Canon Fourth. Of the ordination of a presbyter.
Canon Fifth. Of the constituting a deacon.
Canon Sixth. Of those who have suffered for the faith.
Canon Seventh. Of him who is elected reader and sub-deacon.
Canon Eighth. Of the gift of healings.
Canon Ninth. That a presbyter should not dwell in unbefitting places; and of the honour of widows.
Canon Tenth. Of those who wish to become Nazarenes (Christians).
Canon Eleventh. Of him who makes idols and images, or the artificer.
Canon Twelfth. Of the prohibition of those works, the authors of which are not to be received but on the exhibition of repentance.
Canon Thirteenth. Of a prince or a soldier, that they be not received indiscriminately.
Canon Fourteenth. That a Nazarene may not become a soldier unless by order.
Canon Fifteenth. Enumeration of works which are unlawful.
Canon Sixteenth. Of him who has a lawful wife, and takes another beside her.
Canon Seventeenth. Of a free-born woman, and her duties. Of midwives, and of the separation of men from women. Of virgins, that they should cover their faces and their heads.
Canon Eighteenth. Of women in childbed, and of midwives again.
Canon Nineteenth. Of catechumens, and the ordinance of Baptism and the Missa.
Canon Twentieth. Of the fast the six days, and of that of Lent.
Canon Twenty-first. Of the daily assembling of priests and people in the church.
Canon Twenty-second. Of the week of the Jews' passover, wherein joy shall be put away, and of what is eaten therein; and of him who, being brought up abroad, is ignorant of the Calendar. [2079]
Canon Twenty-third. Of doctrine, that it should be continuous, greater than the sea, and that its words ought to be fulfilled by deeds.
Canon Twenty-fourth. Of the bishop's visitation of the sick; and that if an infirm man has prayed in the church, and has a house, he should go to him.
Canon Twenty-fifth. Of the procurator appointed for the sick, and of the bishop, and the times of prayer.
Canon Twenty-sixth. Of the hearing of the word in church, and of praying in it.
Canon Twenty-seventh. Of him who does not come to church daily,--let him read books; and of prayer at midnight and cock-crowing, and of the washing of hands at the time of any prayer.
Canon Twenty-eighth. That none of the believers should taste anything, but after he has taken the sacred mysteries, especially in the days of fasting.
Canon Twenty-ninth. Of the keeping of oblations which are laid upon the altar,--that nothing fall into the sacred chalice, and that nothing fall from the priests, nor from the boys when they take communion; that an evil spirit rule them not, and that no one speak in the protection, [2080] except in prayer; and when the oblations of the people cease, let psalms be read with all attention, even to the signal of the bell; and of the sign of the cross, and the casting of the dust of the altar into the pool. [2081]
Canon Thirtieth. Of catechumens and the like.
Canon Thirty-first. Of the bishop and presbyter bidding the deacons present the communion.
Canon Thirty-second. Of virgins and widows, that they should pray and fast in the church. Let those who are given to the clerical order pray according to their judgment. Let not a bishop be bound to fasting but with the clergy. And on account of a feast or supper, let him prepare for the poor. [2082]
Canon Thirty-third. Of the Atalmsas (the oblation), which they shall present for those who are dead, that it be not done on the Lord's day.
Canon Thirty-fourth. That no one speak much, nor make a clamour; and of the entrance of the saints into the mansions of the faithful.
Canon Thirty-fifth. Of a deacon present at a feast at which there is a presbyter present,--let him do his part in prayer and the breaking of bread for a blessing, and not for the body; and of the discharge of widows.
Canon Thirty-sixth. Of the first-fruits of the earth, and the first dedication of them; and of presses, oil, honey, milk, wool, and the like, which may be offered to the bishop for his blessing.
Canon Thirty-seventh. As often as a bishop takes of the sacred mysteries, let the deacons and presbyters be gathered together, clothed in white robes, brilliant in the view of all the people; and in like manner with a reader.
Canon Thirty-eighth. Of the night on which our Lord Jesus Christ rose. That no one shall sleep on that night, and wash himself with water; and a declaration concerning such a one; and a declaration concerning him who sins after baptism, and of things lawful and unlawful.
