ments adduced to the contrary by many other Roman theologians".

II. The Roman bishop did not, for many centuries, exercise the powers of a patriarch in the western churches generally. According to Thomassin, presbyter of the Oratory, the privileges of a patriarch were as follows. First, to ordain all the metropolitans of their patriarchate, and many of the bishops; secondly, to judge those metropolitans; thirdly, to receive the appeals of bishops from metropolitans, and even those of presbyters and deacons ; fourthly, to assemble councils of those subject to their patriarchate. From this it may be concluded that the Roman patriarchate does not extend beyond Italy and Sicily, for the following reasons i.

1. There is no instance of the metropolitans of Africa being ordained by the papal authority. On the contrary, it is plain that the bishops of Carthage were ordained by the synod of Africa. De Marca, archbishop of Paris, has proved that it was the ancient right of the Gallican and Spanish churches to ordain their own metropolitans, without reference to any foreign authority. Even the archbishop of Milan was not ordained by the Roman pontiff, but by the bishop of Aquileia'.

2. The canons attribute the judgment of all bishops without exception to the provincial synods; and we do not find that the Roman pontiff during the early ages, either claimed or exercised any peculiar right of judging the metropolitans of the west.

3. That the patriarch of Rome had no right to receive appeals from Africa, appears by the case of Apiarius, whom Zozimus pretended to absolve from the excommunication of an African synod; on which it was decreed by the African church, and renewed again more than once, that whoever should appeal from the African synod to Rome, should be excommunicated. Baluzius proves that for eight hundred years the Gallican churches permitted no appeals to the Roman patriarch ".

4. Though the bishops of Rome assembled many synods in the course of the first six centuries, we do not find a single example of their summoning all the bishops of the west to a patriarchal synod. Their synods consisted always of the bishops of Italy; and were never attended by those of Africa, Gaul, Spain, Germany, Illyricum, Britain; unless by chance one or two happened to be present in the city.

Gregory the great himself was sensible that it might be alleged that Spain was not within the Roman patriarchate; for in an epistle to the Spanish bishops, having quoted an imperial law commanding certain causes to be referred to the metropolitan or the patriarch of the diocese, he continues: "If against this it be alleged, that he has no metropolitan or patriarch: it must be said, that the cause is to be heard and decided by the apostolical see, the head of all churches "."

III. We may conclude then, that the patriarchate of Rome does not extend beyond the limits of Italy and

m Baluzii Præfat. ad Anton. quia a sede apostolica, quæ omAugust. lib. de emendatione

Gratiani.

"Contra hæc si dictum fuerit, quia nec metropolitam habuit nec patriarcham; dicendum est

nium ecclesiarum caput est, causa hæc audienda ac dirimenda fuerat."-Gregorius Magnus, Epist. lib. ii. ep. 56.

the adjoining islands; because no patriarchal rights were exercised beyond them by the Roman pontiffs for many centuries. For it is in vain to allege, as the Ultramontanes do, that the Roman see did not exercise its rightful privileges, or that the confusions of the times may have interfered with them. History shows that these prelates have been always but too anxious to exercise and to extend their jurisdiction.

With regard to the British churches in particular, it has been shown by Stillingfleet and others, that there is no evidence that the Roman pontiff ever exercised any acts of patriarchal jurisdiction in them, or that they form any part of the Roman patriarchate: but these proofs are needless, for if so many other provinces of the west, much nearer to Rome, were not under its jurisdiction, it is not credible that our provinces should have been so.

OBJECTIONS.

1. Schelstrate, in reply to Stillingfleet, adduces the letter of the synod of Arles to pope Sylvester, in a. D. 314, which consisted of bishops from Africa, Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Britain, in which it is said: "Placuit etiam antequam a te qui majores dioceses tenes, per te potissimum omnibus insinuari," or, as corrected by Du Perron, "Placuit etiam, hæc juxta antiquam consuetudinem, a te, qui majores dioceses tenes, per te potissimum omnibus insinuari," implying an acknowledgment that the bishop of Rome held the "greater dioceses." These greater dioceses Schelstrate says, must mean the civil dioceses of the Roman empire. These dioceses

Stillingfl. Orig. Brit. See Auctoritate Patriarchali et MeVol. I. p. 482. tropolitica, Romæ, 1687.

P Schelstrate, Dissertatio de

were thirteen, viz. Macedonia, Dacia, Italy, Illyricum, Africa, Gaul, Spain, and Britain, in the west; and Egypt, the Oriental, Asia, Pontus, and Thrace, in the east; and hence Schelstrate supposes that the greater dioceses referred to by the synod, must mean the western dioceses of Italy, Africa, Gaul, Britain, &c.

Answer. There is no proof that the word 'dioceses' was, so early as 314, applied to the civil dioceses, or that Constantine had yet formed those dioceses. Schelstrate himself produces no evidence of their existence until about the time of the council of Nice in 325, when Constantine, having lately subdued Licinius, and obtained possession of the whole empire, may probably have instituted this arrangement.

We find, indeed, the term dioecesis' generally applied before the synod of Arles to the ordinary provinces of the Roman empire. Schelstrate himself quotes Onuphrius Panvinus, saying that in the time of the emperor Hadrian, "there were seventeen provinces or dioceses in Italy and its islands." He might have added that Strabo, in the time of Tiberius, observed that Phrygia, and other regions of Asia, were divided into dioceses' by the Romans; and that the ' diocese' of Cybara was the greatest in Asia. Cicero mentions three dioceses' of Asia, and speaks of "all the dioceses" between mount Taurus and Cilicia'. Hence it is plain that the term had been applied long before the synod of Arles, to the ordinary Roman province,

e

b Schelstrate, p. 62. Ibid. p. 63.

d Strabo, lib. xiii. p. 432.

Cicero, lib. xiii. ad famil. Epist. lxvii. "Ex provincia mea Cilicienci, cui scis tres dlouhos Asiaticas attributas fuisse."

Id. lib. iii. epist. ix. "Quid enim erant, &c. . . . ut me omnium illarum diœcesium, quæ cis Taurum sunt, omniumque earum magistratus legationesque convenirent."

or some smaller division; so that we may most probably understand the expression "majores dioceses," to refer to those Italian provinces subject to the Roman patriarchate, the term majores being taken positively for "magnas," and doubtless those provinces might well be called great, since they were the richest and most populous in the whole world, and comprised about 240 bishoprics.

II. The British bishops, at all events, with the rest of the synod of Arles, acknowledged the papal power of receiving appeals from all parts of the world".

Answer. 1. This can have no relation to the patriarchal power of Rome; because no one pretends that the Roman patriarchate extends over the whole world. 2. There was no acknowledgment of the papal power of receiving appeals; but the right of desiring the cause to be re-heard, was here conferred on the bishop of Rome; a privilege, however, which was never acknowledged by the eastern church, and which did not take effect for several centuries in the west, as Du Pin has shown.

III. Pelagius, after being accused of heresy at synods in the east, permitted his cause to be referred to the Roman pontiff, which he would not have done, if the Roman pontiff had not had authority in Britain *.

Answer. Pelagius had preached his heresies in Italy and the east, therefore he was lawfully subject to the cognizance of synods and bishops in those regions. He did not appeal from a British synod to Rome, but from an oriental synod.

IV. The bishops of Spain, Gaul, and Africa, often consulted the Roman see in difficult cases, and re

"Schelstrate, p. 94.

Du Pin, De Antiqua Eccl. VOL. II.

Discipl. Dissert. ii.

k

Schelstrate, p. 95.

Nn