Episcopate Sentence Examples

Although there is very little authentic information about Fabian, there is evidence that his episcopate was one of great importance in the history of the early church.

In the very earliest centuries we find the episcopate, united in council,, drawing up symbols of faith, which every believer was bound to accept under pain of exclusion, condemning heresies, and casting out heretics.

For this exercise of the primacy as for the others, we must conceive of the pope and the episcopate united to him as a continuation of the Apostolic College and its head Peter.

In addition to the encyclical letter, nineteen resolutions were put forth, and the reports of twelve special committees are appended upon which they are based, the subjects being intemperance, purity, divorce, polygamy, observance of Sunday, socialism, care of emigrants, mutual relations of dioceses of the Anglican Communion, home reunion, Scandinavian Church, Old Catholics, &c., Eastern Churches, standards of doctrine and worship. Perhaps the most important of these is the famous "Lambeth Quadrilateral," which laid down a fourfold basis for home reunion - the Holy Scriptures, the Apostles' and Nicene creeds, the two sacraments ordained by Christ himself and the historic episcopate.

The bishop has acquired control of the sacraments, presbyters and deacons acting only under his orders; the episcopate appears as a unit, bishops being bound to respect one another's disciplinary decrees.

Granvelle was made first archbishop of Malines, and all the odium attaching to the increase of the episcopate was laid at his door, though he was in reality opposed to it.

In this way, Qwing to the dislocation of the ancient aristocracy, to the enlarged jurisdiction,of a power so democratic as the episcopate, and to the increased privileges of the burghs, feudalism received a powerful check in Italy.

His advocacy of an American episcopate, in connexion with which he wrote the Answer to Dr Mayhew's Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London 1764), raised considerable opposition in England and America.

The third and fourth oecumenical synods (Ephesus, 43 1; Chalcedon, 451) were primarily tribunals for the trials of Nestorius and Dioscorus; it was secondarily that they became organs of the universal episcopate for the definition of the faith, or legislative assemblies for the enactment of canons.

He died at Bournemouth on the 21st of December 1889, and was succeeded in the episcopate by Westcott, his schoolfellow and lifelong friend.

He submitted to the opinion of the episcopate in the various parts of Christendom the divergence between the Easter usage of Rome and that of the bishops of Asia.

The day after his son's funeral Taylor caught fever from a patient whom he visited, and, after a ten days' illness, he died at Lisburn on the 13th of August 1667, in the fifty-fifth year of his life and the seventh of his episcopate, and was buried in the cathedral of Dromore.

He first appears (c. 357) as a supporter of Acacius, bishop of Caesarea, the leader of that party in the episcopate which supported the Homoean formula by which the emperor Constantius sought to effect a compromise between the Homoeusians and the Homousians.

In spite of the advice of Gregory of Nazianzus and of the Western Church, the recognition of Paulinus's sole episcopate was refused, Flavian being consecrated as Meletius's successor.

Meanwhile, and throughout his long episcopate of thirty-two years, he foreshadowed the zeal and the enlightened policy later to be displayed in the prolonged period of his pontificate, building and restoring many churches, striving to elevate the intellectual as well as the spiritual tone of his clergy, and showing in his pastoral letters an unusual regard for learning and for social reform.

Later the secret was betrayed and came to the ears of persons who, as he says, "urged my sins against my laborious episcopate."

James, the Lord's brother, who, partly because of his relationship to Christ, stood supreme in the church at Jerusalem, as also Timothy and Titus, who acted as temporary delegates of St Paul at Ephesus and in Crete, are justly considered to have been forerunners of the monarchical episcopate.

Even when introduced, the monarchical episcopate was not thought necessary for the ordination of other bishops or presbyters.

Roman theologians generally reckon only seven orders, although, if we count the episcopate an order distinct from the presbyterate, the sum is not seven, but eight.

According to common opinion, the matter and form of ordination to the episcopate were the imposition of the consecrating bishop's hands with the words, " Receive the Holy Ghost."

The monarchical episcopate is rejected.

The Lutheran Bugenhagen, who was in priest's orders, ordained seven superintendents, afterwards called bishops, for Denmark in 1527, and Norway, then under the same crown, derives its present episcopate from the same source.

The Anglican priesthood being gone, the episcopate also lapses.

For according to the Pontifical, the episcopate is the " summum sacerdotium "; the bishop in consecration receives " the sacerdotal grace "; it is " his office to consecrate, ordain, offer, baptize, confirm."

The power of the collective episcopate to maintain Catholic unity was disproved long before it was overshadowed by the centralized authority of Rome; before the Reformation, its last efforts to assert its supremacy in the Western Church, at the councils of Basel and Constance, had broken down; and the religious revolution of the 16th century left it largely discredited and exposed to a double attack, by the papal monarchy on the one hand and the democratic Presbyterian model on the other.

The episcopate, however, was preserved by Peter Magnusson, who, when residing as warden of the Swedish hospital of St Bridget in Rome, had been duly elected bishop of the see of Westeraes, and consecrated, c. 1524.

The episcopate of the new metropolitan was marked by a vigour and activity that were felt not merely in his own diocese, but as far as Tours, Orleans and Paris.

Its episcopate in the 10th century still numbered thirty members, but in 1076 the Church could not provide three bishops to consecrate a new member of the episcopate, and for that purpose Gregory VII.

In the 13th century the native episcopate had disappeared.

He also exerted himself to promote the establishment of the Indian episcopate.

His episcopate, which lasted some thirty years, was characterized by great missionary zeal, and by so much success that, according to the (doubtless somewhat rhetorical) statement of Gregory of Nyssa, whereas at the outset of his labours there were only seventeen Christians in the city, there were at his death only seventeen persons in all who had not embraced Christianity.

It was probably during the earlier years of his episcopate that Philoxenus composed his thirteen homilies on the Christian life.

But as the claims of the church to be the guardian through its episcopate of the apostolic tradition, of the Christian faith itself, were magnified, and unity in practice as well as in doctrine came to be regarded as essential, this distinction became a theoretical rather than a practical one.

Between s o and 176 the authority of the episcopate had been immensely strengthened, and along with it a settled order had been introduced into the Churches.

In 1900 the archbishops again acted together, when an appeal was addressed to them by the united episcopate, to decide the vexed questions of the use of incense in divine service and of the reservation of the elements.

He succeeded in driving the raiders away, rebuilt the walls, and during the fifty-eight years of his episcopate the town grew and prospered.

His episcopate, however, is chiefly remembered owing to its tragic close.

When the Lambeth articles put forward as a basis of union were discussed, it was evident that all the free churches were agreed in accepting the three articles dealing with the Bible, the Creed and the Sacraments as a basis of discussion, and were also agreed in rejecting the fourth article, which put the historic episcopate on the same level as the other three.

The great monument of his episcopate is the eleven famous charges in which he from time to time reviewed the position of the English Church with reference to whatever might be the most pressing question of the day - addresses at once judicial and statesmanlike, full of charitable wisdom and massive sense.

In 366 Liberius gave a favourable reception to a deputation of the Eastern episcopate, and admitted into his communion the more moderate of the old Arian party.

This theory of the independence of the episcopate with regard to the Roman bishop was first propounded by Cyprian, in his treatise De unitate ecclesiae.

This was done for the first time, in 1870, at the Vatican Council, whose decrees, recognizing the universal episcopate and the infallibility of the pope, marked the triumph of that ultramontane doctrine by which they had been long anticipated.

He, however, triumphed over them, and his episcopate was peaceful.

Almost immediately the entire assembly with one voice cried out anathema on the impious Nestorius and his impious doctrines, and after various extracts from the writings of church fathers had been read the decree of his exclusion from the episcopate and from all priestly communion was solemnly read and signed by all present, whose numbers had by this time swelled to one hundred and ninety-eight.

As a result the ecumenical council came into existence especially for the purpose of settling disputed questions of doctrine, and giving to the collective episcopate the opportunity to express its voice in a final and official way.

At the council of Nicaea, and at the ecumenical councils which followed, the idea of an infallible episcopate giving authoritative and permanent utterance to apostolic and therefore divine truth, found clear expression, and has been handed down as a part of the faith of the Catholic Church both East and West.

The infallibility of the episcopate guarantees the infallibility of a general council in which not the laity and not the clergy in general, but the bishops as successors of the apostles, speak officially and collectively.

Meanwhile the Roman episcopate developed into the papacy, which claimed supremacy over the entire Christian Church, and actually exercised it increasingly in the West from the 5th century on.

The Lutheran state churches of Denmark, Sweden and Norway have retained the episcopate.

The episcopate in all three countries accommodates itself to something like the Lutheran consistorial system of ecclesiastical government.

He also took a leading part in opposition to the projected establishment of an Anglican Episcopate in America, and before and during the American War of Independence he ardently supported the Whig Party.

He came to Bremen about 1067-1068, most likely on the invitation of Archbishop Adalbert, and in the 24th year of the latter's episcopate (1043 ?-1072); in 1069 he appears as a canon of this cathedral and master of the cathedral school.

Is the authority of the church manifested in the decisions which a local church arrives at by a majority of votes, or in the decisions of apostles and prophets after taking counsel, of the episcopate in later times, ratified by common consent of Christendom?

After Cyprian the African episcopate, in proportion as it perfected its organization, seemed to feel less and less the need for close relations with the apostolic see.

When orthodox Christianity had Pyrenees, the episcopate of those countries grouped sovereigns.

On these different occasions the pope, ignored in ordinary times, was made use of by the Byzantine government to ratify measures which it had found necessary to adopt in opposition to the opinion of the Greek episcopate.

When the episcopate met in council the bishop of Rome had to be at its head.

The crown in England also abandoned investiture by the pastoral staff and ring, but, more fortunate than in France, retained the right of receiving feudal homage from the episcopate.

The episcopate, while it gained in intelligence and morality, lost a part of its independence.

Other adversaries of the episcopate, the burgesses and the petty nobles dwelling in the city, also profited by these frequent changes of bishops, and the disorders that ensued.

The episcopate and the great monastic prelacies continued to lose their independence, as was shown by Honorius II.

The subjection of the secular clergy was complete, while the episcopate retained no shadow of its independence.

But the control exercised by the Roman Curia over the episcopate had been realized by many other means.

These aggressions of monarchy and the episcopate were rendered vain, outside the Habsburg dominions, by the revolution; and to the Habsburg dominions the clerical revolution of 1790 caused the loss of what is to-day Belgium.

Prussia, together with other German states, was in arms against pope and episcopate.

After a brief but great episcopate of fifteen months, he died, unmarried, on the 23rd of January 1893.

Charles seems to have been a prince of education and letters, a friend of the church, and conscious of the support he could find in the episcopate against his unruly nobles, for he chose his councillors for preference from among the higher clergy, as in the case of Guenelon of Sens, who betrayed him, or of Hincmar of Reims. But his character and his reign have been judged very variously.

The wants, moreover, of the North American colonies did not escape the attention of Archbishop Laud during his official connexion with them as bishop of London, and he was developing a plan for promoting a local episcopate there when his troubles began and his scheme was interrupted.

If this view be, rejected and it is necessary to fall back on the choice between 64 and 67, the problem is perhaps insoluble, but 64 has somewhat more intrinsic probability, and 67 can be explained as due to an artificial system of chronology which postulated for Peter an episcopate of Rome of twenty-five years - a number which comes so often in the early episcopal lists that it seems to mean little more than "a long time," just as "forty years" does in the Old Testament.

During Dr Temple's episcopate ritual irregularities of all kinds had grown up, which left a very difficult task to his successor, more especially in view of the growing public agitation on the subject, of which he had to bear the brunt.

The true work of his episcopate was, however, positive, not negative.

The record of his episcopate is to be found in the two volumes of the Ada Ecclesiae Mediolanensis (Milan, 1599).

In April of that year, however, Bishop Blomfield of London published his famous letter to the archbishop of Canterbury, declaring that "an episcopal church without a bishop is a contradiction in terms," and strenuously advocating a great effort for the extension of the episcopate.

His literary activity, which had been considerable, was in no way diminished by his elevation to the episcopate.

During his episcopate many churches and schools were built in the diocese.

He had, ten years before this, only escaped promotion to the episcopate by a very questionable stratagem - which, however, he defends in his instructive and eloquent treatise De Sacerdotio.

To the years of his presbyterate and episcopate belong the great mass of homilies and commentaries, among which those On the Statues, and on Matthew, Romans and Corinthians, stand out preeminently.

The rest of the western bishops, however, still held aloof, and the episcopate of Tuscany caused his name to be removed from the diptychs.

He was a quarrelsome man, and after a stormy episcopate, died on the 19th of December 1343.

To him the divine authority of the Catholic Church was an axiom, and in 1889 he published two works, the larger of which, The Church and the Ministry, is a learned vindication of the principle of Apostolic Succession in the episcopate against the Presbyterians and other Protestant bodies, while the second, Roman Catholic Claims, is a defence, couched in a more popular form, of the Anglican Church and Anglican orders against the attacks of the Romanists.

This primacy, a primacy of honour and jurisdiction, involving the plenitude of power over the teaching, the worship, the discipline and administration of the Church, is received by the pope as part of the succession of St Peter, together with the episcopate of Rome.

His mother, a daughter of John Rolls of The Hendre, Monmouthshire, was intensely religious; and all the daughters of the family entered convents, while six of the eight sons took priest's orders, three of them rising to the episcopate, Roger becoming archbishop of Sydney, and John bishop of Sebastopolis.

Other acts followed by which the episcopate was strengthened, though the act of 1587 annexing the temporalities of the bishops to the crown, while fatal to the old episcopate, made the prospects of the new more doubtful.

It is cruciform, with a central tower, and has an eastern octagon which may have been copied from the corona of Canterbury Cathedral, as Eystein, archbishop of Trondhjem (1160-1188) and an active builder, was in England during his episcopate.

In view of the necessity for increasing the episcopate in the 19th century and the objection to the consequent increase of the spiritual peers in the Upper House, it was finally enacted by the Bishoprics Act of 1878 that only the archbishops and the bishops of London, Winchester and Durham should be always entitled to writs summoning them to the House of Lords.

During the same episcopate Irenaeus was appointed bishop of Lyons.

His efforts on behalf of the clergy were untiring, and his ideal of the bishop's office may be read in his address to his nephew, Angelo della Ciaia, who had been raised to the episcopate (Admonitio ad episcopum Theanensem, nepotem suum, Rome, 1612).

From the beginning of his episcopate Hincmar was in constant conflict with the clerks who had been ordained by Ebbo during his reappearance.

In this case, benefit was repayed by benefit, for Athanasius during his episcopate had been a zealous promoter of asceticism and monachism.

Save during the episcopate of William Elphinstone (1484-1511), the building progressed slowly.

It is then to the episcopate, assembled in ecumenical council, and to its chief, that the function of legislating for the whole Church belongs; the inferior authorities, local councils or isolated bishops and prelates, can only make special laws or statutes, valid only for that part of the Church under their jurisdiction.

At the time of the Vandal invasion this collection comprised the canons of the council of Carthage under Gratus (about 348) and under Genethlius (390), the whole series of the twenty or twenty-two plenary councils held during the episcopate of Aurelius, and finally, those of the councils held at Byzacene.

From all quarters tale Catholic episcopate had submitted to the Vatican council petitions in this sense.

After briefly reviewing the present condition of the canonical texts and collections, he pointed out its inconvenience, referred to the many requests from the episcopate, and decreed the preparation of a general code of canon law.

John Sigismund, adopting his court-preacher's views, issued (1568) an edict of religious liberty at the Torda Diet, which allowed David (retaining his existing title) to transfer his episcopate from the Calvinists to the anti-Trinitarians, