412 DISCOURSE ON THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. to relieve one another in need were to be under one government. Then all mankind must be so. Ans. 2. It appears by St Paul that these succours were of free charity, favour, and liberality, and not by constraint.' Arg. XII. The use of councils is also alleged as an argument of this unity. Ep., p. 51; Lat., p. 400. Ans. 1. General councils, in case truth is disowned, that peace is disturbed, that discipline is loosed or perverted, are wholesome expe- dients to clear truth and heal breaches; but the holding them is no more an argument of political unity in the church than the treatyof Munster was a sign of all Europe being under one civil government. Ans. 2. They are extraordinary, arbitrary, prudential means of restoring truth, peace, order, discipline; but from them nothing can be gathered concerning the continual ordinary state of the church. Ans. 3. For during a long time the church wanted them, and afterwards had them but rarely. "For the first three hundred years," says Bellarmine, " there was no general assembly; afterwards, scarce one in a hundred years."' And since the breach between the oriental and western churches, for many centenaries, there hath been none. Yet was the church from the beginning one till Constantine, and long afterwards. Ans. 4. The first general councils (indeed all that have been with any probable show capable of that denomination) were congregated by emperors to cure the dissensions of bishops; what, therefore, can be argued from them but that the emperors found it good to settle peace and truth, and took this for a good mean thereto? Alb. Pighius said that general councils were an invention of Con- stantine, and who can confute him?Bell. de Conc. i. 13. Ans. 5. They show rather the unity of the empire than of the church, or of the church as national under one empire than as catho- lic; for it was the state which called and moderated them to its purposes. Ans. 6. It is manifest that the congregation of them depends on the permission and pleasure of secular powers, and in all equity should do so (as otherwhere is showed.) s Ans. 7. It is not expedient that there should be any of them, now 1 2 Cor. viii. 3, Aidaips,ror. Verse 8, ob zeve ivrorayiv. Chop. ix. 7 ,"E..pros vrpaarps7.rar. Rom. xv. 26, Ebaóxneay. Acts xi. 29; xxiv. 17,'Exsnp6ae4as ororrvwv. 2 Primis trecentis anis nulla fuit congregatio generalis ; postea vero vix centesimo anno. De Rom. P. i. 8. 3 The validity of synodical decrees (as spiritual) doth proceed from the obligation to each singular bishop; as if princes in confederacy do make any sanction, the subjects of each are bound to observe them, not from any relation to the body confederating, but because of their obligation to their own prince consenting.
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