Bishop's throne

“ If authority is sought, the world is greater than the city. Wherever there may be a bishop, either at Rome, Constantinople or Alexandria, the bishop is of the same merit and of the same priesthood. The power of riches and the lowliness of poverty make [4] the bishop either higher or lower. Besides," he says, "all are successors of the apostles." So we see that the pope and his cardinals are not the only successors of Christ. ”

“ If, in your wisdom, you consider the matter to its bottom, you will see that not only the cause carried on at Rome is concerned. In the case of other bishops, if there be any lapse, it may be restored; but if the Pope of Rome is endangered, not one bishop but the episcopate itself will seem to be shaken. You well know how we are steering the bark of faith amid storms of heresies, whose winds roar around us. ”

“ A bishop at that time was not only a dignitary of the church, but also a prince of the realm, whose duty it was to send his contingents to the king's army, and to act as councillor at his court. The fiefs and jurisdictions of the bishoprics were given therefore to faithful followers, not only as a reward for their past services, but also in consideration of their future ones. ”

“ Many a baron's son balances in his mind—which is better, the seigneur's "cap of presence" or the bishop's miter? The bishop, indeed, cannot marry; but the Church is not always very stern in dealing with other forms of social enjoyment. Sometimes a powerful reforming Pope will make the prelates affect a monkish austerity—but the next Pope may prove too busy to be insistent concerning "sins of the flesh." A great fraction of all the bishops are the sons of noble houses. Merely becoming tonsured has not made them into saints. ”

“ The episcopal see is first mentioned in 452, but probably existed a century earlier. The bishop soon acquired great temporal powers, especially after his dominions were made, in 831, dependent on the Empire alone, of which he became a prince in 1170. ”

“ He placed himself on a level with the throne, and the nobility itself felt itself subdued by a power emanating from its own body. The clergy, and the people, with their desires to reconcile democracy with the church, lent him their influence, in order to destroy the double aristocracy of the nobility and bishops. ”

“ But since that time the popes had taken to calling themselves by this very title, and they meant a great deal more by it than the patriarchs of Constantinople had meant; for people in the East are fond of big words, so that, when a patriarch called himself Universal Bishop, he did not mean anything in particular, but merely to give himself a title which would sound grandly. And thus, although he claimed to be universal, he would have allowed the bishops of Rome to be universal too. ”

“ It is our decree that the statutes of the canons be observed in all things, and those of them which have been [pg 584] neglected in the past because of the circumstances of the times shall hereafter be observed perpetually; so that when a bishop dies one shall be chosen for his place by the clergy and people, who is to be ordained by the metropolitan and his provincials; if the person be worthy let him be ordained by the order of the prince ”

“ Bishops have, in virtue of their God-given powers, full authority within their dioceses in all matters of dispensation, patronage and the like; papal bulls, briefs, &c., and the decrees of the Roman Congregations are only of binding force in each diocese when sanctioned by the bishop; nunciatures, as hitherto conceived, are to cease; the oath of allegiance to the pope demanded of bishops since Gregory VII.’s time is to be altered so as to bring it into conformity with episcopal rights ”

“ The Church itself was so deeply tainted with heresy that the faithful were scandalized at seeing the practical immunity enjoyed by heretical clerks, owing to the difficulty of assembling a sufficient number of bishops to officiate at their degradation, and Gregory IX. felt it necessary, in 1233, to decree that in such cases a single bishop, with some of his abbots, should have power to deprive them of holy orders and deliver them to the secular arm to be burned—a provision which he subsequently embodied in the canon law. ”

“ And it only evinces a want of thinking, for any man to say, for example, “that such and such a Church derives its orders from the Church of Rome.” Every one must have observed the false position in which English Churchmen have allowed themselves to be put, by overlooking this simple point. They have thus admitted, practically, that the Church of Rome had a private line of Apostolical Succession, of which she could impart to others!—forgetting that the Bishop of Rome himself is necessarily indebted to the Bishops of three other Churches for his own consecration. ”

“ It is the Church of the Martyrs, the Church of the Fathers, of Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, and Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustin, and Gregory the Great, bearing one unbiassed indisputable witness, attested in a hundred Councils, denied in none, for the Patriarchal system, and against a power assumed by one Bishop, though the greatest, most venerable, and most illustrious in his own see, to interfere, dispense with, suspend, or abrogate, the authority of the Bishop in his Diocese, and of the Metropolitan in his Council ”

“ He was, indeed, a nobleman endowed with singular prudence and virtue, agreeable in his person and conversation, gracious and magnificent in his carriage and behaviour, to which I may add that he spoke the French language perfectly.
He was constantly attended by his chapter, with several of his canons, who are all sons of dukes, counts, or great German lords. The bishopric is itself a sovereign State, which brings in a considerable revenue, and includes a number of fine cities. The bishop is chosen from amongst the canons, who must be of noble descent, and resident one year. ”

“ Where the Church must needs have some ordained, and neither hath nor can have possibly a bishop to ordain, in case of such necessity the ordinary institution of God hath given oftentimes, and may give place. And therefore we are not simply without exception to urge a lineal descent of power from the Apostles by continued succession of bishops in every effectual ordination.” There can be little doubt, we think, that the succession, if it ever existed, has often been interrupted in ways much less respectable. ”

“ We now for the first time find bishops, after they had been nominated by the king, going to Rome for confirmation, and the Roman court claiming to have the right to reject a royal nomination. Various matters, too, were now referred to the Pope for decision, contrary to the custom of the English Church. Other foreign fashions were also introduced. In England, any place was chosen for a bishop’s see that was a convenient centre for diocesan work; on the Continent, bishops always had their sees in cities. ”

