Barrow - BX1805 .B3 1852

324 NO APPEALS TO THE POPE IN EARLY TIMES. upon no account favour that use of them to which, to the overthrow of all ecclesiasticalliberty and good discipline, they have been per- verted ; for, (1.) They pretend to confer a privilege on the pope; which argues that he before had no claim thereto. (2.) They qualify and restrain that privilege to certain cases and forms; which is a sign that he had no power therein flowing from absolute sovereignty, for it is strange that they who pretended and intended so much to favour him should clip his power. (3.) It is not really a power which they grant of receiving appeals in all causes, but a power of constituting judges, qualified according to certain conditions, to revise a special sort of causes, concerning the judgment and deposition of bishops. Which considerations subvert his pretence to original and universal jurisdiction upon appeals. 14. Some popes challenged jurisdiction upon appeals, as given them by the Nicene canons, meaning thereby those of Sardica ; which shows they had nobetter plea, and therefore no original right. And otherwhere we shall consider what validity those canons may be allowed to have. 15. The general synod of Chalcedon (of higher authority than that of Sardica) derived appeals, at least in the eastern churches, into another channel,---namely, to theprimate of each diocese, or to the patriarch of Constantinople.' That this was the last resort appears from [the fact] that otherwise they would have mentioned the pope. 16. Appeals in cases of faith or general discipline were, indeed, sometimes made to the consideration of the pope; but not only to him, but to all other patriarchs and primates, as concerned in the common maintenance of the common faith or discipline. So Euty- ches appealed to the patriarchs. 17. The pope, even in later times, even in the western parts, has found rubs in his trade of appeals. Consider the scuffle between Pope Nicholas I. and Hincmarus, bishop of Rhemes [Rheims] 18. Christian states, to prevent the intolerable vexations and mis- chiefs arising from this practice, have been constrained to make laws against them, particularly England.' In the twelfth age, Pope Paschal II. complained of King Henry I. "that he deprived the oppressed of the benefit of appealing to the apostolic see."4 It was one of King Henry I.'s laws, "None is per- mitted to cry from thence, no judgment is thence brought to the 1 Can. ix. 17. 2 Baron. ann. 865, &c. ; P. Mc. I., Ep. xxxvii. &o. s Vid. Matt. Paris, ann. 1094 ; Statutes of provisors, premunire, &e. 4 Vos oppressis apostolica; sedis appellationem subtrahitis. Eadm. p. 113.

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