SECTION VI. ... ............ Rules and Advices to the Clergy of the Diocess of Down and Connor, for their Deportment in their Personal and Public Capacities, given THE RULE OF CONSCIENCE. BOOK III. CHAP. IV. Continued. OF THE POWER OF THE CHURCH IN CANONS AND CENSURES, WITH THEIR OBLIGATIONS AND POWERS OVER THE CONSCIENCE. RULE IX. Excommunication, inflicted upon a light Cause, binds externally, but not internally; but if it be inflicted upon an unjust Cause, it binds not at all. 1. THIS latter part of the rule is evident and consented to by all. For in this the civil and ecclesiastical power differ. The civil power, if it condemns the innocent, hath effect upon him, and does afflict or put him to death: but the ecclesiastical power does nothing, unless the man hath done the mischief to himself. For God having undertaken to verify what the church does, it must be supposed that the church must do right, else God will not verify it; and then it signifies nothing, but that the governors ecclesiastical have sinned. "Ejiciunt oves qui contra justitiam de ecclesia separant," saith St. Jerome; "They that, against right, cast a man from the church," they are ill shepherds, "and drive the sheep" from their folds where Christ loves to see them: and therefore Alexander II. says, that "unjust excommunications are not to be slighted and neglected;" and Gerson says, 'it is honourable to the church, that such a prelate should be resisted to his face.' But this in case of injustice and manifest abuse: such are those excommunications in b 24. q. 1. c. Audivimus. a In Jerem, cap. xxiii. VOL. XIV. B the 'Bulla cœnæ Domini,' in which those persons who do their duty, who do not consent to the errors and abuses of the church of Rome, who read good books that discover their horrible impieties, are excommunicated: it is 'brutum fulmen; it is harsh as the noise of peacocks, but does no harm to them that are intended. 2. But now, in the other part of the rule, there is difficulty, and it is occasioned by a discourse of St. Leod; "Let not the communion be, easily or lightly, denied to any Christian, nor at the pleasure of every angry priest; because the mind of the avenger ought, unwillingly and with a kind of grief, to proceed to the infliction of vengeance, even upon a great guilt. For we have known some, for slight actions and words, excluded from the grace of the communion, and a soul for which the blood of Christ was shed, by the infliction of this sò severe a punishment, wounded, and, as it were, disarmed and spoiled of all defence, exposed to the assaults of the devil, that it might be easily taken." By which words St. Leo seems to say, that he, who, for a trifling cause, is excommunicate, does nevertheless feel all the evils of that greatest censure. He says well and true: but he does not say, that he is separate from God, that he shall perish everlastingly, -that God will in heaven verify what is done upon earth; but he, reproving this impiety, that the greater excommunication should be inflicted for trifles, tells the real evils which do follow: for the excommunicate, being separate from the communion, denied the prayers of the church, banished from the communion of saints, is divested of all these excellent helps and spiritual defensatives against the power of the devil. Now this is very true, though the case were wholly unjust; and much more, if the cause be something, though not sufficient. 'De facto' the man is deprived of the helps of the church, and the advantages of holy ordinances: and though God will, if the man be a good man and devout, hear his private prayers, and supply him with secret strengths, and in his behalf rebuke the devil; yet it is a worthy cause of complaint in St. Leo, to consider that this evil was done for little things, and that, for so small occasions, God should be put to his extraordinary way, and the man be deprived of the blessings of the ordinary. d In his 93d epistle. e 3. But whether this sentence, so slightly inflicted, do really bind the soul before God, is a question which Origen inquired into, but durst not affirm it; but concludes that it obliges in the church and before men: for whether it obliges before God or no, "Deus scit; nos autem pronunciare non possumus, secundum quod scriptum est, ' Nolite judicare, " " God only knows, but we must not judge." But yet if it be his unhappy lot to fall into such a calamity, " factum valet, fieri non debuit;" the ecclesiastical ruler did very ill in it, yet the man is bound to the church. "Qui ergo in peccato levi correptus-non se emendat, nos quidem sic eum debemus habere, quasi publicanum, et ethnicum, abstinentes ab eo, ut confundatur;" "He therefore that is taken and excommunicate for a small fault, and will not amend, we must esteem him as a heathen and a publican, that he may be ashamed. Indeed the church hath put a heavy and an unequal load upon such a person, and hath erred greatly; for no man is to be separate from the church of God, but he that separated himself from God, and hath left his duty: but therefore if the church do excommunicate him, whose action or words though it be faulty, yet it can consist with the state of a good man, and does not destroy the love of God, the censure was too heavy as to the external, and false as to the internal; for the man is not fallen from God, but does communicate with the head, and continues to receive of the spirit of Christ. 4. But yet even such a man is bound externally: for this is the meaning of that famous saying of St. Gregory ; "Pastoris sententia etiam injusta timenda est;" "The sentence of a bishop, though it be unjust, is to be feared;" that is, though it be in a cause, that is not great and competent enough, but if it be in a light matter, yet it is to be feared; not only because the man is deprived of the prayers and communions of the church (which, though it happen to an innocent person, is a great evil, and therefore is to be feared though it be in all senses unjust); but also, because it binds the man that is deprehended even in a light fault, to submit to the judgment and satisfactions of the church. The burden is very great, and ought not to have been imposed; but when it is, it must be suffered, because no repentance can be too great for any Tract. 6. in Matt. ( In Evangel. homil. 26. |