§ 4. The administration of ecclesiastical affairs was divided by Constantine himself into the external and the internal.' The latter not at this period, nor even afterwards, universally equivalent to metropolitan. Ed.] Hence there were not properly five orders of bishops, above the rank of chorepiscopi, as Mosheim represents; but only three, namely, patriarchs, metropolitans, or archbishops, and simple bishops. Before the times of Constantine, provincial councils were common; and these gave rise to the order of metropolitans. Among the metropolitans, those of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, stood pre-eminent in honour and influence. During the reign of Constantine the Great, the powers of these three metropolitans were enlarged; but whether they bore the title, or possessed the authority, of patriarchs, at that time, is not certain. They however became patriarchs, both in name and in power, before the century had elapsed. And these were the three original patriarchs. Towards the close of this century, the bishops of Constantinople obtained rank next to those of Rome, and extended their authority over several dioceses not subject to the other patriarchs. In the next century, the bishops of Jerusalem became independent of the patriarchs of Antioch; and thus there were five patriarchates formed. Their respective limits were as follows. The patriarchal authority of the bishops of Rome did not at first extend beyond Italy, perhaps not over the whole of that. For the bishops of Africa, Spain, Gaul, Britain, and Illyricum, acknowledged no ecclesiastical head or ruler, except their own metropolitans. But after the dissolution of the western empire, the bishop of Rome found means to bring all the bishops and metropolitans of the West under his authority. This he justified, partly by claiming to be patriarch of all the West, and partly by virtue of his assumed supremacy over the whole church. The patriarchs of Constantinople claimed dominion over the civil dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Thrace, which belonged to the prefecture of the East, and also over the two dioceses composing the prefecture of Illyricum. No one of these dioceses had before belonged to any patriarchate; the three former having been governed by provincial councils, in which the metropolitans (or exarchs] of Ephesus, Caesarea in Cappadocia, and Heraclea in Thrace, had the precedence of all other metropolitans. The two other dioceses, those of Macedonia and Dacia, had been governed in a similar manner; and being afterwards claimed by the bishops of Rome, were the cause of long and violent contests between these ambitious prelates. But the patriarchs of Constantinople retained them, and thereby VOL. I. extended their dominions northward over the Russian empire. The patriarchate of Antioch embraced, originally, the whole diocese of the East, and likewise extended over the churches beyond the limits of the Roman empire in Asia, quite to India. But in 451, the patriarchate of Jerusalem was created out of it, embracing the whole of Palæstina I. II. and III. or Salutaris, and thence to Mount Sinai and the borders of Egypt. The patriarchate of Alexandria embraced the civil diocese of Egypt; and thence extended into Abyssinia.- Such were the territorial limits of the five patriarchates, from the fifth century onward to the Refor mation. In the eleventh century, Nilus Doxopatrius, of Constantinople, gives them substantially the same boundaries. From him we learn, that the patriarch of Constantinople then presided over fifty-two metropolitans, who had under them 649 suffragan bishops; and over thirteen titular metropolitans, i. e. bishops who were called metropolitans and auтOKépaλo, but had no suffragans; and likewise thirty-four titular archbishops. The patriarch of Antioch presided over thirteen metropolitans, with 139 suffragans, besides eight titular metropolitans, and thirteen titular archbishops. The patriarch of Jerusalem presided over four metropolitans with suffragans, and twenty-five titular archbishops. And the patriarch of Alexandria presided over seven metropolitans with suffragans, and five titular metropolitans and archbishops. The number of suffragans in the two last patriarchates is not given. Tr. The first time we meet with the name Patriarch, given to any bishop by any public authority of the church, is in the council of Chalcedon, which mentions the most holy patriarchs of every diocese, and particularly Leo, patriarch of Great Rome. Richerius, who has written accurately about the councils, can trace the name no higher. Among private authors, the first that mentions patriarchs by name is Socrates, who wrote his history about the year 440, eleven years before the council of Chalcedon.' Bingham's Antiquities, i. 67. See that admirable work for information upon this matter; also Cave's Dissertation concerning the government of the Ancient Church, Lond. 1683. Edw. Brerewood, Veteris Ecclesiæ Gubernatio Patriarchalis. S.