Your correspondent lays much stress on the saving of time effected by his plan, and I agree with him entirely that in penny collections there is a great waste of time; but that there is no such waste in my going round for orders, I would contend upon the principle of its being highly beneficial to the poor to visit them at their houses, when you can come to them as welcome visitors. The offer of your gift at once makes you acceptable, and words of kind admonition, or even gentle reproof, are then, if ever, likely to be well received. You see also the state of their cottages, and can inculcate neatness and cleanliness, and are able to make inquiries about their children, and, in short, to look in every way to their bodily and ghostly welfare. I am, sir, yours gratefully, D. The number of half-price donations in the year 1834 amounted to 462, and the average consequently of money brought each time by the poor person was 2s. 1 d., a sum which with any forethought they ought never to be without, supposing them to be in work. Should they, however, say that they have not the money now, but expect to have it in about a fortnight, I arrange their Saturday for coming accordingly. MY DEAR ON COMMUNION WITH ROME. In reply to the "Scottish Catholic Priest," I would venture to suggest the following observations : : As to the first point, namely, whether the church of England broke off communion with Rome by rejecting the papal supremacy, or the church of Rome with England by Paul the Third's sentence of excommunication. 1. That although the acknowledgment of the papal supremacy is now an article of Roman faith, it was not so when England rejected it. 2. That if the pope had not passed sentence of excommunication against King Henry and his adherents, there would have been nothing to prevent the bishops of France and Spain from receiving them to communion. 3. That the pronouncing that sentence was a gratuitous act on the part of the pope. 4. And that, therefore, as it was not a necessary consequence of the rejection of the Roman jurisdiction, the separation is Roman and not English. As to the second point, namely, whether the withholding the cup in the eucharist so far decatholicizes the church of Rome, that (even if the bishops of Spain or Italy would admit us to communion without requiring any assent to the Roman peculiarities) we should be schismatical in partaking of it; it seems to me, I confess, hard to affirm it. Surely the whole responsibilities of that "division of the mystery," (as Glasius calls it,) must rest with the priest who withholds the cup, and cannot be imputable to those who are willing to receive both parts at his hands if he will give them. I suppose that, by partaking of the bread of the eucharist, a man communicates in the body of our Lord; and that that grace cannot be hindered by the profaneness of the priest in subsequently withholding the blood. If a man, then, is in a country where they who have rightly received the ministry of recon ciliation, both order and mission, have presumed to diminish somewhat of the means of grace, I see not how the truth of Scripture, or the rules of the church, require us to account him a schismatic, because he is willing to receive at their hands all that they will give. But I speak with submission to those whose province it is to decide such points, on which, I conceive, it does not become a presbyter to speak confidently. If the case were in esse, instead of not being likely to be even in posse, it were well worthy the consideration of the chief pastors of the reformed; and there are none in Christendom whose decision would carry more weight with it than the venerable fathers of that portion of the church to which the "Scottish Catholic Priest" has the privilege to belong. ALPHA. P.S. It is worthy of notice that the continuance of the half-communion rests with the pope; the council of Trent having so far dispensed with the decrees of the council of Constance as to leave it in the power of the pope to allow the use of the chalice to the laity where he should see good. Decr. Super petitione Concessionis Calicis. Sessio. 22. Perhaps the following sentence in the 30th article, 1603, bears upon the second point considered above-"So far was it from the purpose of the church of England to forsake and reject the Churches of Italy, France, Spain, &c., in all things which they held and practised, that it doth with reverence retain those ceremonies which do neither endanger the church of God, &c., and only departed from them in those particular points wherein they were fallen from themselves in their ancient integrity, &c." The inference I should draw from this would be that as the administration of the bread in the eucharist (as far as it goes) is right, our church would not require us to forbear receiving it at the hands of the clergy of the churches of France, Spain, &c., provided we were not understood thereby to assent to their departures from primitive and scriptural antiquity. SON OF MAN. SIR,-The suggestion, concerning which "W. M." does me the honour to ask my opinion, seems to amount to this that the phrase Son of God, as applied to the incarnate Word, may be used as well in respect of his visibly personal presence among men as otherwise, but that the phrase Son of Man is expressive of his visible presence only, and