Patriarch

“ The patriarch, in ancient times, protected and sustained his dependents, and, in return, received their entire allegiance, wielding over them the power of life and death, and thus initiating the first form of human government. ”

“ Thou standest before thy posterity as a patriarch. Thy blessing shall be recorded in a book that thy seed may see the record and know their origin. Put off thy diffidence, come up boldly to the work of thy God, in which thou must engage with all thy faculties that thy seed may be saved and that thou mayest be instrumental in the salvation of others. If thou art faithful in thy masters cause, thou shalt be blessed in the earth and be a man of God. Thou shalt be blessed in the earth and it shall yield to thee its strength. The angels of heaven shall minister to thee. ”

“ How then is it that while forbidding the greater he was silent about the less? Because the example of the patriarch seemed injurious to many who indulged their flesh so far as to live with sisters in their life time. ”

“ Patriarchs.—These officers hold the keys of blessings in the church. The order of this priesthood was confirmed to be handed down from father to son, and rightly belongs to the literal descendants of the chosen seed, to whom the promises were made. [118] There is one general and a number of local patriarchs in the church. The first is patriarch to the whole church, and he may minister in any branch or stake in it, his jurisdiction in blessing the people being co-extensive with the church. He holds the keys of the patriarchal blessings upon the heads of all the Lord's people. ”

“ The Great Patriarch.—Adam, the patriarch of the human family, is over all the Gospel dispensations, including the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, which is virtually all dispensations rolled into one. Nevertheless, each has its own immediate presiding authority, holding the keys of his particular period—holding them under Adam, the universal head. ”

“ To a true believer in the faith of the Latter-day Saints a blessing of this kind, from under the hand of a Patriarch, was then, and is now, next to a boon of eternal life. A Patriarch is a man highly favored of God, possesses the gift of discerning spirits, and can read the present and future destiny of men. Patriarchal blessings strengthen, stimulate and encourage true Saints to press on to perfection while passing through this world of sorrows, cares and disappointments. ”

“ The judges, whose curiosity was aroused, and who were flattered that a man of such reputation for wisdom should submit a matter to them for their opinion, signified to him to proceed.
"Gentlemen and wise men," began the Patriarch, "there was once a father, and this father had thirteen sons, who were esteemed by all who knew them. As time with sure hand marked its progress on the issue of this good man, and the children grew into youth, they one by one went into the world, spreading to the four known quarters of the globe, and carrying with them the good influence given by their father. ”

“ As soon as this came to the ears of the patriarch, he wrote a very sharp letter to the king, reproving him for the proclamation that he had made; adding, that it was an encroachment upon the office of the priesthood, that he, a layman, should take upon him to direct in matters merely ecclesiastical. ”

“ There is to be no end to the increase of the old Patriarch, and, as his posterity increases, world on world will be created and brought into existence, and those children will be sent forth from the presence of the Patriarch to take upon themselves bodies, as we have done here in this world. ”

“ The patriarch at the head of the family, and even of a whole tribe, is the father, ruler, priest, and judge for the little community over which he presides. In his person there is a simple union of all the important powers of the later Hebrew state. ”

“ And yet it was these austere patriarchs who, in the midst of their chaste and obedient families, thanks to their pride, their cultivation of right, and their noble self-respect, laid the foundation of the future. ”

“ The father-and-mother official is in short looked up to by the people as representing the Emperor, the august Head of all the heads of families, the Universal Patriarch; he is looked down to by his superiors as representing all the families to whom he stands in loco parentis. ”

“ Each child of us, though really born to the broad light of a democratic age, is reared in the patriarchate. Each child of us sees the father, dispenser of benefits, arbiter and ruler of the family; and, so reared, each child of us repeats from generation to generation the mistakes of personality. ”

“ They gather round the table, chatter and and plan, count on their fingers, but play little. From time to time, and only after long consultation, an elderly, bearded patriarch goes to place the family stake. ”

“ Where establishment of descent in the male line has initiated the patriarchal family, the name father, even in its original meaning, comes to be associated with supreme authority, and to be therefore a name of honor. ”

“ Affinities and races were in existence which carried back their origin to one patriarch, they followed the head of the oldest family, from whom the rest were derived, or thought that they were derived, and usually obeyed his decision. ”

“ Patriarchs of the remotest ages, that obeyed the Lord God in regard to. their marriages and family organizations, have not disagreed with us, nor we with them, so far as we and they have obeyed the law of God. If there is any difference at all, it was more developed among them than it is among us, we being in our infancy. ”

“ Much against his will, the patriarch elect was often dragged by force from his cloister, where he had passed years of abstinence and mortification, and being duly exalted to the episcopal throne, on which the residue of his days were to be passed, he never failed to impart a full share of ignorance and superstition. ”

“ Like the Patriarchs of old I am surrounded by all my descendants, sons, daughters and grandchildren—they have assembled from all quarters to visit us, and if I were not afraid that they would soon become too numerous for the limits of our house I should insist on its being an annual custom. ”

“ The prototype of this identification of the king with the father, which regularly recurs also in the dreams of adults, presumably is the origin of royalty from the patriarchate in the family, which is still attested by the use of identical words for king and father, in the Hindoo-Germanic languages [96] (compare the German “Landesvater,” father of his country, = king) . ”

“ The history of the patriarchs is of this kind; they are founders of a chosen race of people, the inheritors of the earth; they exist in the generations which are to come after them. Their poetry, like their religious creed, is vast, unformed, obscure, and infinite; a vision is upon it—an invisible hand is suspended over it. ”

