mmendation to their ministers; and St. Paul
dispenses with such letters, not by virtue of his Apostolic authority,
but because the power of his preaching was enough manifested in the
Corinthians themselves. And these passages are all the more forcible,
because if in any of them St. Paul had claimed absolute authority over
the Church as a teacher, it was no more than we should have expected him
to claim, nor could his doing so have in anywise justified a successor
in the same claim. But now that he has not claimed it,--who,
following him, shall dare to claim it? And the consideration of the
necessity of joining expressions of the most exemplary humility, which
were to be the example of succeeding ministers, with such assertion of
Divine authority as should secure acceptance for the epistle itself in
the sacred canon, sufficiently accounts for the apparent inconsistencies
which occur in 2 Thess. iii. 14, and other such texts.

204. So much, then, for the authority of the Clergy in matters of
Doctrine. Next, what is their authority in matters of Discipline? It
must evidently be very great, even if it were derived from the people
alone, and merely vested in the clerical officers as the executors of
their ecclesiastical judgments, and general overseers of all the Church.
But granting, as we must presently, the minister to hold office directly
from God, his authority of discipline becomes very great indeed; how
great, it seems to me most difficult to determine, because I do not
understand what St. Paul means by "delivering a man to Satan for the
destruction of the flesh." Leaving this question, however, as much too
hard for casual examination, it seems indisputable that the authority of
the Ministers or court of Ministers should extend to the pronouncing a
man Excommunicate for certain crimes against the Church, as well as for
all crimes punishable by ordinary law. There ought, I think, to be an
ecclesiastical code of laws; and a man ought to have jury trial,
according to this code, before an ecclesiastical judge; in which, if he
were found guilty, as of lying, or dishonesty, or cruelty, much more of
any actually committed violent crime, he should be pronounced
excommunicate; refused the Sacrament; and have his name written in some
public place as an excommunicate person until he had publicly confessed
his sin and besought pardon of God for it. The jury should always be of
the laity, and no penalty should be enforced in an ecc