“ Laymen have not the right to choose those who are to be made bishops.
(From the Council of Laodicæa, fourth century.)
C. vii. Every election of a bishop, priest, or deacon, which is made by the nobility [that is, emperor, or others in authority] , is void, according to the rule which says: "If a bishop makes use of the secular powers to obtain a diocese, he shall be deposed and those who supported him shall be cast out of the church." ”

“ According to the Papal theory, the authority of the bishop is an emanation from that of the Pope, who, as monarch, unlimited by any co-ordinate authority, retains in his own hands not only extraordinary but ordinary, not only ultimate but immediate jurisdiction over every subject within the bounds assigned to a bishop. ”

“ Though every time a Pope dies the chain of succession is broken and must be linked together again at every new election, and though no secular throne has ever so frequently changed its incumbent, or been so stormily assailed and abandoned, yet this remains the only throne on earth which seems never to have changed its occupant. ”

“ The State had then nothing to do with the matter; and the people (such was their temper and disposition) would have thought of owning a heathen for a Bishop, as soon as a man not duly ordained. Nay, there was even a holy emulation among the Churches; in consideration of which we might in a qualified sense, admit an additional kind of sacredness and certainty, so to speak, in the Succession of those Episcopates, which were noted for peculiar carefulness; as in the Ante-Nicene times that of Alexandria appears to have been. ”

“ The Prince-Bishop changed colour ever so faintly, the sarcasm of the accent rather than of the words pierced his armour of omnipotence and self-love; he understood why men had dreaded the lash and the steel less than they had dreaded the lightest touch of this woman's scorn. But he was a powerful and accomplished personage, to whom defeat or opposition were heresies unknown; he recovered his momentary discomfiture, and came nearer to her, the warm after-glow on his stately stature and his handsome majestic form, while his lustrous eyes smiled gently. ”

“ We should,” he added in a gay tone, “resolve upon choosing a priest among us;—the curate of St. Helena.”—But how ordain him, it was said, without a bishop?—“And am I not one,” replied the Emperor, “have I not been anointed with the same oil, consecrated in the same manner? Were not Clovis and his successors anointed, at the time, with the formula of Rex Christique sacerdos? Were they not, in fact, real bishops? Was not the subsequent suppression of that formula caused by the jealousy and policy of the bishops and popes?”
I did not eat at dinner, the Emperor wished to know the cause. ”

“ As wealth increased, and was intrusted to the clergy, they became indifferent to the wants of the people, no longer supported by them. They became lazy, arrogant, and independent. The people were shut out of the government of the church. The bishop became a grand personage, who controlled and appointed his clergy. ”

“ If we allege for our defence 'the strength of God's truth' and 'the plainness of Scripture' with 'the word of the Lord,' and many gay terms, the King's Majesty will not be abused with such a vain answer, and this is a politic consideration. The doings in this realm hitherto have never done the Bishop of Rome so much displeasure as the alteration in religion during the King's Majesty's minority shall serve for his purpose.'—Gardiner to the Protector: Foxe, vol. ”

“ What makes a church, according to the apostolic constitution? All churches which have that constitution agree that the essentials of a church are a bishop with a clergy and laity in his communion. The bishop is its nucleus, and makes the church in the sense in which the head makes the body. A bishopless church is a headless body. We say this is what all Christians agree upon who believe in apostolical succession. So that even the recent contemptible sect calling themselves “Old Catholics” were bound to procure a bishop for their schism, albeit they set at defiance both authority and logic. ”

“ So that if, for example, we should produce a list of every Archbishop of Canterbury to the very first, who was consecrated by a French Bishop, and should then add the name of every one that had preceded that French Bishop in his see, up to the Apostles’ days, still we should not have proved the existence of any One line of Apostolical descent. No single line of Succession confined to a single Church is possible. Every newly ordained Bishop in every See comes of a new line ”

“ In later times, when the feudal system becomes established in its completeness, the position of the bishop undergoes a great change, as his relations to the state and to society become more complex in their character ”

“ Once instituted by the Pope, each bishop is the governor for life of a French province and all-powerful in his circumscription we have seen to what height his moral and social authority has risen, how he has exercised his command, how he has kept his clergy under discipline and available, in what class of society he has found his recruits, through what drill and what enthusiasm every priest, including himself, is now a practiced soldier and kept in check ”

“ A quarrel with a government had hitherto always brought a bishop glory, but not so a quarrel with the Curia. In the former case, the Pope took care to make up to the bishop in professional advantage more than he could lose by political collision. In the latter case, no government could or would make up to him for disgrace or ruin. A martyr bishop was one of the most effective figures in every Church display. A great occasion would be comparatively dull without one. Governments could make no such use of bishops who might suffer for loyalty. ”

“ Every church requires at least one priest in residence to say mass and afford religious comfort to the laity. If competent bishops could always have appointed this clergy, much sorrow would have been eliminated. Unfortunately, the bishop can only name a fraction. Practically every noncathedral church has its patron, the heir or beneficiary of the wealthy personage who once endowed the local establishment. This patron may be the bishop himself, but often the honor may be enjoyed by an abbey, or a chapter of canons, or, in a majority of cases, by some very secular seigneur. Conon will say. ”

“ They command, among other things, the use of all the ecclesiastical laws and canons which were in use in Henry VIII.'s time, not being directly contrary to the laws of the realm; the disuse by the bishop of the phrase 'regia auctoritate fulcitus,' and of the oath of supremacy; the deprivation or divorce of all married clergy; and rigid care on the part of the bishops for the exclusion of all Sacramentaries and other heretics from holy orders. ”