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neither the sacraments nor any other rites of the worship, peculiarly Christian, could From Acts i. be regularly celebrated.

In this state things continued until the reign of Constantine the Great, and in many countries long after that epoch *. Then indeed churches began to be built in every diocese at convenient distances from each other, for the accommodation of the people; but they were not, at first, supplied, each, by a constantly resident minister. Divine service was performed in them sometimes by one and sometimes by another of the city clergy, sent by the bishop for that purpose; and all those clergymen were supported, as formerly, by their share of the offerings, which still continued to be paid into the common stock of the mother church. At length, emperors and kings, and opulent individuals of different stations, as well as the bishops of the several dioceses, perceiving the benefits that would accrue to the people in the country from having among them a resident minister appointed to each church, thought of endowing those churches, on condition that they and their heirs or successors should have the right of presenting to the churches, thus endowed, clergymen regularly ordained, orthodox in the faith, and ready to pay canonical obedience to the diocesan, to be by him appointed permanent ministers, and subordinate pastors of the different portions of the flock which was equally committed to his care. By this stipulation no encroachment whatever was made on the original rights of the church. The people at large appear not to have ever had, and in the earliest ages could not possibly have, the right of choosing their own spiritual guides; the resident ministers, though no longer maintained on the stock of the mother church, were as much under the jurisdiction of the bishop of the diocese, as the itinerant clergymen, by whom the now endowed churches had been formerly supplied; the bishop retained the same relation to the people that he had before, being still the chief pastor of the whole diocese; and to him the parochial ministers were as accountable for their conduct in feeding his flock, as were the missionaries from the mother church, by whom he had formerly fed them.

The government of the primitive church, before she was anywhere incorporated with the state, was supported by the spiritual censures that were passed on her scandalous members; for it is obvious that the church, of herself, has no right to inflict, directly, any civil punishment on the greatest sinners. Our Blessed Lord, the Head of the church as a spiritual society, declared in the most solemn manner, that his kingdom is not of this world; and therefore it is indisputable, that the ministers of that kingdom, whether bishops or presbyters, who presume to impose upon any sinner a pecuniary mulct, or to inflict any corporal pains or penalties for any offence whatever, arrogate to themselves an authority which they derive not from their Divine Master.

In churches established by law, the sentence of excommunication is indeed often followed by imprisonment and other civil penalties; and this is as it should be, because such churches are an essential part of the constitution of the state, which never has been, nor ever will be, preserved in peace but by the reverence of the people for some system of religion. But though the sentence which produces these effects, is pronounced by an ecclesiastical judge, the civil punishment is inflicted by the authority of the state, with which the church is incorporated. In the days of primitive persecution, which are those of which we are here treating, when the church was wholly governed by herself, the sentences of her bishops or synods on scandalous offenders cast those offenders out of her communion; deprived them of the privilege of uniting in public worship with the faithful; and cut them off wholly from the Christian society; but they directly deprived them of no civil privilege, nor of any portion of their liberty or property. Indi rectly indeed they did; for our Saviour having commanded, that "whosoever would not

There seems to have been in England no parishes, in the present sense of the word, before the year 673 or 680. Bingham, book ix. chap. viii.

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10. to the end.

&c. or 9055. Ann. Dom. 98. &c.

A. M. 4012, hear the church, should be unto his disciples as a heathen man and a publican" was to the Jews, excommunicated persons were carefully shunned by all Christians, who never associated with them more closely than the intercourse of civil life rendered unavoidable.

When all Christians were in earnest in their professions of religion, and zeal and true honour glowed in every breast, to be held in universal abhorrence must have been felt as a severe punishment; for even virtuous Jews and Heathens could not esteem such men as had been cut off from the society of Christians for unworthy conduct; and the church being then in reality what we still believe it to be, one catholic and apostolic body, whoever was cut off from one society of Christians, could not take refuge, as now, in a differently constituted sect, but found himself actually cut off from the communion of all, who named with reverence the name of Christ. In exercising this authority, the church cannot be said to have exceeded her powers. She has indeed no right, of herself, to impose fines or inflict any kind of civil punishment for spiritual offences, of which alone it is her inherent right to judge; but surely she has that right which is allowed to every corporation—the right to deprive of her peculiar privileges, such of her own members as refuse to obey her laws and will not listen to her admonitions.

