When Christ founded his Church, he left it in the hands of his Apostles, without any prerogative given to one, or eminency above the rest, save only of priority and orderly precedency, which of itself was natural, necessary and incident. The Apostles govern'd all; their Authority was the sanction, and their Decrees and Writings were the Laws of the Church. They exercis'd a common jurisdiction, and divided it according to the needs and emergencies, and circumstances of the Church. In the Council of Jerusalem, S. Peter gave not the decisive sentence, but S. James, who was the Bishop of that See. Christ sent all his Apostles as his Father sent him; and therefore he gave to every one of them the whole power which he left behind; and to the Bishops congregated at Miletum, S. Paul gave them caution to take care of the whole flock of God, and affirms to them all, that "the Holy Ghost had made them Bishops": and in the whole New Testament, there is no act or sign of superiority, or that one Apostle exercised power over another: but to them whom Christ sent, he in common intrusted the Church of God: according to that excellent saying of S. Cyprian, "The other Apostles are the same that S. Peter was, endowed with an equal fellowship of honour and power: and they are all shepherds, and the flock is one" and therefore it ought to be fed by all the Apostles with unanimous consent.
This unity and identity of power without question and interruption did continue and descend to Bishops in the primitive Church, in which it was a known doctrine that the Bishops were successors of the Apostles: and what was not in the beginning, could not be in the descent, unless it were innovated and introduc'd by a new authority. Christ gave ordinary power to none but the Apostles, and the power being to continue for ever in the Church, it was to be succeeded to, and by the same authority, even of Christ, it descended to them who were their successors, that is, to the Bishops, as all antiquity does consent and teach: Not S. Peter alone, but every Apostle, and therefore every one who succeeds them in their ordinary power, may and must remember the words of S. Paul; We are Ambassadors or Legates for Christ: Christ's Vicars, not the Pope's Delegates: and so all the Apostles are called in the Preface of the Mass; Quos operis tui Vicarios cidem contulisti praeesse Pastores; they are Pastors of the Flock and Vicars of Christ; and so also they are in express terms called by S. Ambrose, and therefore it is a strange usurpation, that the Pope arrogates that to himself by Impropriation, which is common to him with all the Bishops of Christendom.
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