DISCIPLINE ECCLESIASTICAL.

The Christian Church being a spiritual community or society of persons profe ing the religion of Jesus , and, as such, governed by spiritual or ecclesiastical laws, her discipline consists in putting those laws in execution, and inflicting the penalties enjoined by them against several sorts of offenders. To understand the true nature of church discipline, we must consider how it stood in the ancient Christian Church. And, first, The primitive Church never pretended to exercise discipline upon any but such as were within her pale, in the largest sense, by some act of their own profe ion; and even upon these she never pretended to exercise her discipline so far as to cancel or disannul their baptism. But the discipline of the Church consisted in a power to deprive men of the benefits of external communion, such as public prayer, receiving the eucharist, and other acts of Divine worship. This power, before the establishment of the Church by human laws, was a mere spiritual authority, or, as St. Cyprian terms it, a spiritual sword, affecting the soul, and not the body. Sometimes, indeed, the Church craved a istance from the secular power, even when it was heathen, but more frequently after it was become Christian. But it is to be observed, that the Church never encouraged the magistrate to proceed against any one for mere error, or ecclesiastical misdemeanour, further than to punish the delinquent by a pecuniary mulct, or bodily punishment, such as confiscation or banishment; and St. Austin affirms, that no good men in the Catholic Church were pleased that heretics should be prosecuted unto death. Le er punishments, they thought, might have their use, as means sometimes to bring them to consideration and repentance. Nor was it a part of the ancient discipline to deprive men of their natural or civil rites. A master did not lose his authority over his family, a parent over his children, nor a magistrate his office and charge in the state, by being cast out of the Church. But the discipline of the Church being a mere spiritual power, was confined to, 1. The admonition of the offender; 2. The le er and greater excommunication. As to the objects of ecclesiastical discipline, they were all such delinquents as fell into great and scandalous crimes after baptism, whether men or women, priests or people, rich or poor, princes or subjects. That princes and magistrates fell under the Church’s censures, may be proved by several instances; particularly St. Chrysostom relates, that Babylas denied communion to one of the Roman emperors on account of a barbarous murder committed by him: St. Ambrose likewise denied communion to Maximus for shedding the blood of Gratian; and the same holy bishop absolutely refused to admit the emperor Theodosius the Great into his church, notwithstanding his humblest entreaties, because he had inhumanly put to death 7000 men at The alonica, without distinguishing the innocent from the guilty.