400 DISCOURSE ON THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. this authority seated? How then did the political unity of the church subsist? Was the seat of the sovereign authority first resi- dent at Jerusalem, when St Peter preached there? Did it walk thence to Antioch, fixing itself therefor seven years? Was it thence translated to Rome, and settled there ever since? Did this roving and inconstancy become it? 5. The primitive state of the church did not well comport with such an unity. For Christian churches were founded in distant places, as the apostles found opportunity, or received direction to found them; which, therefore, could not, without extreme inconvenience, have resort or reference to one authority anywhere fixed. Each church, therefore, separately ordered its own affairs, without recourse to others, except for charitable advice or relief in cases of extraordinary difficulty or urgent need. Each church was endowed with a perfect liberty and a full au- thority, without dependence or subordination to others, to govern its own members, to manage its own affairs, to decide controversies and causes incident among themselves, without allowing appeals or rendering accounts to others. This appears by the apostolical writings of St Paul and St John to single churches, wherein they are supposed able to exercise spi- ritual power for establishing decency, removing disorders, correcting offences, deciding causes, &c. Rev. ii. iii.; 1 Cor. xiv. 40; 1 Thess. v. 14; 1 Cor. v. 12, vi. 1. 6. This aúzovoµFa, and liberty of churches, appears to have long continued in practice inviolate, although tempered and modelled in accommodation to the circumstances of place and time. It is true, that if any church notoriously forsook the truth, or committed disorder in any kind, other churches sometimes took upon them, as the case moved, to warn, advise, reprove it, and to declare against its proceedings, as prejudicial not only to the welfare of that church, but to the common interests of truth and peace; but this was not in way of commanding authority, but of fraternal solicitude, or of that liberty which equity and prudence allow to equals in re- gard to common good. So the Roman church interposed in reclaim- ing the church of Corinth from its disorders and seditious (Iren. iii. cap. 2); so St Cyprian and St Denis of Alexandria meddled in the affairs of the Roman church, exhorting Novatian and his adherents to return to the peace of their church. It is also true, that the bishops of several adjacent churches used to meet upon emergencies (concerning the maintenance of truth, order, and peace; concerning settlement and approbation of pastors, &c.), to consult and conclude upon expedients for attaining such 4
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