The sacred canons of the holy patriarch Hippolytus, the first patriarch of the great city of Rome, [2083] which he composed, are ended; and the number of them is thirty-eight canons. May the Lord help us to keep them. And to God be glory for ever, and on us be His mercy for ever. Amen.
[2075] De Magistris, Acta Martyrum ad Ostia Tiberina, Rome, 1795, fol. Append., p. 478. [Bunsen, vol. ii. p. 302.]
[2076] [Ad proferendum sancte. A very primitive token.]
[2077] [Note this mild excommunication of primitive ages.]
[2078] Ordinatio missæ. [Missa. See note 6, p, 256, supra.]
[2079] Connection, textum.
[2080] Sanctuary [Guettée, p. 424. Within the chancel-rails.]
[2081] [Bells first used in the fourth century by Paulinus in Campania.]
[2082] And of the preparing a table for the poor.
[2083] [A very strange title in many respects. But see p. 239, supra.]
Elucidations.
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I.
(The God-bearing Mary, p. 242.)
"This name" (theotokos), says Pearson, "was first in use in the Greek Church, which, delighting in the happy compositions of that language, so called the Blessed Virgin; from which the Latins, in imitation, styled her Virginem Deiparam," etc....Yet those ancient Greeks which call the Virgin theotokos, did not call her metera tou Theou, "Mother of God." This was very different to a pious ear, and rests on no synodical authority. The very learned notes of Pearson, On the Creed, pp. 297, 299, should by all means be consulted. Leo of Rome, called "the Great," seems to have coined the less orthodox expression, relying on Holy Scripture, indeed, in the salutation of Elisabeth (Luke i. 43). This term has been sadly abused for Mariolatry.
II.
(Synaxis, p. 257.)
It seems to me worth while to quote a few words from the new and critical edition of Leighton's Works, which should be consulted for fuller information. [2084] The editor says: "Leighton uses a word for the Holy Communion which is worth noting, because it is rarely used by Western theologians." The word Synaxis is but a Christianized form of the word Synagogue; but, like the word koinonia, it points to Christ's mystical body,--"gathering together in one the children of God." Synaxis = sunagei eis hen. It sums up the idea, "We, being many, are one Bread and one Body, for we are all partakers of that one Bread." Compare John xi. 52 and 1 Cor. x. 15.
St. Chrysostom calls the Synaxis phrikodestate, which is a very different thing from maxime tremenda, as applied to the modern "Mass," in behalf of which it is quoted. For Chrysostom applies it to the participation of the "Synaxis," and not to the "oblation," much less to the "Host" as an object of adoration, of which he never heard or dreamed. He calls "the Synaxis" Shudderful (to borrow a word from the Germans), because the unworthy recipient, in the Synaxis, eats and drinks his own condemnation. [2085] One must ever be on his guard against the subtlety which reads into the Fathers modern ideas under ancient phrases. [2086] Precisely so Holy Scripture itself is paraphrased into Trent doctrine, as in Acts xiii. 2 the Louvain versionists rendered the text, "And while they offered the sacrifice of the Mass and fasted."
[2084] Leighton, Works, edited by West, of Nairn, vol. vi. p. 243, note. London, Longmans, 1870.
[2085] 1 Cor. xi. 29-34. Chrysostom evidently has in view the apostle's argument, based on the Communion as a Synaxis, and not on its hierurgic aspects.
[2086] Mendham's Literary Policy of the Church of Rome (passim), and also the old work of James, On the Corruption of Scripture, Councils, and Fathers, a new edition. London: Parker, 1843.
Cyprian
Cyprian.
[Translated by the Rev. Ernest Wallis, Ph.D.]
Introductory Notice to Cyprian.