-According to Theodore Balsamon (Neale, Holy Eastern Church, i. 126), the title of patriarch belongs correctly only to Antioch: the bishops of Rome and Alexandria being properly popes, and those of Jerusalem and Constantinople archbishops. Ed.] Eusebius, de Vita Const. M. iv. 24. R he relinquished to the bishops and to councils. It embraced all the essentials of religion, religious controversies, forms of worship, functions of the priests, their vices, and some other things. The external administration he took upon himself. It included whatever relates to the external condition of the church, or to its discipline, and also all contests and causes of the ministers of the church, both of the higher and of the lower orders, which did not respect religion and sacred functions, but property, worldly honours, and privileges, offences against the laws, and the like. He therefore, and his successors, assembled councils, presided in them, assigned judges for religious disputes, decided contests between bishops and their people, determined the limit of ecclesiastical provinces, and by the ordinary judges, heard and decided upon the civil causes and common offences among the ministers of the church; ecclesiastical causes, on the other hand, he left to the cognisance of councils and bishops. Yet this famous partition of the ecclesiastical government into the external and the internal administrations was never clearly explained and accurately defined. Hence, both in this and in the following centuries, we see many transactions which do not accord with it, but contravene it. For the emperors not unfrequently determined religious matters of the interior kind: and, in like manner, councils and bishops often enacted laws respecting things which seem to belong to the external form and affairs of the church. § 5. The bishop of Rome took precedence over all others of the episcopal order. Nor was this pre-eminence founded solely on popular feeling and a prejudice of long standing, sprung from various causes: but also on those grounds which commonly give priority and greatness in the estimation of mortals. For he exceeded all other bishops in the amplitude and splendour of the church over which he presided, in the magnitude of his revenues and possessions, in the number of his ministers of various descriptions, in the weight of his influence with the people at large, and in the sumptuousness and magnificence of his style of living. These marks of power and worldly greatness were so fascinating to the minds of Christians even in this age, that often most obstinate and bloody contests took place at Rome when a new pontiff was to be created by the suffrages of the priests and people. A shocking example of this is afforded by the See the imperial laws, in both the Justinian and Theodosian Codex; and, among others, Ja. Godefroi, ad Codicem Theodos. vi. 55, 58, 333, &c. [This whole system resulted, in part, from the office of Pontifex Maximus, which was retained by Constantine and all his successors, till into the fifth century; and, in part, from the conception of Constantine, that the church was a society existing independently of the state. See Boss, Diss. de Pontificatu maximo Imperator. Christianor. Schl.] 2 Ammianus Marcellinus, Hist. xxvii. 3. ['Besides their standing rents and revenues, their gains by collections and oblations were so great, that by them alone, in the time of pope Damasus, they were enabled to live in a state and grandeur like that of temporal princes, if we may believe the account given by Ammianus Marcellinus: and the story is known of Prætextatus a zealous Gentile, designed to be consul, who, reflecting upon the plenty of that see, was wont pleasantly to tell pope Damasus, Make me but bishop of Rome, and I will immediately become a Christian.' Cave's Disc. of the Anc. Ch. Gov. p. 25. S.] disturbance at Rome in the year 366, after the death of Liberius. When they came to the choice of a new bishop, one party was for placing Damasus, and another for appointing Ursicinus, a deacon, over the widowed church; and the contention caused a cruel war, great loss of life, conflagrations, and battles. Damasus came off victorious in the contest; but whether his claims were better, or his cause more righteous, than those of Ursicinus, does not appear.' I dare not pronounce either of them a good man. § 6. It is, however, abundantly attested, that the bishops of Rome did not in this age possess supreme power and jurisdiction in the church. They were citizens in the commonwealth; and though higher in honour, they obeyed the laws and mandates of the emperors, just like other citizens. The more weighty religious causes were determined either by judges appointed by the emperor, or in councils; minor causes were decided by individual bishops. The laws relating to religion were enacted either by the emperors or by councils. No one of the bishops acknowledged that his authority was derived from the plenary power of the Roman bishop, or that he was constituted a bishop by the favour of the apostolic see. On the contrary, they all