisive to show that
the sentence should now terminate.

And here comes up the distinction which is suggested

in the Episcopal Recorder. If it were a case of separation
of the party from membership of the Church , and from the
privilege of receiving the Lord's Supper, the case of the
Corinthian convert, and the teachings of St. Paul, might
 11

have some application ; but as the communion of the

Lord's Supper is not withheld, and nothing is in question but
the office of bishop, this case and teaching have no appli
cation, and therefore, the sentence of suspension ought not
to be remitted . This, we may suppose, is the ground or
source of the suggested distinction . And as one of the
bishops of the Church has already made the same sugges
tion, and as the answer formerly given to it has not been
thought sufficient, it seems worthy to be considered a little
further : and that is the object of this supplementary paper.

The answers to it are obviously these :

1. That if the office of bishop were the only thing in
question, the sentence ought nevertheless to be rescinded
or remitted .

2. That the office of bishop is not the only thing in

question ; and the teaching of St. Paul, and the universal
practice of the Church in the limitation and remission of
sentences of suspension , apply with the same force as to
any other case that has ever occurred .

I. If the office of bishop were the only thing in ques

tion, and were of no more value than a wisp of straw, the
sentence ought to be remitted .
The sentence is a badge of insubordination to the law, Vous
te
ampapëne

in the highest court of the Church. What is the House

of Bishops itself, but an embodiment of the law- of the
highest law, of the law of God, and under it, of the law of
His Church ? What concord has this law with a sentence
which all churches in Christendom have repelled from
the time of the Apostles, and which the Apostolic Church
repelled , in conformity to the express model delivered by
God ? What effect must the unlimited continuance of

this sentence have upon the reverence that is due to the

law of the Church, and to the highest law ? If ignorance
excused the breach when it first was made, what will
 12

excuse the continuance of the breach after that ignorance

is at an end ? Has the harmony of our Church been on
the increase since 1844 , so that we may attribute some
part of the increase to this sentence ? Is the law of love
more general in it, more effectual, with less of the law of
majorities ? If such sentences strengthen the attachment
of one side of a church, do they strengthen the attachment
of another ? And what is a church with two or more

sides to it, and a fissure perhaps, in each of them ? Are

we in the right pursuit, when we are attributing defects in
our growth to our liturgy and services, instead of to our
selves ? Is there no strength, no reverence, no love , lost
in pulling vehemently different ways ? We may trace our
present want of personal unity to one cause or to another,
perhaps to several ; but the true way of amendment is to
consider each cause by itself, and to amend seriatim ; and
if this sentence of indefinite suspension is not among the
causes, the phenomenon of a House of Bishops, thirteen to
fourteen upon such a point as suspension from office, nine
years after its first infliction, is the most extraordinary
that any Church court has ever presented .

But the office of bishop is not a wisp of straw. It is,

4
and according to our belief, it ought to be, a great, living,
efficient agency. It has vows upon it ; it has important

rights annexed to it, and solemn duties connected with it.

To be restrained from these , is deep grief, and continuing
dishonor to the party. It ought to be a grief as it is a
dishonor to the other bishops, if it be illegal. Those who
want, if there be any who want, to make this suspension
in form, a deposition in fact, do not know what they want ;
but it is easy to show them what they must bring to pass, if
they compass their wishes. They will continue to exhibit
a bishop of this Church , not deposed , not deposable, com
pletely reformed for eleven years past from the only
offence contained in the Record of Suspension, not inferior
 13

in power of mind to any of the bishops, not wanting in

physical ability to do anything that a bishop can do, not
a paralytic personally, but a paralytic episcopally, by and
through an illegal restraint. They will exhibit this, and
show to other churches what we think of the sacred office
of a bishop ! And not only this, but what is with us the
actual weight of a plain command of one of the plainest
laws of the Church, even after it has been vindicated by
an express Canon of the General Convention !

This will be more fully enforced under the succeeding

head.

II . The office of bishop is not the only thing in question .

It might have been the only thing in question , if the sen
tence had conformed to the Canon of 1844 , in another par
ticular, not adverted to in the pamphlet upon Suspension ,
though distinctly noticed elsewhere . It might have been

the only question, if the sentence, after violating all eccle

siastical law by suspending the party indefinitely, had not
also violated the canon by suspending him " from the
public exercise of the office and functions of the sacred
1 ministry."
In point of authority, this addition to the canonical pu
nishment limited by the 9th section in the case of a " con
fessing Bishop," to wit, suspension " from his office," is
pretty much of a piece with a sentence by a judge of
criminal law, that a convicted felon, after being hanged by
the neck until he is half dead, shall be cut down and
quartered . There is as little authority in the canon , for
suspension from the exercise of the office and functions of
the sacred ministry, as there is for the other in the general
law of executions for felony. In all that two of the
bishops have written upon the subject, there is not a word
to excuse such a sentence. One of them is altogether
silent . The other suggests no better reason, than that it
 14

would have been shocking to permit a bishop to preach as

a minister, after he was suspended for intemperance ;
though, he, who may have drafted the sentence, and cer
tainly voted for it, did not think it shocking to leave the
bishop free, to consecrate the bread and wine and to dis
tribute the Eucharist in private, and to preach in private,
and to absolve in private, and to do everything that a
priest can lawfully do in private, the hypothesis of intem
perance not being applicable to private exercises ! But
the question is not what is shocking, or not shocking, but
what is lawful or not lawful for a court to do, —a court as
much under an obligation and vow to exercise such disci
pline as by the authority of God's word, and by the order of
the Church, is committed to it, as the constituent bishops
were by the act of their consecration . And there is not a
word of God, nor an order of the Church, that commits to
the House, an authority to pass such a sentence.
The 6th section of the same canon of 1844 , makes the
distinction plainly. In the case of an accused bishop, who
defies the jurisdiction of a Court of Bishops , and refuses to
appear to their summons, the 6th section does give the court
express authority to pronounce him in contumacy, and
orders, that " sentence of suspension from the ministry shall
be pronounced against him for contumacy ;" but in the
case of a confessing bishop, the 9th section restricts the
authority of the House of Bishops to determine by vote
without trial, " whether the said offending and confessing
bishop shall be admonished, or be suspended from his office,
or be deposed, and the sentence thus determined shall be
pronounced by the bishop presiding."
The ground of the distinction is as clear as light. To
one who defies the authority of the Church , the exercise
of no ministerial power is to be left while he is in contu
macy ; and most properly too . In the case of the other,
the vote of the House and the sentence must conform ,
 15

and the very matter of the vote -the exclusive mode of de

termination without trial-that he, the offending and con
fessing bishop, be suspended from his office, is made the very
matter of the sentence. It is no wonder then , that seven
of the bishops protested against this enlargement of the
¡
sentence. The sentence was so enlarged, because the office
and functions of the ministry are not cut off by suspension
from the office of bishop . If they had all been included
in it, as Bishop Hopkins alleges, without any authority
but his own, and against the authorities to the contrary
which were cited, why was not the inclusion of them
trusted to the words of the canon ?
The fact then is undeniable, that the exercise of the
office of bishop is not the only thing in question . The
right of teaching and preaching the Gospel is in ques
tion . In the performance of this duty, the person re
ferred to, to say nothing of his eminence, was most in
structive and efficient. Nobody can deny that. He
preached the pure doctrines of the Church and of the
Gospel . He was free from all taint or suspected taint of
Puseyism, or fancy Churchmanship, or low Churchman
ship. There was none of it in his preaching, or in his
nature . He was invaluable to a large part of his general
flock, who never looked up to him without being fed, not
with chaff, nor with painted and decorated confectionary,
but with the meat that endureth to everlasting life . It
was prepared too, and presented in a manner, equally
acceptable and profitable to the ignorant and the educated ,
the lowly and the high, the simple and the critical. It
should be added, equally beyond denial, that the vigor of
his intellect remains to this day, that his theological
opinions and beliefs are neither changed nor likely to
change, that his power of writing is at least what it was,
and that although eleven years, and none of them without
suffering, may have impaired his physical strength in some
 1

16

degree, he has in all probability, several years of life still

remaining to him, which might be made profitable to the
same persons in the same way. This is not the fruit of
Episcopal office . It is the precious fruit of the word of
God, as he preached it as one of the ministry. It is denied
to them, his hearers, by the sentence , in the same way
that it is denied to him ; and the interruption of his rights,
is at the same time an interruption of theirs.
Further, the right of his daily bread is, and for eleven
years has been, in question ,-the daily bread of himself
and his family . He would have been as sure, under God ,
of his daily bread in this city, if the sentence had not
withheld it from him, as another eminent bishop has been
in another city, without any Episcopal cure. He would
have been as sure of it, from teaching and preaching the
word of God in the Church, as the farmer is made sure of
it by having the wheat in his garner to dispose of, or the
baker who has the flour to prepare for the table. He is
still sure of it, in perhaps a modified or diminished degree .
He may at least, get the crumbs which fall from the rich
man's table, and no doubt desires to be fed by them ; and
there are some, perhaps many, who would be glad to ask
him in return to dip his finger in the water of life for their
refreshment, while as yet there is no gulf whatever be
tween them . This is a thing as lawfully to be desired on
his part, as it is on theirs . In this aspect, his case is worse
than that of the laborers in the parable ; for if asked why
he stands idle all the day long, he can only answer, be
cause no man is permitted to hire me ; and what can be
answered by those who refuse the permission ?
But there is a more serious point of view in which the
impediments in the way of ministerial office may be ex
hibited . They are an interruption of the ordination vows
of his priesthood, which went up with him to his conse
cration, and are still upon him, and which this suspension
 17

from the office of bishop is made by the sentence to hinder,

and unnecessarily and illegally to hinder.
This is a matter which it cannot be supposed the

bishops think lightly of. But they cannot think of it at

all, if the office of bishop is all that they think of in the
case. There is not one of them, who, if he were under
such a suspension , would not think of it as the continual
sting of the sentence, transcendently more sharp than the
mere suspension from Episcopal office . He would so think
of it, if he was not unworthy of the ministry ; for the
ordination vow binds him to give faithful diligence always
so to minister the doctrine, and sacraments, and the disci
pline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded , and as the
Church hath received the same, according to the com
mandments of God . Is this a light matter, when the
question of remission comes up ? If the receiving of the
Eucharist is everything to a layman, so that St. Paul would
exclaim against the withholding of it, after reformation
and penitence, is the priestly communion nothing, which
is hindered by this sentence, the preaching of the word,
and the giving to the people publicly where he may, the
spiritual food of the body and blood of Christ ? Are there
no special rewards for these ? Are there no special and
precious enjoyments from them, even in this world ? Is

there no danger from their privation , that any one shall

be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow ? Who is there

among the bishops that deems so meanly of the office and

functions of the sacred ministry, as to think that the heart
of a suspended bishop, must ache only for the rotchet,
and not for the return of the liberty of serving his Lord
and Master according to his ordination vows ? Not one of
them, we may be sure.

It is impossible that any sincere Christian , bishop, or

minister, after laying these thoughts to his heart, can
speak of a distinction between office and communion in
2
 18

this matter. In this aspect, the case of a minister with

held from priestly communion, is the same as that of a
layman withheld from lay-communion . It is wholly and
altogether the same within the teaching of St. Paul . The
highest proof of it, is in the universal limitation of suspen
sion of bishops and ministers from office, from the first
foundation of the Church. The opposite view, degrades the
priestly office to a degree that it is painful to think of. It 1
degrades it from the solemn dedication of a Christian minis
ter to the service of God , into an investment of surplice and
bands, as it implies that his sorrow for suspension lies in
being divested of the badge of office, the cingulum honoris,
and not in being kept away from the performance of the
duty, and the exercise of the exalted privilege of distribu
ting the bread of life to others . If reformation and peni
tence constitute a title to renewed communion in any case,
it does in this. There is both the vow upon the minister,
and the interest of those to whom before God and the
Church, it is to be performed.
It is, perhaps, becoming manifest to the reader, that the
motive of the Episcopal Recorder for suggesting the dis
tinction between office and communion, may have been to
avoid the application of St. Paul's teaching , by frittering
away the possession that is withheld from the suspended
bishop, to that of an empty name or title of honor, to be
withheld or returned at pleasure. But it has been shown,
that the claim cannot be so reduced ; and in few words,
it will further be shown, that the very terms of the sug

gestion involve a fundamental misapprehension of the

case, and of the argument.
The case of the suspended Bishop does not present any
feature of a right revoked or cancelled by the judgment of
law. It is a case of the exercise of a right suspended and
only suspended, the right to both office and clerical com
munion still subsisting in full vigor, and the exercise of it
 19

only restrained ; restrained contrary to law, if the Church

has any law, and contrary to the usage of all churches,
ancient and modern ; contrary to equity and justice, unless
more can be claimed for an unlawful indefinite sentence,
than can be claimed for a lawful and definite one . A dis
tinction between the right of restoration to office and the
right of restoration to communion, has never existed , does
not exist, and can never exist in this or in any other case
?
of mere suspension from office. No right has been ousted
or taken away by that censure. There is no restoration

to be made to anything. They who suggest the distinc

tion, make it. It has no substance. There is no truth in
the language . The end or expiration of the term of sus
pension finishes the censure, and the party is at once free
to move as he could before. If there is no confession of

penitence required by the sentence, none is due. If it is

required by the sentence, the act of penitence must be
part of the term of suspension , and the whole being com
pleted, the censure is at an end . It can be called restora
tion to right, only to confound it with a different thing, and
to take away the responsibility of the House of Bishops.
It may have been innocently intended by the Episcopal
Recorder. I presume not to say the contrary. But it is
an abuse of words, and a dangerous one.
If this had been a lawful or definite suspension for eleven
years, a term without parallel in the history of either the
Christian or the Jewish Church , it would now have been
ended and over forever, without any application to the
House of Bishops.
Being an unlawful indefinite suspension, though the
House must be asked for remission , because there is no
Court of Appeal or Review, what is the difference that a
conscientious man can suggest on this ground ? Will it
be said, that from this violation of law, arises a right to
continue it at mere will and pleasure, for any reason that
 20

any bishop in the House may think sufficient ? God for

bid, that such a thought should ever have the sanction of
a majority of the Bishops ! The unanswerable reason
for ending it at once, THE PRIMORDIAL TRUTH, ought to be
foremost in every mind-that it is EVIL, because it is against
law. Concede that, and every reason for continuing it, is
a reason for violating the law. Every continuance , every
new day and hour of its existence, is a new violation of
law. Let no man flatter himself, that because he may
have had nothing personally to do with the infliction of
the sentence, he is under no responsibility in assenting to
its continuance . There is no refuge for such casuistry in
any the obscurest corner of the moral code ; none at least
in that code, as it is taught and held in our Church . The
refusal to remit is a fresh infliction . The assent to its
continuance , is a new confirmation . The Common Law
is an honest code ; every ratification is equivalent to a new
command. If he would make a pillow for conscience, with
reports or rumors of matters unconfessed , or untried in
the presence of the party, let him learn morality from a
heathen :

Qui statuit aliquid, parte inaudita altera,

Equum licét statuerit, haud æquum est.

If he would supply the original defect, by invoking the

long time that has past since the first infliction , let him
go again to the law, for the maxim, which in cases of
penal infliction , is without exception : Quod ab initio non
valet, tractu temporis convalescere non potest. If he would
seek at this time of day to modify under the Canon of
1847 , and not to remit at once, he will do worse than in
any other way, for that would be to bolster the violation
of one canon by the violation of another. Who can doubt
that the power of modification was intended for immediate
use ! A modification for new reasons, after old ones for
 21

non-remission had been worn out by nine years use, would

be the glory of canonical interpretation ! There is no
position of ease that can be found by changing postures in
the uneasy bed of this indefinite sentence. The sentence
is radically and incurably wrong ; and the wisdom of this
world concurs with the wisdom of the other, in recom
mending the remission of it, while the party is still living
to admit of it ; for if his life should end before the remis
sion, the first judicial sentence of the American Church
would stand recorded forever, as made and finally con
summated against the usages of the Apostolic Church , and
of all orthodox churches from the beginning, and against
the plain purpose of the Word of God , as interpreted by
both the Jewish and the Christian Church .

But to this must be added in conclusion , all the weight

of the moral motive, that speaks out in the language of
St. Paul : " Sufficient is this punishment, which was inflicted
of many." The reformation of the confessed infirmity is
clear, indubitable , and has been for years. The suffering
has been extreme, extending to the interruption of priestly
offices and ministrations, to the impairing of social refresh
ment, and to the diminution of daily bread . The peni
tence was confessed at the first, and has been again for
mally confessed to the House. If you would penetrate to
the centre of the party's heart, what can you get, but that
which his lips and his life have declared for now eleven
years completed ? The case is so plain , clear, and un
answerable in all its parts, that it is not believed , it can
not be believed, that any body of men, such as the bishops
of the Church , looking at the case by itself, can hesitate
for a moment to terminate the sentence . It is the body

that is referred to, not all the individuals of the body .

The influence of prejudice, imbibed through partial views,
or a discolored medium,—the avulsion from relations of
 22

personal kindness, which opposition to theological opinions.

and movements, is proverbially prone to make- the sug
gestions of self-love, by which we come to identify our
character and comfort with the maintenance of what we

ourselves have proposed or vehemently asserted, -all these

may close the minds and hearts of individuals, otherwise
good men, against the access of either reason or love.
Even these very remarks, which manifest the writer's true
respect for the order and the body, by appealing to them
selves for the correction , may contribute to bolt on the
inside the hearts of one or two, perhaps more, that
before were only closed . But looking at the case by itself,
it is not believed possible that any such body of men can
be insensible to the imperative call for remission . And
how otherwise can it be looked at ? How otherwise
ought it to be looked at ? What has any other case to do
with it ? What does it amount to before God, or before
the Church, that if this sentence should be remitted, there
would be a perplexity in disposing of another ? If they
are different in circumstances, the perplexity cannot arise.
If they are the same in all points, there can be no per
plexity, moral, religious, or administrative, that will not
be dispelled at once by a sound mind, warmed into action
.
by a charitable heart . A righteous precedent never pro
duced evil since the world began. It has the promise
.
both of this world, and of the world to come. Let the
House of Bishops " lay judgment to the line," -to the line
of the one separate, independent, unconnected case, and
the judgment must be righteous. Where it will lead,
ought no more to be a previous question, than in any
other case of doing righteously. Enough has been said
against distinctions in this case . There is one distinction
that is real, substantial, and vital, the distinction between
this and any other case. One cannot be confounded with
 23

another, without doing wrong in both . Decide the one

case righteously, and the House and the Church will have
this comfort at least, that the remission will cast no more
shadow than the light itself, either before or behind.
The suggested distinctions of the Episcopal Recorder,
and the probable ground of them, have thus been noticed,
as a supplement to the Pamphlet upon the Law of Sus
pension of the Clergy in the Primitive Church.
There is another remark in the same brief notice by the
Recorder, which will receive as brief a reply. The remark
is to this effect, that the personal topic on which the Pamph
let bears, is one which the Editors hope never to be com
pelled to discuss in their columns . Their columns are pro
bably no fitter place for the discussion of personal topics in
general , than those of other religious journals, in some of
which there is a greater tendency to advert to what is
personal in a case, than to the great truths, which it
should be the design of such journals to sustain and pro
mote. The hope expressed by the Episcopal Recorder is

a creditable one, if it has reference to the dangers of this

tendency. If it implies that others should fear to dis
courage the hope, by the discussion of the principles that
ought to govern the case , there is at least one quarter in
which it can have no effect. There is nothing in the
personal topic referred to, and nothing in those dangers
themselves, which rarely involve one side only, that
should or can prevent a man of truth and conscience, with
out malice or resentment, personal or impersonal, towards
either individuals or bodies, from endeavoring to remove
every film of either prejudice or ignorance, that can inter
cept the light in its progress to a point of judicial morality.
On the contrary, every one ought to hope and to expect,
especially every one who is the editor of a religious jour
nal, that whenever and wherever the light is intercepted,
———
H
 24

the obstruction will be removed ; and whenever and

wherever it is confused by false lights, that the prism of
fair criticism will always be at hand , to refract the grosser
colors in their proper direction , downward, and away from
the line of true and colorless vision .
A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH.
PHILADELPHIA, 10 November, 1855.

THE END.