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[a.d. 200-258.] If Hippolytus reflects the spirit of Irenæus in all his writings, it is not remarkable. He was the spiritual son of the great Bishop of Lyons, and deeply imbued with the family character imparted to his disciples by the blessed presbyter of Patmos and Ephesus. But while Cyprian is the spiritual son and pupil of Tertullian, we must seek his characteristics and the key to his whole ministry in the far-off See and city where the disciples were first called Christians. Cyprian is the Ignatius of the West. We see in his works how truly historical are the writings of Ignatius, and how diffused was his simple and elementary system of organic unity. It embodies no hierarchical assumption, no "lordship over God's heritage," but is conceived in the spirit of St. Peter when he disclaimed all this, and said, "The presbyters who are among you I exhort, who am also a presbyter." Cyprian was indeed a strenuous asserter of the responsibilities of his office; but he built upon that system universally recognised by the Great Councils, which the popes and their adherents have ever laboured to destroy. Nothing can be more delusive than the idea that the mediæval system derives any support from Cyprian's theory of the episcopate or of Church organization. His was the system of the universal parity and community of bishops. In his scheme the apostolate was perpetuated in the episcopate, and the presbyterate was an apostolic institution, by which others were associated with bishops in all their functions as co-presbyters, but not in those reserved to the presidency of the churches. Feudal ideas imposed a very different system upon the simple framework of original Catholicity. But a careful study of that primitive framework, and of the history of papal development, makes evident the following propositions:--
1. That Cyprian's maxim, Ecclesia in Episcopo, whatever else he may have meant by it, is an aphoristic statement of the Nicene Constitutions. These were embedded in the Ignatian theory of an episcopate without a trace of a papacy; and Cyprian's maxims had to be practically destroyed in the West before it was possible to raise the portentous figure of a supreme pontiff, and to subject the Latin churches to the entirely novel principle of Ecclesia in Papa. To this novelty Cyprian's system is essentially antagonistic.
2. It will be seen that Cyprian, far from being the patron of ecclesiastical despotism, is the expounder of early canons and constitutions, in the spirit of order and discipline, indeed, but with the largest exemplification of that "liberty" which is manifested wherever "the Spirit of the Lord" is operative. Cyprian is the patron and defender of the presbytery and of lay co-operation, as well as of the regimen of the episcopate. His letters illustrate the Catholic system as it was known to the Nicene Fathers; but, of all the Christian Fathers, he is the most clear and comprehensive in his conception of the body of Christ as an organic whole, in which every member has an honourable function. [2087] Popular government and representative government, the legitimate power and place of the laity, the organization of the Christian plebs into their faculty as the antilepseis of St. Paul, [2088] the development of synods, omni plebe adstante,--all this is embodied in the Catholic system as Cyprian understood it.
3. The Orientals [2089] in large degree, even under their yoke of bondage and the superstitions engendered by their decay, have ever adhered to this Ignatian theory, of which Cyprian was the great expounder in the West; while the terrible schism of the ninth century, which removed the West from the Nicene basis, and placed the Latin churches upon the foundation of the forged Decretals, [2090] was effected by ignoring the Cyprianic maxims, and then by a practical pulverizing of their fundamental principle of unity. This change involved a subversion of the primitive episcopate, an annihilation of the rights of the presbytery, and a total abasement of the laity; in a word, the destruction of synodical constitutions and of constitutional freedom.
4. The constitutional primacy, of which Cyprian was an early promotor, had to be entirely destroyed by decretalism before the papacy could exist. Gregory the Great stood upon the Cyprianic base when he pronounced the author of a scheme for a "universal bishopric" to be a forerunner of Antichrist. It was the spirit of the Decretals to substitute the fictitious idea of a divine supremacy in one bishop and one See, for the canonical presidency of a bishop who was only primus inter pares.
5. Hence the Cyprianic system has ever been the great resource of the "Gallicans against the Ultramontanes" in the cruel but most interesting history of the West. From the Council of Frankfort to our own times Cyprian's spirit is reflected in Hincmar, in Gerbert, in the Gallican canonists, in De Marca, in Bossuet, in Launoy, in Dupin, in Pascal, in the Jansenists (Augustinians), and by the Old Catholics in their late uprising against the dogmatic triumph of Ultramontanism. Nobody can understand the history of Latin Christianity without mastering the system of Cyprian, and comprehending the entirely hostile and uncatholic system of the Decretals.