Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/265

 8. STUBBS: THE CANON LAW 251 rather as a philosopher than as a divine, Christianity, as a growing rehgion, was certain to require an expansion, in expanding circumstances, of the principles which were clearly enough stated in the Gospel, but the application of which had to be regulated by some other process than the will of the individual. The moral teaching had to be expanded « authoritatively, the dogmatic teaching had to be fenced by I definitions, the administrative machinery had to be framed i with some attempt at uniformity, so that, whilst the Christian society remained a simple voluntary society with no power of enforcing its own precepts by material sanctions, it should have a common jurisprudence recognised by the conscience of its members and by their general consent. Qence from the days of the apostles there were councils, and canons, and constitutions, and books of discipline ; at first the canons, ^ councils, and books of disciphne covered all the ground of ^L>— which I have spoken — doctrine, discipline, and administria- -^ tion, although some councils may be more famous for their decisions on one point than on another. Not perhaps to speak of the Apostolic Constitutions, take the council of Nicea for an example, and remember that we owe to it not only a formulated creed, but directions about consecration i of bishops and ordination of priests, and likewise rules for ' the treatment of the lapsed and apostates, and the prohi- bition of usury. The legislation of Constantine added a new 1 element which worked itself into all these three; giving a coercive and material force to rules which had been hitherto matters of conscience and consensus ; the church was em- powered to enforce her doctrinal decisions, her rules of dis- cipline, and her frame of administration ; and that so com- pletely that from this date the ecclesiastical administration in Christian countries under the empire became so wedded to the secular administration as to be at times almost indis- tinguishable from it except on close investigation. From this date then our materials begin to sort themselves: the doctrinal definitions are embodied in the Creeds, and need not be pursued further than the fourth, or, at the outside, the sixth general council: but the canons of discipline and administration are worked into great detail for a long period