Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/242

37 have elsewhere showed. The council of Neocæsarea imposed it as a universal rule, how great soever the Church were to which the Deacons were to serve; .... a canon, which, though it were at first designed only for their own province of Cappadocia, was, notwithstanding, afterwards extended, first, to the Eastern Empire .... afterwards to the Western .... Therefore, even then it is much more probable that this number was already received in more Churches than otherwise.

And now the comparisons of the Bishops in Ignatius cannot seem so strange, these things being considered, as they did to Blondell, who had considered none of them. They are generally designed to express the sacredness and excellency of the persons which the clergy bore in these mystical performances. Nor is there any thing in them that is really affected or strained, much less blasphemous, no, nor any extravagant flights of fancy .... If he was to compare them with the first invisible archetypes of unity, (as that is, indeed, his great design in those epistles, in opposition to the schisms then rising,) then it was very proper for him to take notice only of the two orders which were then immediately concerned in the office of ministration, and then to compare them with God the Father, and the Logos; because as this unity consists in the unity of the Head, and the Scripture tells us that the Head of every man is Christ, so also the same Scripture tells us that the Head of Christ is God .... These things, therefore, being thus solidly laid down by the first fathers, in their disputes against their contemporary Heretics and Schismatics, all the inferences thence deduced against them, will follow naturally and undeniably .... It will follow, that disunion from the Bishop was a disunion from Christ and the Father, and from all the invisible heavenly Priesthood, and sacrifice, and intercession. It will follow that disunion from any one ordinary, must consequently be a disunion from the whole Catholic Church, seeing it is impossible for any to continue a member of Christ's mystical body, who is disunited from the mystical head of it. It will follow that visible disunion from the external sacraments of the Bishop, is in the consequence a disunion from the Bshop, and