and that they should not by too great severity bring detríment on the Church; for all men could not bear so severe an exercise, and the chastity of the wives so separated would be endangered also." Conjugal society," he said, "was chastity; and it was enough, that such of the clergy, as were not married before their ordination, should continue unmarried, according to the ancient tradition of the Church; but it was not proper to separate any one from his wife, which he had married whilst he was a layman." This said, the whole council agreed to stifle the motion that had been made, and left every man to his liberty as before. So Socrates and Sozomen tell the story; to which all, that Valesius, after Bellarmin, has to say, is, "That he suspects the truth of the thing, and desires leave to dissent from his historians." Which is but a poor evasion, in the judgment of Du Pin himself, who thus reflects upon them for it;s "Some question the truth of this story," says he, "but I believe they do it for fear the story might prejudice the present discipline, rather than from any solid proof they have for it. But they should consider, that this canon-is purely a matter of discipline, and that the discipline of the Church may change according to the times, and that it is not necessary, for the defence of it, to prove that it was always uniform in all places." So that, in the judgment of that learned Romanist, there is no question to be made, but that the council of Nice decreed in favour of the married clergy, as the historians relate it did; and that then the practice was different from that of the present Church of Rome, which others are so unwilling to have the world believe.

SECT. 8. And other Councils of that Age.

It is as evident from other councils of the same age, that the married clergy were allowed to continue in the service of the Church, and no vow of abstinence required of them at their ordination. Socrates observes, that the council of Gangra anathematized Eustathius, the heretic, because he

'Sporat. lib. i. c. 11. Sozom. lib. i. c. 23. fib. i. t. 11.

Vales. Not. in Socrat. 'Du Pin Bibliotheque, vol. ii. p. 253. Edit. Anglic.

taught men to separate' from such presbyters, as retained their wives, which they married while they were layman, saying, their communion and oblations were abominable. The decree is still extant among the canons of that council, and runs in these words; "If any one separate from a married presbyter, as if it were unlawful to participate of the eucharist, when such an one ministers, let him be Anathema." The council of Ancyra gives leave to deacons to marry after ordination; "if they protested at their ordination that they could not continue in an unmarried state, they might marry, and yet continue in their office, having in that case the bishop's license and permission to do it." And though the council of Neo-Cæsarea in one canon forbids unmarried presbyters to marry after ordination; yet such, as were married before ordination, are allowed by another canon" to continue without any censure, being only obliged to separate from their wives in case of fornication. The council of Eliberis, indeed, and some others in this age, began to be a little more rigorous toward the married clergy; but it does not appear, that their laws were of any great force. For Socrates says,' even in his time, in the eastern Churches, many eminent bishops begat children of their lawful wives; and such, as abstained, did it not by obligation of any law, but their own voluntary choice. Only in Thessaly, Macedonia, and Hellas, the clergy were obliged to abstain under pain of ecclesiastical censure; which, he says, was occasioned by Bishop Heliodore's writing his book, called his Ethiopics. So that as yet there was no universal decree against married bishops in the Greek Church, much less against presbyters and deacons. But the council of Trullo, Anno 692, made a difference between bishops and presbyters; allowing presbyters, deacons, and all the inferior

1Socrat. lib. ii. c. 43. Πρεσβυτέρω γυναῖκα ἔχοντος, ἣν νόμῳ λαϊκὸς ὢν ἠγάγετο, τὴν ἐυλογίαν &, τὴν κοινωνίαν ὡς μύσος ἐκκλίνειν ἐκέλευε.

* Con. Gangr. c. 4. Ει τις διακρίνοιτο παρὰ πρεσβυτέρω γεγαμηκότος, ὡς μὴ χρῆναι λειτεργήσαντος αυτῷ προσφορᾶς μεταλαμβάνειν, ἀνάθεμα ἔσω.

3 Con. Ancyr. c. 10. Ει ἐμαρτύραντο καὶ ἔφασαν χρῆναι γαμῆσαι, μὴ δυνάμενοι ὕτως μένειν ; ἔτοι μέτα ταῦτα γαμήσαντες ἔσωσαν ἐν τῇ ὑπηρεσία, &c.

Con. Neo-Cæs. c. 1.

Arelat. ii. c. 2.

6 Ibid. c. 8.
'Socrat. lib. v. c. 22:

• Con. Elib. c. 33. Con.

orders, to cohabit with their wives after ordination,' and giving the Roman Church a smart rebuke for the contrary prohibition; but yet laying an injunction upon bishops' to live separate from their wives, and appointing the wives3 to betake themselves to a monastic life, or become deaconesses in the Church, And so the matter was altered in the Greek Church, as to bishops, but not any others. In the Latin Church, also, the alteration was made but by slow steps in many places; for in Afric, even bishops themselves cohabited with their wives at the time of the council of Trullo, as appears from one of the forementioned canons of that council. But it is beyond my design to carry this inquiry any further; what has been already said, being sufficient to show, that the married clergy were allowed to officiate in the first and primitive ages; and that celibacy in those times was no necessary condition of their ordination, as is falsely pretended by the polemical writers of the present Church of Rome. I have now gone through the several qualifications of the ancient clergy, concerning which, inquiry was made before their ordination; I come now, in the next place, to consider the solemnity of the thing itself, together with the laws and customs, which were generally observed at the time of ordination.