The object, however, of her spiritual censures, is not perhaps universally understood. In the first ages, when men were excommunicated, as they frequently were, for apostacy, and other scandalous sins, they were never restored to her communion, unless sometimes on the bed of death, without being obliged previously to undergo a severe course of penance; but neither the excommunication nor the penance was intended, as some Christians seem to imagine, to serve, the former as a punishment, and the latter as an atonement for sin, but both to operate as instruments towards the reformation of the sinner. The sole atonement for sin is the blood of Christ, which will wash away the deepest stains from the sincere and humble penitent, who has faith to trust in it alone; and it was only to produce humility and penitence in the mind of the sinner, and to serve as a warning to the comparatively innocent, that the most scandalous offender was ever excommunicated. When St Paul delivered to Satan the incestuous Corinthian at one time, and Hymeneus and Alexander at another, his purpose was not to doom them to hell-fire, but that the " flesh of the former being destroyed or mortified, his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus," and that the two latter might learn not to blaspheme.

The purpose of all ecclesiastical censures, is to produce reformation; and therefore they are public offences only that ought to be publicly censured. As uninspired men cannot discern the secrets of the heart, and are therefore unable to judge of the sincerity of any man's professions but from his external conduct, severe courses of penance, of longer or shorter duration, according to circumstances, were, in the primitive church, prescribed to scandalous offenders, before they could be again received into that communion from which they had been expelled. This was done at first, and indeed as long as churchmen retained any just notions of the object of the religion which it was their duty to teach, only that they and the faithful committed to their pastoral care, might have some ground on which to judge of the sincerity of a penitent's professions. It was reasonably supposed, that the man must be in earnest, who, in order to be restored to the communion of the church, submitted cheerfully to all the indignities that were then put upon public penitents; and, as evidences of sincerity, those indignities certainly served a good purpose, but they contributed, of themselves, nothing to the putting away of the penitent's sins. They were evidences to men of that perάrcia-that change of heart and mind from profaneness to piety, and from sin to righteousness, which, in our version of the New Testament, is expressed by the word repentance, but they were nothing more; and therefore sinners, who had

2

given no public scandal, however great their private sins might have been, were never, From Acts i. in those days of purity, subjected to public penance.

Such appears to have been the constitution and discipline of the Christian church during the three first centuries of the Christian era, and it belongs to ecclesiastical history, and not to a work of this nature, to trace her farther. Indeed the History of the Bible proceeds not so far; but the church suffered very little alteration in her external constitution or modes of discipline from the completion of the canon of Scripture until the conversion of the emperor Constantine, when Christianity became the established religion of the empire.]

10. to the end.

DISSERTATION V.

OF THE PROFANE HISTORY DURING THIS PERIOD, VIZ. FROM
THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE COMPLETION OF THE CANON
OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

SUCH
parts of the Jewish history as had any analogy to the things contained in the
New Testament, we have already remarked in the Notes annexed to this Work; and
what we have farther to do, is to recite some such principal passages in the Roman
history (especially in the lives of the several emperors who lived in the apostolic age),
as have any connection with these Sacred Writings.

In our last Dissertation of this kind, we left Augustus Cæsar in the very zenith of his power and glory; after the defeat of every rival, in full possession of the Roman empire, and, upon the death of Lepidus, created pontifex maximus, or the high priest of Rome: But, toward the conclusion of his reign, he met with great afflictions from his own family, and especially by his daughter Julia, who being married to his wife's son Tiberius, by her nocturnal revels and adulteries, had made herself infamous in the whole city. The emperor, though a Pagan, had so great a sense, not only of the scandal, but of the immorality likewise of her actions, that he was once resolved to have put her to death; but, upon second consideration, he banished her to a desolate island, called Pandataria, where he prohibited her the use of all sorts of delicacies, and permitted none, without his approved knowledge of their lives and morals, to + approach her. Not long after, her daughter of the same name, who was married to L. Paulus, being convicted of the same crimes, was banished into an island in the Adriatic Sea, called Tremera: And, in the space of a few years, young Agrippa (his only surviving

In this whole narrative we follow the account which Dr Echard, in his Roman and Ecclesiastical Histories, has given us.

