THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
of unsoundness in the faith and set forth the views they actually held. A declaration was adopted, consisting of sixteen articles, corresponding to a similar list of sixteen heresies alleged to be held by the New School churches, which had been presented to the Assembly and had been the basis of its acticwi. Replying to the first of the charges, that it was taught " that God would have been glad to prevent the existence of sin in our world, but was not able without destroying the moral agency of man; or that, for aught that appears in the Bible, sin is incidental to any wise, moral system," the members of the convention declared that they believed that " God permitted the introduction of sin, not because he was unable to prevent it consistently with the moral freedom of his creatures, but for wise and benevolent reasons which he has not revealed " (art. i) . In replying to the other charges, the convention pronounced fully in the sense of the Westminster Symbols. With a perhaps unconscious supralapsarianism, they put the doctrine of election first in order, and all the other facts in the process of redemption after it; so the arrangement suggests that it was the primary purpose of God to save a definite number of men out of a race to be thereafter created; that in pursuance of this purpose man was formed, the fall decreed, and an atonement provided sufficient to meet the case of that predestined number, and no others. No affirmation of the universality of the atonement is found among these sixteen propositions. Original sin, total depravity, vicarious atonement, Christ's intercession for the elect previous to their conversion, absolute dependence upon irresistible divine grace for the renewal of the heart, instantaneous regeneration, etc., all these dogmas are emphatically affirmed. " All who are saved are indebted from first to last to the grace and spirit of God and the reason why God does not save all is not that he wants the power to do it, but that in his wisdom he does not see fit to exert that power further than he actually does " (art. xiii). In short, the Auburn Declaration rises well up to the high-water mark of the Calvinistic theology and was indorsed by the General Assembly (Old School) in 1868 as containing " all the fundamentals of the Calvinistic Creed."
Bibliography: For full text of the declaration consult Schaff, Creeds, iii, 777-780; consult also E. D. Morris, The Presbyterian Church, New School, 1837-1869, pp. 77 sqq., Columbus, O., 1905.
AUDIANS: The followers of a certain Audius, according to Epiphanius (Hcer., lxx; followed by Augustine, Hcer., 1), Theodoret (Hist, eccl., iv, 10; Hcer. fab., iv, 10), and Ephraem Syrus (Serm., xxiv, Adv. hcer.), who state that Audius was a Mesopotamian, a layman who lived " in the time of Arius," that he declaimed against the worldly conduct of the clergy, founded an ascetic sect, and, in his old age banished to Scythia, did successful missionary work among the Goths. When Epiphanius wrote (c. 375) the sect was practically extinct in its original home. He praises the orthodoxy of Audius and his exemplary life, but blames him and his followers for holding anthropomorphic views of God and for being quartodecimans. G. Kruger.
Bibliography: C. W. F. Walch, Entwurf einer vollstandigen Historie dcr Ketzereien, iii, 300-321, Leipsic, 1766; G. Hoffmann, Ausziige aus syrischen Akten persischer Martyrer, pp. 122, Leipsic, 1880; J. Overbeck, S. Ephraerm Syri Rabulce opera, p. 194, Oxford, 1865; L. E. Iselin, in JPT, xvi (1890), 298-305.
AUDIENTIA EPISCOPALIS: The name given by the code of Justinian to the bishop's power of hearing and deciding judicial cases. This power in the early Church was based upon such passages of Scripture as Matt, xviii, 18-16 and I Cor. vi, 1- 6. The Didache testifies to the exercise of this power by the presbyters, or by the college of presbyters with the bishop at their head; and the Apostolic Constitutions forbid Christians to go to law, even with the heathen, before a pagan tribunal. Small differences are to be adjusted by the deacons; the more important are to be laid before the bishop sitting in judgment with his clergy every Monday; he is to decide after careful investigation and orderly examination of witnesses, by a procedure following closely that of the secular tribunals. The enforcement of his sentence by the civil power could, of course, only follow when the act took on the form of a stipulation, which could be brought before the courts. But with the public recognition of Christianity, Constantine gave the bishops a real judicial power. The first of his three edicts on this subject is lost, and there have been many controversies about the other two, of 321 and 333. Either party might appeal to the bishop at any stage in the proceedings, and his decision was final, though it required enforcement by the civil tribunals, for even Constantine gave the bishop no imperium. This privilege was abolished by Arcadius for the East (398) and by Honorius for the West (408); the regulations established by Valentinian III in 452 provide that no one shall be forced to appear before the episcopal tribunal, and reduce the power to something more like its original limits. In the form then fixed, it remained in Justinian's code. The bishops attempted, in virtue of their disciplinary authority over their clergy, to compel the latter to submit even their civil differences to episcopal judgment; this Justinian approved, and extended to suits by laymen against clerics. The representatives of the ecclesiastical tendency in the Frankish kingdom went back to the edicts of Constantine. Thus Florus of Lyons, in his commentary on the constitutions published later by Sirmond, disregarded the facts that these had been reversed by Constantine 's successors, and that in any case the edicts of Roman emperors were no authority for the Frankish kingdom; and Benedictus Levita wrote an introduction to the law of 333 in which he asserted that Charlemagne had proclaimed this as the law of his empire. Regino only quotes one passage from the edict of 333; but later collections down to that of Gratian include the whole of what is given by Benedictus Levita; and Innocent III (1198-1216) relied upon it as the basis of his Denunciatio evangelica (see Jurisdiction, Ecclesiastical). But the later development of systematic ecclesiastical judicature absorbed the function of the bishop as arbiter. (E. Friedbero.)
Bibliography. B. Schilling, De origine jurisdictionis ecclesiastical in causia civilibus, Leipsic, 1825; Jungk, De origir