CHAP. VI.

Of the Ordinations of the Primitive Clergy, and the Laws and Customs generally observed therein.

SECT. 1.-The Canons of the Church to be read to the Clerk, before the Bishops ordained him.

WHEN the election of a person, duly qualified according to the forementioned rules, was made, then it was the bishop's office, or the metropolitan's, if the party elect was himself a bishop, to ordain him. But, before they proceeded to ordination, there were some other laws and rules to be

Con. Trull. c. 13. Trull. c. 12.

Ibid. c. 12.

3 Ibid. c. 48.

• Con.

3

2

observed. For, not to mention here again the oath against simony, and the subscriptions, which I have showed before were anciently required of persons to be ordained, I must not forget to note, that in the African Church a rule was made in the third council of Carthage, and thence transferred into the African Code; "That, before any bishop or other clergyman was ordained, the ordainers should cause the canons of the Church to be read in his hearing; that they might not have cause to repent afterward, that they had transgressed any of them." This rule was made at the instance and request of St. Austin, as Possidius* notes in his life, who says, "that because he was ordained bishop of Hippo, while Valerius was alive, which was contrary to the rule of the council of Nice, which he was ignorant of at the time of his ordination, he therefore prevailed with the African fathers to make a decree, that the canons of the Church should be read at every man's ordination. This rule implied a tacit promise, that the party ordained would observe the canons, that were read to him; but for greater security it was afterward improved into an explicit promise by a law of Justinian, which requires every clerk, after the reading of the canons, to profess, that, as far as it was possible for man to do, he would fulfil what was contained in them. Whence, no doubt, came those later forms of professing obedience to the canons of the seven general-councils, in the Greek Church; and the oath to St. Peter, taken by the bishops of Rome in the Latin Church, that they would observe the decrees of the eight general-councils. The first of which forms may be seen at length in Habertus, and the other in Baronius, and the book called, Liber Diurnus, by the reader that is curious to consult them.

8 Cod. Eccles. Afr. c. 19.

6

'See chap. iii. sect. 2 and 14. Con. Carth. iii. c. 3. Placuit, ut ordinandis Episcopis vel Clericis prius ab ordinatoribus suis Decreta Conciliorum auribus eorum inculcentur; ne se aliquid contra statuta Concilii fecisse pœniteat. *Possid. Vit. Aug. c. 8. Quod in seipso fieri non debuisse, ut vivo suo Episcopo ordinaretur, posteà et dixit et scripsit, propter Concilii Universalis vetitum, quod jam ordinatus didieit: nec quod sibi factum esse doluit, aliis fieri voluit. Unde etiam sategit, ut Conciliis constitueretur Episcoporum, ab ordinatoribus deberi ordinandis, vel ordinatis, omnium statuta Sacerdotum in notitiam esse deferenda.

Justin. Novel. 6. c. 1. n. 8.

1

Baron, an. 869. tom. x. p. 433.

Habert. Archieratic. p. 496.

SECT. 2. -No Clerk to be Ordained àwoλ‹λvμévws.

Secondly. Another rule to be observed in this case was, "That every man should be fixed to some Church at his ordination, and not be left at liberty to minister wherever he would, because of several inconveniences that attended that practice." This rule concerned bishops, as well as the inferior clergy; for the Nullatenenses of later ages, as Panormitan calls titular and utopian bishops, were rarely known in the primitive Church. For though every bishop was in some sense ordained bishop of the Catholic Church, as I have showed before, yet for order's sake he was always confined to a certain district in the ordinary exercise of his power. And so presbyters and all other inferior clergy were confined to the diocese of their own bishop, and might not be ordained, unless they had some place, wherein to exercise their function. This was the ancient custom of the Church, which the council of Chalcedon confirmed by a canon, "That no presbyter, or deacon, or any other ecclesiastic should be ordained at large;' but be assigned either to the city-church, or some church or oratory in the country, or a monastery; otherwise his ordination to be null and void. This the Latins called, Ordinatio Localis, and the persons so ordained, Locales, from their being fixed to a certain place. As in the council of Valentia, in Spain, we find a canon, that obliges every priest, before his ordination, to give a promise, "that he will be Localis," to the intent that no one should be permitted to transgress the rules and discipline of the Church with impunity; which they might easily do, if they were allowed to rove about from one place to another. This, in the style of Leo, bishop of Rome, is, "Ordination founded upon a place," or, as we would say now, a title; without which, he says, the ordination was

3

εἰ μὴ

1 Con. Chalced. c. 6. Μηδένα ἀπολελυμένως χειροτονεῖσθαι ἰδικῶς ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ πόλεως, ἢ κώμης, ἢ μαρτυρίῳ, ἢ μονατηρίῳ ἐπικηρύττοιτο. Con. Valentin. c. 6. Nec ullum Sacerdotem quispiam ordinet, qui localem se futurum primitùs non spoponderit: ut per hoc nullus a regulâ vel disciplinâ ecclesiæ deviare permittatur impunè. Leo Ep. 92. ad Rustic. c. 1. Vana est habenda ordinatio, quæ nec loco fundata est, nec auctoritate munita.