+ Some time after this, the people of Rome, whether out of love to the emperor, or respect to his family, earnestly petitioned him to recal his daughter Julia; but he answered them, that "fire and water should sooner meet than they two." Nay, his concern and resentment in this matter were so great, that, when he understood that Phoebe, one of his daugh. ter's confidents, had hanged herself, he protested openly, "That he had rather have been Phoebe's father

than Julia's :" Yet, after five years strict confinement,
the people, in a manner, compelled him to allow of
her removal from the island into the continent, where
she lived till after the emperor's death. But her hus-
band Tiberius had not long obtained the empire, be-
fore her annual pensions were stopped, and she, de-
prived of all hopes or assistance, died in extreme
want and misery: An end not unsuitable to one who
had so vilely debased herself, and so publicly scan-
dalized the noblest family in the world. Echard's
Roman History in the Life of Augustus.

A. M. 4003,

&c. or 5410. Ann. Dom. 1, &c. or 3.

&c. or 5425.

A. M. 4018. grandson by his daughter Livia, whom he had lately adopted for his own) by his extraAnn. Dom. Vagant life, and irreclaimable vices, became so scandalous to his family, and so odious &c. or 11. to the emperor, that he banished him likewise into the island of Planasia; and after'wards, whenever any mention was made of him, or the two Julias (whom he usually called by no other name than his Three Biles, or Imposthumes), he would often, with a profound sigh, say," Would to heaven I had lived without a wife, or died without children!"

This depravation in his own family, it may well be presumed, was one reason for his making such strict laws against all lewdness and adultery, and concerning marriages and divorces. Great numbers, of the Equites more especially, had taken a resolution against marriage, "not out of any kind of virtue or abstinence (as he told them), but from a looseness and wantonness which ought never to be encouraged in any civil government:" And therefore, having highly commended those that were married, and increased the rewards of such as had children, he imposed severe fines upon single persons, in case they did not marry in the space of a year; yet, to shew that he would discourage nothing that had the appearance of virtue, he gave considerable rewards to such women as had vowed perpetual virginity: But, that no public promoter of looseness might escape his censure, he soon after this banished his favourite Ovid, the celebrated poet, into Pontus, for his Amorous Epistles, and his Art of Love, the softness of which was thought capable of enervating and corrupting a larger empire than the Ro

man.

Augustus, as pontifex maximus, had examined into the books of the Sibylline prophecies (a), as we said before. Those that were genuine, he reposited in the capitol, but the spurious he condemned to the flames: And it is generally supposed, that, upon his perusal of these prophecies, foretelling the appearance of a greater Prince, to whom all the world should pay adoration, he utterly refused the title of LORD, which the people unanimously offered him; and this, by the bye, gave some sanction to the story mentioned by Suidas, viz. that Augustus, sending to the Pythian oracle to enquire, "Who should succeed him?" was answered by the demon, "That an Hebrew child, Lord of the gods, had commanded him to return to hell, and that no further answer was to be expected;" whereupon he erected an altar in the capitol, Primogenito Dei, to the "first-born of God."

However this be, it is generally agreed, that in the same year wherein he refused the title of LORD, he appointed Tiberius for his heir, partly through the prevailing solicitations of his wife Livia, and partly from the hopes he had conceived of his virtues outweighing his vices; but at the same time that he did this, he obliged Tiberius to adopt Germanicus, the son of his brother Drusus, a youth of great virtues and surprising excellencies, which soon raised the envy of Tiberius, and not long after his accession to the empire procured the other's ruin.

The last thing which Augustus did, as pontifex maximus, was the regulation of the Roman calendar, which, with us, continues in use to this day, though, in some countries, the alteration which Pope Gregory XIII. made in it, is observed. At length being near Capua, where he found himself dangerously ill, he sent for Tiberius and his most intimate friends and acquaintance, to whom he recommended many wise and useful things; and being minded to leave the world with the triumphs of a Pagan philo

(a) Vid. Vol. ii. p. 696.

