320 NO SUCH POWER IN THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. light of, and, for the most part, treated unjustly;"' with much more passionate language to the same purpose. But in the primitive church the pope had no such power. L In the first times many causes and differences arose, wherein they who were condemned and worsted would readily have resorted where they might have hoped for remedy. If Rome had been such a place of refuge, it would have been very famous for it, and we should find history full of such examples, whereas it is very silent about them. 2. The most ancient customs and canons of the church are flatly repugnant to such a power, for they ordered causes finally to be de- cided in each province. So the synod of Nice decreed, as the African fathers alleged, in defence of their refusal to allow appeals to the pope: " The Nicene decrees," said they, " most evidently committed both clergymen of inferior degrees and bishops to their metropolitans. "' So Theophilus in his epistle: "I suppose you are not ignorant what the canons of the Nicene council command, ordaining that a bishop shouldjudge no cause out of his own district."' 3. Afterward when the diocesan administration was introduced, the last resort was decreed to the synods of them, or to the primates in them, all other appeals being prohibited "as dishonourable to the bishops of the diocese, reproaching the canons, and subverting eccle- siastical order to which canon the Emperor Justinian referred: "It is decreed by our ancestors that against the sentence of these prelates there should be no appeal. " So Constantius told Pope Liberius, " That those things which had a form of judgment passed on them could not be rescinded."' This was the practice, at least in the eastern parts of the church, in the time of Justinian, as is evident by the constitutions extant in the Code and in the Novels.'* 1 Bern. de Consid. lib. iii. cap. 2. Quousquemurmur univers terræ aut dissimulas, aut non advertis? &c. % Decreta Nicena sive inferioris gradus clericos, sive episcopos suis metropolitanis apertissime commiserunt. Syn. Afr. in Ep. ad P. Celest. 3 Arbitror te non ignorare quid praecipiant Niceni concilii cannes, sancientes epis- copum nonjudicare causam titra terminos suos . . . nam, &c.Pallad. cap. vii. Note, that the synod of Constantinople (can. vi.), mentioning appeals to the empe- ror, secular judicatories, a general synod, says, 'Acy<ávas 4 [9Yro xóvYOU, &c. Syn. Const., can. vi. ; Conc. Constantinop., can. ii. vi. ; Conc. Chale., can. ix. xvii. 5 Nam contra herum antistitum sententias non esse locum appellation a majoribus nostris constitutum est.Cod., lib. i. tit. 4, cap. 29. Tá dh g-úcrov i, c, íra dva%.óivtk oL Súvaoa Theod. 7 Nov. cxxiii. cap. 22; Cod., lib. i. tit. 4, § 29. Vid. Grwc. * The Justinian Code is often used to denote the whole system of laws digested by the Roman emperor Justinian about the year 533, which formed the ground-work of the civil law in the greater part of modern Europe. But the collection was divided into four parts, the Institutes, the Digests or pandects, the new Code, or digest of impe- rial decrees, and the Novels, or new constitutions, posterior to the other books. Ea.
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