Series 5 > Religious Controversy in Scotland 1625-1639

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RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY IN SCOTLAND
preside over many bishops. As I reckon, no prudent man disapproves this canonical polity,
nor ought he to disapprove, if it remains within its own bounds.... In my judgement that
monarchy of the Roman pontiff would benefit to this end, in order that a consensus of
doctrine may be retained in many nations.
But the truth is that the popes themselves gave just occasion of revolt from their
obedience, by abusing their power in their rash and unjust proceedings espe¬
cially against Christian princes, and the emperours themselves their gracious
lords, using their excommunication rather as civill punishments then ecclesias¬
tical censure or spirituall medicines, the most of them tending to destruction,
not (as the aposde would have them) to edification or salvation.They have like¬
wise excommunicated and interdicted whole kingdomes and Christian states,
contrarie to the doctrine, wisedom, and discreet proceeding of the ancient church,
as may appeare by the places following quoted out of St Augustine, Epistle 185,
To Boniface:126
For experience in many diseases necessarily brings in the invention of many remedies.
But in cases of this kind, when, owing to the serious ruptures of dissensions in the church,
it is no longer a question of danger to this or that particular individual, but whole nations
are lying in ruin, it is right to yield a little from our severity, that true charity may give her
aid in healing the more serious evils.... So it has been her wont to come to the aid of
multitudes who were perishing through schisms and heresies.
And Epistle 22, To Bishop Aurelius:'22 ‘These offences are taken out of the way, at
least in my judgment, by other methods than harshness, severity, and an imperi¬
ous mode of dealing—namely, rather by teaching than by commanding, rather
by advice than by denunciation. Thus at least we must deal with the multitude;
in regard to the sins of a few, exemplary severity must be used.’And Epistle 250,
To Auxilius:m
... if you have thoroughly examined your judgment in this matter, and have proved it by
irrefragable reasoning or scripture testimonies, you will have the kindness to teach me
also the grounds on which it is just that a son should be anathematized for the sin of his
father, of a wife for the sin of her husband, or a servant for the sin of his master, or how it
is just that even the child as yet unborn should lie under an anathema, and be debarred,
even though death were imminent, from the deliverance provided in the laver of regen¬
eration, if he happen to be born in a family at the time when the whole household is
under the ban of excommunication.... What of so many souls in the entire household?—
of which if even one, in consequence of the severity which included the whole house¬
hold in the excommunication, should perish through departing from the body without
baptism, the loss thus occasioned would be an incomparably greater calamity than the
bodily death of an innumerable multitude, even though they were innocent men, dragged
from the courts of the sanctuary and murdered.
Yet thus have they dealt with whole nations and commonwealthes, and that for
126 Epistle 50 [ii,78,79]; FH>rfc,iii,515.
127 Wedderburn has Epistle 63, but in the edition he used it is given as Epistle 64 [ii, 108]; Works, vi,
53.
128 Epistle 75 [ii, 117]; W>rfa,xm, 455-6.