maintained that they were the ambassadors and ministers of Jesus Christ, and that their authority was derived from above. Yet it is undeniable, that even in this age, several of those steps were laid, by which the Roman pontiffs afterwards mounted to the summit of ecclesiastical dominion; and this, partly by the imprudence of the emperors, partly by the sagacity of the pontiffs themselves, and partly by the hasty decision of certain bishops. Among these steps, however, I would assign either no place, or only the very last, to the fourth canon of the council of Sardica, in the year 347, to which the friends of the Roman pontiff assign the first and the most important place. For, not to mention that the authority and regularity of this council are very dubious, and that, not without reason, the enactments of the council are regarded by some as coming to us corrupted, and by others as See the writers of Lives of the Popes, among whom Arch. Bower has stated this matter ingenuously and impartially, in his Hist. of the Popes, i. 180, &c., ed. 2, Lond. 1749. [Ammian. Marcellin. Hist. xxvii. 3, says, that 137 corpses of the slain were found in one day in the church of Sicininus. Tr.] 2 All these points are discussed at large by many writers, among whom I will name Peter de Marca, de Concordia Sacerdotii et Imperii; L. E. du Pin, de Antiqua Ecclesiæ Disciplina; and especially, Dav. Blondel, de la Primauté dans l'Eglise, -a very learned work: [also Fred. Spanheim, Diss. de Primatu Pape, et Canone vi. Nicano. Schl. - The sixth canon of the council of Nice, A.D. 325, gave to the bishops of Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch, severally, the same preemi nence over their respective surrounding bishops. Meletius had encroached upon the prerogatives of his metropolitan of Alexandria; and therefore the council ordain (according to the translation of Dionysius Exiguus), ANTIQUA CONSUETUDO SERVETUR per Egyptum, Libyam, et Pentapolim, ita ut Alexandrinus Episcopus horum omnium habeat potestatem; quia et Romæ Episcopo parilis mos est. Similiter autem et apud Antiochiam, cæterasque provincias, suis privilegia serventur ecclesiis. To reconcile this canon with the papal claims of universal empire, the Romanists tell us, it relates merely to the patriarchal or metropolitical power of the bishop of Rome, and not to his power as pope-a distinction which does not appear to have occurred to the Nicene fathers. See Natalis Alexander, Hist. Eccles. cent. iv. diss. xx. Tr. See also Cave, Disc. of the Anc. Ch. Gov. p. 50. S.] forged,' it cannot be made to appear from that canon, that the bishops assembled at Sardica decided, that in all cases an appeal might be made to the Roman pontiff as the supreme and final judge. But suppose they had so decided, which yet can never be proved, how weak must that right be which is founded only on the decision of a single obscure council!2 § 7. Constantine the Great, by transferring the imperial residence to Byzantium, and there founding the new city of Constantinople, undesignedly raised up against the rising power of the Roman pontiff a powerful competitor in the bishop of the new metropolis. For as the emperor wished his Constantinople to be another or a new Rome, and had endowed it with all the privileges, decorations, and honours of old Rome, the bishop of so great a city, the imperial residence besides, also wished to be thought every way equal in rank to the bishop of old Rome, and to have precedence of all other bishops. Nor did the emperors disapprove of this ambition, because they considered their own dignity as involved in that of the bishop of their metropolis. Therefore in the council of Constantinople, assembled in the year 381, by authority of the emperor Theodosius the Great, the bishop of Alexandria not being present, and the bishop of Rome being opposed to it, the bishop of Constantinople was, by the third canon, placed in the first rank after the bishop of Rome; the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, of course, to take rank after him. The bishop who had this honour conferred on him was Nectarius. His successor, John Chrysostom, went further, and subjected all Thrace, Asia, and Pontus, to his jurisdiction. The subsequent bishops of Constantinople gradually advanced their claims still further. But 1 See Mich. Geddes, Diss. de Canonibus Sardicensibus; among his Miscellaneous Tracts, vol. ii. p. 415; [and Bower, Lives of the Popes,-Pope Julius, i. 420, &c. ed. 2, Lond. 1749, 4to. Tr.] [This council was got up by Julius, bishop of Rome; and was designed to be a general council, and therefore held at Sardica in Illyricum, as accommodating both the East and the West; but as most of the eastern bishops withdrew from it, it was rather a council of the West. Its decrees were not confirmed by several subsequent councils, nor received by the whole church. See De Marca, de Concordia Sacerdotii, &c. vii. 4, 5, 11, 12, 15. By the third canon in the Greek, or the fourth in the Latin translation by Isidorus, it was ordered, that