Ministers, who acquaint not the Bishops herewith, to take their Counsel and Order herein: But perhaps they have either not learned, or so far forgot the ancient Discipline of ours, and all other Christian Churches, as to permit men, after so abominable a Lapse and Apostasie, boldly to intrude into the Sanctuary of God with the same unhallowed hands and blasphemous mouths, with which they denyed their Saviour and their Country. But what can we say hereunto? Alas! Many are dissenters from our Church; which by our divisions in Religion, hath lost much or its Power, Discipline and esteem amongst us; and men, being grown careles and cold in Religion, little dream or consider of such methods of Repentance; for whilst men condem the Authority, and censures of the Church, and disown the power of the Keys, they seem to deprive themselves of the ordinary means of Salvation, unless God, by some extraordinary light and eviction supplies that in a sublimer manner, which was anceintly effected by a rigorous observation of the Laws and Canons of the Church.
“It is a strange Vulgar Errour that we maintain in England, that the Greek Church doth yearly excommunicate the Roman, which is nothing so; and common reason will tell us. That a Church cannot excommunicate another, or any particular Member thereof, over which it pretends no Jurisdiction or Authority; and that the Greek Church hath no such Claim of Dominion or Superiority over the Roman, no more than it own a subjection to it, is plainly evinced in the third Chapter of this Book: and this I attest to be so, upon enquiry made into the truth thereof, and on Testimony of Greek Priests eminent and knowing in the Canons and Constitutions of their Church: Though we cannot deny but that anceintly one Patriarch might renounce the Communion of another, over whom he had no Jurisdiction, for his notorious Heresie; as S. Cyril did to Nestorius before the Assembly of the Council of Ephesus.”
It has been said that excommunication can only be incurred by living persons, but in this the belief and practice of the Orthodox Church differ from the Catholic Church, since, as has already been remarked, Theodosius of Alexandria who died in 567 excommunicated Origen who died in 253 or 254.[22] Moreover, the fact that Theodosius was deposed for
