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the apostles , excluding other bishops ; ' that they used and commanded clerical tonsure ; that they forbade priests marriage , extolling celibacy ; that they caused prayers to be made for the dead , and erecting images in their churches ; ' to he short , * that they had introduced in the church many tenets , rites , and ceremonies unknown to the ancient and pure times , yea , contrary to them . ' For the which and the like , the said Clemens , and those that were constant to the truth with him , were excommunicated at
Rome as heretics ; as you have in the third volume of the Concels , although the true reasons of their excommunication be not there set down . " Usher , in his Sylloge , has given a letter from Boniface , Archbishop of Mentz , to Pope Zachary , concerning Clemens and Adelbert ; of the former he says , " But another heretic , named Clemens , contends against the Catholic Church , denies the canons , and reproves the proceedings of the churches of Christ , and refuses the explanations given by the holy fathers ,
Jerome , Augustine , and Gregory . Contemning the rights of Synods , he expressly affirms that he can be a lawful Christian bishop after having two sons born to him in adultery ; " ( by which is probably meant marriage , not allowed by Rome to him as being in holy orders ) . Clemens is also charged with heretical doctrine , as to the descent of Christ into hell and predestination . He was , in the result , for his heresy , given over to condign punishment ; one of those canonical observances in which Rome has indeed been
sufficiently orthodox and consistent , and which will continue to stamp her as with a curse , till she has the honesty and policy to avow officially that change in her principles and practice in these respects , which many of her more enlightened sons are eager individually to assert . History has preserved the names of some others of these ancient professors who resisted the claims of the Roman Church to conformity and submission . Perhaps we do " the old religion" injustice in our ideas as to the limited extent of its resistance , and the conscientious struggles of many
of its professors may have been carefully buried in oblivion or neglect . But the odds were certainly in favour of the gradual but complete success of a wily body like that of the Catholic ecclesiastics . Rome brought with her temporal alliances , which it was always desirable to cultivate ; and , what was of the greatest importance , she was most conveniently supplied with miracles when occasion served . She was , besides , not opposed by any well compacted system of ecclesiastical polity , under the direction of an authorized head , and guided by unity of plan and purpose . The bishoprics o ^ Scotland , it is obvious , would fall soon into community with the papal hierarchy ;
particularly when the sovereigns adopted the Roman connexion ; and the change was easy and obvious from bodies like the Culdee fraternities to houses of canons , or other institutions of more orthodox rule . Although it appears that not only the Scots and the Northumbrians , but the Middle Angles , Mercians , and East Saxons , even to the Thames , owed their conversion to Christianity to the Scotch Missionaries , and for some time acknowledged subjection to their ecclesiastical government , it is clear that the boundary of their authority was soon a receding one ; that their opponents were always on the onward move ; that every advantage gained was improved by the permanent establishment of part of the united papal hierarchy ; and that the missionaries of the North either retired and abandoned their labours and influence to avoid submission , or were on conformity received into the more prosperous flock . Bede tells us that Wilfred , the vanquisher of Colman the bishop of Lindisfarne at the above-mentioned public discussion , " by his doctrine introduced into the churches of the Angles a great many rules of the Catholic observance ; whence it followed , that , the Catholic institution
Untitled Article
The Culdees of Ionil 865
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1827, page 865, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1803/page/9/
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