5.

When the Church became a Recognized Institution in any Country, some Relations with the State with Reference to the Control of her Internal Affairs would be necessary.

So long as the members of the ministry and members of the Church will in all things submit absolutely and unconditionally to the decisions of purely voluntary spiritual authorities in matters of dispute which may arise amongst them, there need not be, of necessity, any legal relations on the part of the Church with the State with reference to the matters, processes, and procedures of her internal government; and indeed, there need be no recourse to the State at all to seek its interference with what might be called the family affairs of the Church.

And in such a case the State would have no grounds of interference with the internal government of the Church, unless, indeed, it had good reason to believe that the Church was making use of her rights and privileges, congregations and meetings, for the purpose of undermining its authority and government, or was using these for some other unlawful purpose. It would entirely depend upon the loyalty and obedience of the members of the Church, in yielding ready and implicit obedience to her rulings on contentious points, as to whether it would be necessary for the Church to call in the intervention of the coercive power of the State. This might be necessary to enforce her sentences of judgment against certain unruly and rebellious members, who might refuse to submit themselves to her voluntarily exercised spiritual and ecclesiastical authority. For it must be remembered that the Church of herself, as a spiritual institution, possesses no coercive jurisdiction whatever. While she has received from Christ power to judge and pass sentence upon her own members in matters of discipline, etc., in the execution of her inherent powers of spiritual and ecclesiastical self-government, she has no power of herself coercively to enforce these sentences upon those

who will not voluntarily obey them and submit themselves to them.

6.

Our Lord did not confer the Power of Coercive Jurisdiction upon His Apostles and His Church, and they did not exercise it.

That our Lord's gift of the keys to St. Peter (St. Matt. xvi. 19), His recognition of the Church as the ultimate tribunal for adjudicating on matters which concern her members (St. Matt. xviii. 15-18), and His breathing upon His Apostles, and imparting to them the Holy Ghost (St. John xx. 22, 23), may be taken as conferring upon the Church absolute control over her ministers and members with respect to things ecclesiastical, we do not think there can be a doubt, and that that power was exercised by the Apostolic Church-notably, as described in 1 Cor. v. and 2 Cor. ii.-is clearly and conclusively proved.

It would be needless to dwell upon this point further, for the whole of ecclesiastical history of apostolic, primitive, and later times shows that the Church claimed the right and power of discipline, exercised and executed it over her ministers and members, and morally enforced her spiritual sentences as she thought fit upon those who chose voluntarily to submit to her decisions.

As to this fact there cannot be any question; but the point is given that any minister or member of the Church refused to submit to her jurisdiction in any particular case, how was she to deal with him? To compel him to submit would take for granted the employment of coercive or physical force, and with this coercive power our Lord did not invest His Church. His kingdom, in this sense at least, was not of this world." The authority and power over her ministers and members which He committed to her were solely of a spiritual and ecclesiastical nature. The employment of the sword, and all that is involved in it, belonged exclusively to the civil magistrate, and to the civil

magistrate the Church has always been obliged to appeal for the enforcement of her sentences against persistently rebellious members; while members of the Church, feeling themselves aggrieved by her disciplinary sentences pronounced against them, have not hesitated to invoke the aid of the civil power to resist their execution.

In either case this would necessitate the intervention, even if we do not call it the intrusion, of the civil power into the spiritual domain of the Church, forasmuch as for the purposes of justice and judgment it would be necessary for the civil power to consider the basis on which the Church had taken action in any given case, to review the whole proceedings with reference to it, and to confirm and execute the sentence of the Church, or to reverse it, or to resist its execution as against its subjects affected thereby. While from St. Paul's description of the state of things in the Church at Corinth (as contained in 1 Cor. vi.), it is somewhat difficult to understand whether the Christians at Corinth carried for coercive final settlement to the heathen state courts questions which had been already considered and adjudicated upon by the Church, it is certain that they did carry to the civil tribunal for settlement questions which they ought not to have removed from the jurisdiction of the Church, which the Church was fully competent to decide, and by whose decisions in such matters they ought to have felt themselves bound.

7.

The Primitive Church was obliged to have Recourse to the Coercive Jurisdiction of the State.

In cases in which the members or ministers of the Church would not submit to her ruling, she would either have to put up with schismatic anarchy in her midst, or appeal to the civil power for protection. Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch, in the year 275, for instance, was deposed from his bishopric, and excommunicated from the

ESTABLISHMENT

Church; yet, not heeding the sentence of the Council of the Church against him, he usurped the office of bishop, and kept possession of the church building for some years afterwards, until, on petition of the bishops, the civil power intervened in the person of the Emperor Aurelian, who, on review of the proceedings, ordered the building to be given up to such person as the bishops of Rome and Italy should. name. Eusebius states that Paul was driven from office by the temporal power.

Another case which might be cited as illustrative of our subject is the case of a schism which arose in Africa as to two rival bishops who claimed the See of Carthage-Cæcilian as representing the orthodox, and Majorian the representative of the Donatists. A body of bishops was appointed to decide between them. They gave their judgment against Majorian. His supporters, the Donatists, were dissatisfied, and refused to submit. The Emperor Constantine laid the matter before a Council at Arles in the year A.D. 314, and the Council confirmed the decision of the bishops. The Donatists appealed to the emperor himself to examine into the matter. Constantine gave the final sentence, excluding Majorian from the Bishopric of Carthage. The appeal to the civil power, though made by the schismatical Donatist party, so far as there is evidence to show, was not protested against by the Church.

A further instance as between the Donatists and orthodox Christians arose out of an attempt of St. Augustine to heal the schisms which had arisen out of their continued disputes. For this purpose he sought the intervention of the Emperor Honorius, who commissioned Marcellinus, one of his chief civil officers, in the year 411, to convene an assembly, preside at it, and give judgment, upon the questions under debate. Marcellinus did so, and pronounced against the Donatists, and in his sentence he declared that those who refused to conform should be deprived of the churches of which they had retained possession by his permission when they had agreed to appear before him.

ESTABLISHMENT STATED.

Not long before this the Donatists had received similar assistance themselves from the civil power, in regaining possession of their churches from a body which had seceded from them.

Further, under Charles the Great, when a case could not be settled before the bishops or the metropolitan, he directed that it should be brought finally before himself. The synods referred their decisions to him that they might be supplemented, amended, or confirmed.

The early English laws prove that similar powers were exercised by the sovereigns before the Conquest, and throughout the medieval period the English king never surrendered his supreme visitorial power, i.e. the power of determining finally, on his own responsibility and at his own. discretion, the ecclesiastical relations of his subjects.1

Whether these appeals to the civil power in disputed ecclesiastical questions, and the intervention of the sovereign finally to settle them, were in accordance with the inherent ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Christian Church or not, are points on which we are not called to express an opinion here; we simply cite these cases to show that the Christian Church possessed no coercive powers to carry out its own sentences against contumacious bishops, clergy, and members, but was obliged to have recourse to the State to give effect to its judgments.

8.

Present Dependence of Churches and other Religious Bodies on the Civil Power for Final Sentence and Coercive Jurisdiction.

In the case of the Eastern Church in Russia, the Holy Synod has supreme authority, under the Czar, over all ecclesiastical affairs. The Czar is personally supreme over all civil and ecclesiastical procedure. The members of the

1 See Ecclesiastical Courts Commission Report, p. 15.