“ Rome is most fearful of schism, Constantinople of heresy. Rome will nave no dealings with a church that is not obedient to the pope; Constantinople will send its chrism to a church that does not own allegiance to its patriarch, so long as that church is strictly orthodox. Individual patriarchs have excommunicated insubordinate bishops—as in the case of the Bulgarian exarch. That is only natural; for even patriarchs are men. ”

“ He differs in nothing from his Father, except in age and authority, the Father having the seniority, and, consequently, the right, according to the Patriarchal laws of eternal Priesthood, to preside over him, and over all his dominions, for ever and ever. ”

“ But the Western princes, who had almost forgotten the existence of the Eastern Empire, see in him only a poor Greek king who has come to beg their protection against his enemies.
The Greeks then come to Ferrara and the Emperor enters the city under a great canopy at the head of his retinue, all decked out as sumptuously as possible. But the Patriarch is told he must kiss the Pope's foot. He says he will not dream of doing any such thing; if the Pope is older than he is he will treat him as a father, if the same age as a brother, if younger as a son. ”

“ It is then with no uncertain voice that this Byzantine Church proclaims her faith in the Roman Primacy and Infallibility just before the tyranny of an Emperor and the ambition of an intruded Patriarch drag her into schism.
2. Appeals to Rome from the East.
This faith of the Eastern Churches did not remain a mere theory. The Fathers we have quoted not only proclaimed the Pope's universal jurisdiction; they continually made use of it to defend themselves against opponents; so that the long list of their appeals to Rome speaks even more eloquently than their words. ”

“ We understand that we are to be made kings and Priests unto God; now if I be made the king and lawgiver to my family, and if I have many sons, I shall become the father of many fathers, for they will have sons, and their sons will have sons, and so on, from generation to generation, and, in this way, I may become the father of many fathers, or the king of many kings. ”

“ Nor did we ever spare to meet thee with harsh reproof whilst thou were headstrong and rebellious; but now that thou dost come before us as a penitent and afflicted son, saying, ‘Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight;’ when thou comest as one willing to submit thee to all that the Church may demand of thee in reparation or in penance for thine outrages, we can no longer remember that we are a King, but we must yield us to those feelings which do now so stirringly tell us that we are a father. ”

“ In fact the wives of the patriarchs, all untruthful, and one a kleptomaniac, but illustrate the law, that the cardinal virtues are seldom found in oppressed classes. ”

“ But come, setting this duello of wit aside, I have overheard your confession and your casting about for a father, and in troth, in mere charity, came in to relieve you. In the scroll of beasts, horses and asses, that have fed upon this common of yours, you named one Pendant: faith, wench, let him be the father. He is a very handsome gentleman, I can tell you, in my lord's favour. I'll be both secret and your friend to my lord. Let it be him; he shall either reward thee bountifully, or marry thee. ”

“ Every father of a family, in the normal and healthy state of society, is his own priest as well as his own king. In religion and morals, as well as in all domestic ordinances, he is absolute and supreme; and the functions which necessarily belonged to him as supreme administrator in his own family would, under the influence of family feelings, naturally be conceded to him when the family grew to a clan, and the clan to a kingdom. ”

“ There are a great many persons who pride themselves on their ancestry, and they glory over the royal blood that pours through their arteries. In their line there was a lord, or a duke, or a prime minister, or a king. But when the Lord, our Father, puts upon us the ring of His adoption, we become the children of the Ruler of all nations. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." ”

“ My beloved, the Emperor is our heavenly Father, who imposes upon sons the duty of maintaining and obeying their parents. But who is our father and mother? Christ is our father, as we read in Deut. 32. His affection for us partakes more of this, than of the maternal character. You know that when the son transgresses, the father corrects him somewhat harshly, even with stripes and blows; while the doating mother soothes and coaxes her favourite into humour. Christ permits us to be scourged, because of our many failings ”

“ Again, his summary in the tenth chapter of the Hsiâo King, of the duties of filial piety, is the following:--'A filial son, in serving his parents, in his ordinary intercourse with them, should show the utmost respect; in supplying them with food, the greatest delight; when they are ill, the utmost solicitude; when mourning for their death, the deepest grief; and when sacrificing to them, the profoundest solemnity. When these things are all complete, he is able to serve his parents.'
The royal worship of ancestors. ”

“ And those men who either persuade or enforce the doing of it, stand towards those who are rebellious against it exactly in the position of faithful children in a family, who, when the father is out of sight, either compel or persuade the rest to do as their father would have them, were he present; and in so far as they are expressing and maintaining, for the time, the paternal authority, they exercise, in the exact sense in which I mean the phrase to be understood, paternal government over the rest. ”

“ Thus 'tis more natural for us to love the son upon account of the father, than the father upon account of the son; the servant for the master, than the master for the servant; the subject for the prince, than the prince for the subject. ”

“ All the noble attributes which we find in the Son exist in perfectness in the Father.
"Picture this noble Son, the risen Redeemer, my friends, after His battle with death and His victory over the grave! In the splendid glory of His divine manhood, all power both in heaven and earth in His hand, He stands as the shining figure of the ages. Why? Because He is 'God With Us.'" ”

“ In aristocracies, then, the father is not only the civil head of the family, but the oracle of its traditions, the expounder of its customs, the arbiter of its manners. He is listened to with deference, he is addressed with respect, and the love which is felt for him is always tempered with fear. ”

“ I suppose because I have known the growth of his character so intimately. I called to mind a letter he had written me of what we had expected of our fathers. The ideal father, the profoundly wise, provident, divinely tender and benign, he is indeed the God of the human heart. How solemn this moment of being called to prepare the way, to make way for another generation! What fulfilment does it claim in the character of a man, that he should be worthy to be a father! — what purity of motive, what dignity, what knowledge! ”