[The Gregorian Calendar is merely an improvement of the Julian, and was introduced into all the churches in communion with the see of Rome in the year 1553. Though proceeding on the most incontrovertible principles of science, it was at first rejected by almost all the reformed churches, as it is

by the Greek church at this day; and it was not adopted in Great Britain until A. D. 1751, when, by Act of Parliament, the 3d day of September was enjoined to be reckoned the 14th in that year of confusion. The next year, A. D. 1752, was the first of the New Style, as it was called, and began January 1st, instead of March 25.

&c. or 5425. Ann.

sopher, he called for a looking-glass, caused his hair to be combed, and his wrinkled cheeks A. M. 4018, to be smoothed up, and then, as an actor upon the stage, asked his friends, "Whether A. Dom. 14. he had played his part well?" And upon their answering Yes, he cried Plaudite! and &c. or 11. so expired in the embraces of his beloved wife Livia, bidding her remember their marriage and farewel.

Thus died the great Augustus, in the 75th year of his age, and 41st of his reign, to the inexpressible grief of all his subjects. He was a person of the highest learning and eloquence, and the most amazing wisdom and sagacity; one who had conquered greater difficulties, met with greater success, completed greater designs, and established a greater empire, than any prince in the universe: and therefore we may less wonder, that, according to the Pagan superstition of those times, after his death, we find temples erected to him, divine honours decreed him, and a large sum of money given by his wife Livia to Numerius Atticus, a senator, for having sworn (as Proculus had formerly done of Romulus) that he saw him ascending into heaven.

The Romans, during the administration of Augustus, had all the happiness of a free people, and were restrained from nothing but those mischiefs which a corrupted liberty produces; but shortly after his death, they met with great alterations, and a quite different treatment from his successor Tiberius, whose only wisdom consisted in a mysterious slyness and suspicion, and his policy in continued artifices and dissimulation.

In the beginning of his reign, however, he made a great show of modesty and affability, and performed many laudable actions towards the reformation of mens lives and manners. He regulated the licentiousness of the theatre; banished the astrologers and magicians from Rome; restrained the delicacies of eating-houses and taverns; severely punished the looseness of young people of either sex; and administered justice with great exactness and diligence; but afterwards giving a loose to his depraved temper and inclinations, he became guilty of all kinds of enormities and oppressions, and proved one of the most subtle and designing tyrants in nature; so that historians have observed of him, that he never spake as he thought, nor shewed any inclination for what be desired; that he looked sullen on his friends, and chearful on his enemies; was fair to those he designed to punish, and severe to those he proposed to pardon; for his standing maxim was, that " a prince's mind should be known to no man :" In short, that he was a most exquisite state juggler, a most jealous and barbarous governor, a debaser of the Roman empire, a corrupter of all that was good, and an introducer of all that was bad and abominable in it.

At his first accession to the empire, he ordered young Agrippa, whom Augustus banished, to be murdered, and then published a report, "That this was done in obedience to the particular order of the late emperor, who had given charge to the centurion that guarded him, to dispatch him, upon the first intelligence of his death ;" and having, by the assistance of Piso and his wife Placino, poisoned Germanicus, whose virtues he dreaded, and whose right to the succession, as well as his esteem with the people, might possibly (as he thought) give him some disturbance, he now began to pull off the mask, and to appear more barefaced in his vicious actions, though not so open in his tyrannical designs.

It was a common thing at this time, for governors of provinces to make reports to the emperor of all remarkable events that happened in the places under their jurisdiction; and therefore Pontius Pilate, being now governor of Judea, wrote to Tiberius an account of our Blessed Saviour's passion and resurrection, (which came to pass in the third year of his government) of the miracles which were performed by him, and by others in his name; of the multitude of his followers, which daily increased; and of the opinion which generally prevailed, that he was a God: Whereupon Tiberius made a report of the whole matter to the senate, and proposed to them that Christ might be admitted into the number of their gods. But the senate not liking the motion, and al

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