if any bishop shall think himself unjustly condemned, and wish for a new trial, his judges shall acquaint the bishop of Rome therewith, who may either confirm the first judgment, or order a new trial before such of the neighbouring bishops as he may choose to name. The fourth canon, according to the Greek, adds, that the see of the deposed bishop shall remain vacant, till the determination of the bishop of Rome is known. By the fifth canon, according to the Greek, and the seventh of Isidorus, it is ordered, that if a condemned bishop apply to Rome for relief, the bishop of Rome may, if he see fit, not only order a new trial, but if the aggrieved bishop desire it, he may send one of his presbyters to sit and have a voice in the second trial. See De Marca, loc. cit. cap. 3. - Thus these canons do not give the bishop of Rome even an appellate jurisdiction, but only the power to decide whether an injured bishop shall have a new trial. Tr.] [The diocese of the western part of Asia Minor. Tr.] ↑ See Peter de Marca, Diss. de Constantinop. Patriarchatus Institutione; annexed to his work, de Concordia Sacerdotii et Imperii, iv. 163, &c., ed. Bamb. 1789. Mich le Quien, Oriens Christianus, i. 15, &c. Sam. Parker, An Account of the Government of the Christian Church for the first six hundred years, p. 245, Lond. 1683, 8гa [The canon of the council was thus expressed: Constantinopolitanæ civitatis Episcopum habere oportet primatûs honorem post Romanum Episcopum, propterea quid sit nova Roma.' Tr.] this revolution in the ecclesiastical government, and the sudden elevation of the Byzantine bishop to high rank, to the injury of others, in the first place fired the Alexandrine prelates with resentment against those of Constantinople; and in the next place, gave rise to those unhappy contests between the pontiffs of old and new Rome, which were protracted through several centuries, with various success, and finally produced a separation between the Latin and the Greek churches. § 8. The vices of the clergy, especially of those who officiated in large and opulent cities, were augmented in proportion to the increase of their wealth, honours, and advantages, derived from the emperors and from numberless other sources: and that this increase was very great, after the times of Constantine, is acknowledged by all. The bishops had shameful quarrels among themselves, respecting the extent of their jurisdiction and boundaries; and while they trampled on the rights of the people and of the inferior clergy, they vied with the civil governors of provinces in luxury, arrogance, and voluptuousness. The presbyters, in many places, boldly challenged an equality with bishops, in rank and authority. Of the pride and effeminacy of the deacons we often meet with various complaints. Those especially who ranked first among the presbyters and deacons, were unwilling to be considered as belonging to the same order with the others; and, therefore, they not only assumed the titles of archpresbyters and archdeacons, but also they thought themselves authorised to take far greater liberties than were allowed to others. § 9. Among the more celebrated writers of this age, who shed lustre on the eastern provinces and Greece, the most eminent were those whose names here follow. Eusebius Pamphili, bishop of Cæsarea in Palestine, a man of great reading and erudition, who has acquired immortal fame by his labours in ecclesiastical history, and in other branches of theological learning. Yet he was not free from errors and defects; leaning towards the side of those who hold an inequality between the three persons in the Godhead. Some rank him among the Arians; but they certainly err in so doing, if they 3 See Sulpitius Severus, Historia Sacra, i. 23, ii. 32, 51. Dialog. i. 21. Add to this, the account given by Dav. Clarkson, in his Discourse on Liturgies, p. 228 (of the French edition), of the extremely corrupt state of morals among the clergy; and, in particular, of the eagerness of the bishops to extend the boundaries of their authority, p. 150, &c. *[So called from his close intimacy with the martyr, Pamphilus, who has sometimes been inaccurately represented as his brother. Mosheim styles him Eusebius Pamphili, as does Cave, but Du Pin, Eusebius Pamphilus. He requires either one of these distinctions, or to be mentioned with his see of Cæsarea, to prevent confusion with Eusebius of Nico 3 No one has, with more zeal and learning, accused Eusebius of Arianism, than Joh. le Clerc, in his Epistolæ Ecclesiast. annexed to his Ars Critica, ep. ii. p. 30, &c. To him, add Natalis Alexander, Hist. Eccles. Nov. Test. sæc. iv. diss. xvii. All, however, that these and others labour to prove is, that Eusebius thought that there was some disparity and a subordination among the persons of the Godhead. And suppose this to have been his opinion, it will not follow that he was an Arian, unless the term be taken in a very extensive and improper sense. is to be lamented that so many abuse this term, and apply it to persons who, though It |