is not used in speaking of his unseen and providential agency. I was not aware that such was the case; nor do I now feel prepared to say whether such is the case or not. When Stephen said, "I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God," and when St. John said (Rev. i. 13), "I saw one like unto the Son of Man," they were describing things in heaven, not on earth; and they were speaking of Christ in his personal absence, and not in regard of any sojourn upon earth, or any judicial advent. But, on the other hand, "W. M." may rejoin that they spoke of his person as exhibited and rendered actually visible to them, although not to others. The words Son of Man were from the days of Job to those of Ezekiel merely synonymes of Man, and consequently the Son of Man of the Man; and such I suppose them to be when applied to the Lord by Daniel and the apostles. Yours, H. VAUGHAN'S LIFE OF WYCLIFFE. (Continued from vol. vii. p. 689.) In p. 34 [34], after speaking of the close of the fifth century, Mr. Vaughan adds::-"The distinction between a bishopric and a parish, which through several centuries was unknown, began to obtain." 33 Mosheim, to whom Mr. Vaughan is so much indebted, seems to have been of another opinion. He says, treating of the "Constitution and Order of the Church of Jerusalem," under the apostles, "That the vast multitude converted to Christianity at Jerusalem must have been distributed into several companies or classes, and that each company or class had its own proper presbyters and ministers, as also its separate place of meeting for the purposes of religious worship. These things then being admitted, it appears to me that the origin of what we term parishes may, with every sort of probability, be deduced from the arrangement and distribution of the primitive and parent church at Jerusalem." And if we look into "The Constitution, Discipline, &c., of the Primitive Church," a work written to shew that bishops in those days presided over individual congregations only, and that bishops and presbyters must be of the same order, because they had the same names and titles;" even there we shall find the admission that," "In the third century, the Christians of the diocese of Alexandria" who resided in the immediate vicinity of that city, "had divided themselves into several distinct and separate congregations, which were all subject to one bishop, as is clearly enough asserted by Dionysius, bishop of this church, who mentions the distinct congregations in the extremest suburbs of the city.' Here, then, without going into particulars, as contained in the unanswerable reply to the above work, entitled, "An Original Draught of the Primitive Church," we may safely conclude with Dr. Stillingfleet, who has cited this and other instances, particularly that of Athanasius, bishop of the same see, in the earlier part of the fourth century, "that here were true parochial churches," long before the period assigned by Mr. Vaughan. Other proofs might be adduced from various quarters, 37 97 34 36 (32) Mosheim's Commentaries on the Affairs of the Christians before the time of Constantine the Great. London: 1813. Vol. i. p. 199, note. (33) An Enquiry into the Constitution, Discipline, Unity, and Worship of the Primitive Church. London (no date). C. ii. p. 16. (34) Ibid. c. iv. p. 67. (35) Ibid. c. ii. p. 38, 39. (36) Eusebii Historia Ecclesiastica, l. vii. c. 11; and Lowth's note thereon, in Reading's edition at Cambridge, in 1720, p. 336. (37) An Original Draught of the Primitive Church, in answer to a discourse entituled, An Enquiry into the Constitution, &c., of the Primitive Church. Second edition. London : 1717. C. î. p. 49. (38) Stillingfleet's Works, vol. ii. p. 584, 585. some of which may be seen in Bingham's "Antiquities of the Christian Church.39 Passing over for the present some other matters, we return to the council of Nice, of which Mr. Vaughan writes (p. 65) [67]:—“ That assembly failed to recognise any peculiar dignity in the Bishop of Rome. Its canons restricted the affairs of every province to the decision of its metropolitan; and in noticing the patriarchal power as conferred on the prelates of Rome and Alexandria, describe their particular authority as local, as derived from ancient custom, and the one as being strictly the same with the other." "Let The canons of the council of Nice, to which Mr. Vaughan refers, are the fourth and sixth; these canons say nothing of patriarchal, but speak of metropolitical power, as the highest then known to the church; such the words more expressly referred to will shew. ancient customs still take place; those that are in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis, that the bishop of Alexandria have power over all these, because such also is the custom of the Bishop of Rome. And accordingly, in Antioch, and in other provinces, let the privileges be preserved to the churches. This also is altogether evident, that if any man be made a bishop without the consent of the metropolitan, this great synod decrees such a one to be no bishop." 41 27 40 par Thus much from the sixth: if we turn to the fourth canon we shall read-" A bishop ought to be constituted by all the bishops that belong to the province; and the ratification of what is done must be allowed to the metropolitan in every province." Thus, then, Mr. Vaughan is mistaken in supposing that the canons of the council of Nice were employed" in noticing the patriarchal power, as conferred on the prelates of Rome and Alexandria ;" and though they " describe their ticular authority as local, as derived from ancient custom," yet that authority was metropolitical, and not patriarchal, as Mr. Vaughan imagines. That the power of Metropolitans was, indeed, an "ancient custom" at the time of the council of Nice is evident from the history of the second century;12 wherein, not to quote other instances, we have Irenæus, bishop of Lyons, who, Eusebius tells us," presided over the churches of Gaul, and Philip, bishop of Gortyna, in Crete, who, by Dionysius of Corinth," is stated to have possessed an equal authority over the churches of that island. And, indeed, there are learned men that carry the superiority of metropolitans over other bishops up to the age of the apostles, relying on various passages in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, who says, that Titus exercised such authority over the churches of Crete, which Timothy did, in consequence of his appointment as Bishop of Ephesus, over the churches of Asia. The case of the churches of Cyprus, and their independence, under their metropolitan, from the times of the apostles, might also be instanced. (39) Bingham, ibid. b. ix. c. 8, s. 1, 2, &c. (40) Cave, ibid. c. 2. p. 50. 45 46 (41) Johnson's Clergyman's Vade Mecum, (the sixth edition, corrected.) London, 1731. (42) Cave, ibid. c. 2, s. 7, p. 93. (44) Ibid. l. 4, c. 23, p. 185. P. 46, 47. (43) Eusebius, ibid. 1. 5, c. 23, p. 243. (45) Ibid. 1. 3, c. 4, p. 91. Bingham, b. 2, c. 16, s. 1. (46) Usher's Original of Bishops and Metropolitans, Oxford, 1641, p. 73, 74, compared In p. 67 [69,] says Mr. Vaughan, "According to the constitution of the church, as modelled by the first Christian emperor, every civil vicariate had its ecclesiastical exarch or primate. The vicariate of Rome comprehended the south of Italy and the three chief Mediterranean islands. It was comparatively small, but its ten provinces were wholly free from metropolitan jurisdiction, a peculiarity which invested the Bishop of Rome with the important functions of that dignity, in addition to the higher authority possessed by him in common with his eastern rivals. "The first Christian emperor," Constantine, apportioned the Roman empire after a new manner. Entire countries, as Britain, Gaul, Egypt, &c., then began to be known by the name of dioceses; over which were the several vicars, (or, as in Egypt, the Augustal præfect,) to whom the prætorian præfects, before spoken of, were superior. But this division into dioceses did not take place till the latter part, or indeed near the extremity, of the reign of Constantine.47 "The constitution of the church, as modelled" after that of the state, Mr. Vaughan refers to the time of " the first Christian emperor ;" he should have given his authority for his assertion, because assertion without authority, in such cases, is of little or no value. It was by degrees, and long after the time set down by Mr. Vaughan, that exarchs, or primates, as superior to metropolitans, rose in the church;48 which exarchs generally answered to the civil officers called vicars. Of the extent of the bishoprick of Rome we need not again to speak; nor of Mr. Vaughan's constant mistake as to the "higher authority" of patriarch, which the bishop of that city, he supposed, at that time possessed; but when he affirms that "the ten provinces" under that bishop "were wholly free from metropolitan jurisdiction," it is plain that his acquaintance with the council of Nice was only indirect, and by means of an imperfect, or, it may be, a perverted medium. If the Bishop of Rome had no metropolitans under him, at the time of the council of Nice, but bishops only, then he was a metropolitan, and nothing more; but if he had metropolitans under him at that time, then he was a patriarch, for a patriarch possessed authority over metropolitans, in the same manner as metropolitans did over bishops." Valesius, who endeavoured to prove the Bishop of Rome to be a patriarch, from the Nicene canons, tells us, that a patriarch was metropolitanus metropolitanorum; and De Marca1 conjectures 50 with Stillingfleet, vol. 3, p. 66, 67. Beveridge, as before, p. 106, col. 2, on the 8th canon of the council of Ephesus; and on the 6th canon of Nice, p. 58. Pantin's Observations on certain passages in Dr. Arnold's (master of Rugby School)" Christian Duty of Granting the Roman Catholic Claims;" Lutterworth, 1829; p. 87, &c., and note thereon, where also the parallel between the churches of Britain and Cyprus is spoken of. (47) Basnagii Annales Politico-Ecclesiastici; Roterodami, 1706, t. ii. p. 749–751. (50) Vales. Observat. Ecclesiastic. in Socraten et Sozomenum, 1. 3, c. 2. p. 394, Reading's edition, compared with Parker's Account of the Government of the Christian Church for the first six hundred years, London, 1683, p. 202, &c. The word patriarch is used above as of the same extent with exarch; see note 30. Justelli, ibid. in note 25, &c. Bingham, ibid., b. 2, c. 17, s. 2. (51) De Marca De Concordia Sacerdotii et Imperii, Bambergæ, 1788, tom. i. l. 1, c. 7, n. 4, p. 51, 52, &c. Fimiani Adnotat., ibid. Boshmeri Observat. c. vii. no. 4, p. 162. |