Quest. XXV. Whether canons be laws? and pastors have a legislative power?
All men are not agreed what a law is, that is, what is to be taken for the proper sense of that word. Some will have the name confined to such common laws as are stated, durable rules for the subject’s actions: and some will extend it also to personal, temporary, verbal precepts and mandates, such as parents and masters use daily to the children and servants of their families. And of the first sort, some will confine the name laws to those acts of sovereignty which are about the common matters of the kingdom, or which no inferior officer may make: and others will extend it to those orders which by the sovereign’s charter, a corporation, or college, or school may make for the subregulation of their particular societies and affairs.
I have declared my own opinion de nomine fully elsewhere, 1. That the definition of a law in the proper, general sense, is to be a sign or signification of the reason and will of the rector as such, to his subjects as such, instituting or antecedently determining what shall be due from them, and to them; Jus efficiendo, regularly making right.
2. That these laws are many more ways diversified and distinguished, (from the efficient, sign, subjects, matter, end, &c.) than is meet for us here to enumerate. It is sufficient now to say, 1. That stated regular laws, as distinct from temporary mandates and proclamations. 2. And laws for kingdoms and other commonwealths, in regard of laws for persons, schools, families, &c. 3. And laws made by the supreme power, as distinct from those made by the derived authority of colleges, corporations, &c. called by-laws or orders (for I will here say nothing of parents and pastors, whose authority is directly or immediately from the efficiency of nature in one, and divine institution in the other, and not derived efficiently from the magistrate or any man). 4. That laws about great, substantial matters, distinct from those about little and mutable circumstances, &c. I say the first sort, as distinct from the second, are laws so called by excellency above other laws. But that the rest are univocally to be called laws, according to the best definition of the law in genere. But if any man will speak otherwise, let him remember that it is yet but lis de nomine, and that he may use his liberty, and I will use mine. Now to the question.
1. Canons made by virtue of the pastoral office and God’s general laws (in nature or Scripture) for regulating it, are a sort of laws to the subjects or flocks of those pastors.
2. Canons made by the votes of the laity of the church, or private part of that society as private, are no laws at all, but agreements; because they are not acts of any governing power.
3. Canons made by civil rulers about the circumstantials of the church, belonging to their office, as orderers of such things, are laws, and may be urged by moderate and meet civil or corporal penalties, and no otherwise.
4. Canons made by princes or inferior magistrates, are no laws purely and formally ecclesiastical, which are essentially acts of pastoral power; but only materially ecclesiastical, and formally magistratical.
5. No church officers as such, (much less the people,) can make laws with a co-active or coercive sanction; that is, to be enforced by their authority with the sword or any corporal penalty, mulct, or force; this being the sole privilege of secular powers, civil, or economical, or scholastic.
6. There is no obligation ariseth to the subject for particular obedience of any law, which is evidently against the laws of God (in nature or holy Scripture).
7. They are no laws which pastors make to people out of their power: as the popes, &c.
8. There is no power on earth under Christ, that hath authority to make universal laws; to bind the whole church on all the earth; or all mankind. Because there is no universal sovereign, civil or spiritual, personal or collective.
9. Therefore it is no schism, but loyalty to Christ, to renounce or separate from such a society of usurpation; nor any disobedience or rebellion, to deny them obedience.
10. Pastors may and must be obeyed in things lawful as magistrates, if the king make them magistrates: though I think it unmeet for them to accept a magistracy with the sword, except in case of some rare necessity.
11. If pope, patriarchs, or pastors shall usurp any of the king’s authority, loyalty to Christ and him, and the love of the church and state, oblige us to take part with Christ and the king against such usurpation, but only by lawful means, in the compass of our proper place and calling.
12. The canons made by the councils of many churches, have a double nature: as they are made for the people and the subjects of the pastors, they are a sort of laws; that is, they oblige by the derived authority of the pastors; because the pastors of several churches do not lose any of their power by their assembling, but exercise it with the greater advantage of concord. But as they are made only to oblige the present or absent pastors who separatedly are of equal office power, so they are no laws, except in an equivocal sense, but only agreements or contracts. So Bishop Usher professed his judgment to be; and before him the council of Carthage in Cyprian’s time; but it needs no proof, any more than that a convention of kings may make no laws to bind the kings of England, but contracts only.
13. But yet we are aliunde obliged even by God, to keep these agreements in things lawful, for the church’s peace and concord, when greater contrary reasons, a fine, do not disoblige us. For when God saith, You shall keep peace and concord, and keep lawful covenants, the canons afford us the minor, But these are lawful contracts or agreements, and means of the church’s peace and concord; therefore (saith God’s law) you shall observe them. So though the contracts (as of husband and wife, buyer and seller, &c.) be not laws, yet that is a law of God which bindeth us to keep them.
14. Seeing that even the obliging commands of pastors may not by them be enforced by the sword, but work by the power of divine authority or commission manifested, and by holy reason and love, therefore it is most modest and fit for pastors (who must not lord it over God’s heritage, but be examples to all) to take the lower name of authoritative directions and persuasions, rather than of laws; especially in a time when papal usurpation maketh such ruinating use of that name, and civil magistrates use to take it in the nobler and narrower sense.
The questions, 1. If one pastor make orders for his church, and the multitudes or synods be against them; which must be obeyed, you may gather from what is said before of ordination. And, 2. What are the particulars proper, materially, to the magistrate’s decision, and what to the pastor’s? I here pass by.
Grotius de imperio sum. pot. circ. sacr. most solidly resolveth
this question.
1 Pet. v. 2, 3; 2 Cor. i. 24.