Series 5 > Religious Controversy in Scotland 1625-1639

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RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY IN SCOTLAND
The Master of Sentences, after Jerome, expounds this place the same way, giving
the power of binding and loosing to all priests as well as to bishops, bk. 4, distinc¬
tion 19:50 ‘It seems right to others, as I acknowledge it seems right to me, this key
is given to the entire body of priests [sacerdotibus], namely of binding and loosing....
for, he says, the other aposdes, as well as Peter, have this same judicial power,
because truly all priests have this power, and the whole church has in bishops
and presbyters.’51
As Christ s precept puts the right of the church censures not in the hand of
one bishop but of the church—a multitude of governours, the presbyterie, the
synedrium of elders—so was the practice in the apostles’ dayes. See 1 Corinthians
5 [: 4-5], where it is acknowledged that the excommunication of the incestuous
did belong not to a bishop, which then was not, but to the church of Corinth,
for the aposde rebuketh them that they had not excommunicat; albeit he was an
aposde,yet will he not take this censure to himselfe alone but willjoine them, or
rather willjoine himselfe with them,making them the subject of the power:‘Yee
being met with my Spirit’, he commaunds them to purge away the old leaven
and shewes that they have power to judge all within the church, which St Au¬
gustine, The City of God, bk. 20, ch. 9,52 expounds of excommunication ‘by the
rulers themselves by whom the Church is now governed’.This same excommu¬
nication, 2 episde [2 Corinthians 2:6-10], is called a rebook53 given by many
and the absolution from it is given to them, ‘to whom yee forgive, I forgive’,
shewing that both the censure and absolution from it belong to those who were
no bishops. So Chrysostom on the place takes it:‘He made them companions in
the decree; neither did he alone give it out, least they should think him proud
and a contemner of them.’54 Long after the apostles’ dayes was this practice keeped
in the church, that all ecclesiastick causes did come before not one bishop, but a
multitude of elders. Tertulhan, Apology, 39: ‘the tried men of our elders preside
over us’,55 and Cyprian is full of the convocation of his presbyterie at every
occurrance for the judging of all ecclesiasticall causes. Neither was the calling of
the presbyterie a matter arbitrarie at the bishop’s option as a prince doeth call his
councell when he will and misken it when he pleases, and when it is called
either followes their advyce or rejects it. Such princely power of bishops over
50 PL, cxcii, 890.
1 ‘bishops and presbyters’ reversed in NLS copy.
52 Augustine, W6rfes,ii,365.
53 ‘rebuked’ is used in GB, but Baillie was probably consulting the Greek NT at this point.
54 Greek text omitted. See Saint Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians (A
Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. xii, ed. P. Schaff, repr. Grand Rapids, Mich.,
1956), 298.
55 Tertullian, Writings, i, 119.