But I will detain you no longer than may suffice now to express my best thanks for your patient hearing and to assure you that it is my heart's desire at such times to satisfy my own incumbent duties, to which I have been encouraged so frequently, nay so kindly and so uniformly, by the prompt attention which I have experienced at your hands. NOTES. 66 NOTE I. THE remarks of Dr. Maurice on this head, in a certain instance, may serve here for an example." Secontaurus," saith his opponent, was a very small and contemptible village that Ischyras was made Bishop of, containing so few inhabitants that there was never Church there before." To this Dr. Maurice replies, "Is this then to be a model of primitive Episcopacy? But this place deserves a more particular consideration. This Bishop, who pretended to be a Presbyter of Meletius or Colluthus his ordination, accused Athanasius of forcing his Church, overthrowing his Communion table, and breaking the chalice: although it was proved that he never was a Presbyter, nor had any Church; for there never had been any in his village. For a reward of calumny this hamlet was erected into a Bishop's seat by Constantius, in opposition to the Catholic faith, to the rules of the Church, and to ancient tradition and usage of that country. Athanasius is very particular in his description of this place, which was made the scene of his accusation; and tells us that Mareotis, the region in which this village was, had always belonged to the Bishop of Alexandria as part of his diocese; that there never had been a Bishop, nor so much as a Chorepiscopus before Ischyras; but the villages were distributed to Presbyters, some having ten, some more of them to make up the parish. In this region there were fourteen parish Pres " byters, and thirteen Deacons, as appears by their subscription to the letter sent to the Synod of Tyre on behalf of their Bishop. This was the state of that place, and since our author was not ashamed of urging this instance to countenance his notion, I am content the whole cause should be tried upon this issue, and that it may be judged by this instance, which Episcopacy was the primitive, diocesan or congregational. Here was a large region that had many Churches and many more villages so near Alexandria, that they could not want Christians in the earliest times; yet we are assured by a competent judge, (Athanasius) that this region never had a Bishop of its own, but was always under the Bishop of Alexandria, who at certain times visited it in person. But about three hundred years after St. Mark had planted the church of Alexandria, Constantius upon the instigation of the Arians, made one of the least of these villages a bishop's seat, against all rule and prescription, as Athanasius contends. Judge then which is the most ancient or most primitive in this place, the Diocesan or the Parish Bishops. And since the Council of Sardica is obliquely taxed by Mr. Clarkson, as guilty of innovation upon the account of forbidding Bishops to be made in villages, excepting such where Bishops had been formerly made, this passage is sufficient to clear and justify that Canon against frivolous reflections, since it appears from hence that there was too much reason to put a check to the innovations of the Arians, who, for the encouragement and strengthening of their party, took upon them to multiply Bishoprics, contrary to the ancient tradition and practice of the Church." The same author begins a set of testimonies as complete as can well be imagined, with this remark: "What country or territory the ancient Bishops had, besides the city where they lived, comes now under examination, and if it shall appear, by testimonies unexceptionable, that the ancient cities had large territories, and that these territories were under the Bishop of the city, and that the people there were too numerous and too far distant to be able to come to the Bishop's Church, then I hope we shall be no more troubled with this new way of measuring ancient Bishoprics by the compass of the city walls *." NOTE II. "Altar, in the primitive sense, signified not only the Communion Table, but the whole place where the chair of the Bishop and the seats of the Presbyters were placed, and in this sense there was but one altar in one Diocese, as there is now but one Consistory. This is explained by passages out of Ignatius Cyprian, and archbishop Usher: and to be within the altar which is Ignatius's phrase, is no other than to be in communion with the Bishop and his Clergy; and the one altar is no more than one communion, which may be held in different places and at several tables +." * Maurice Defence, chap. vi. p. 367: † Ibid. p. 37. THE END. |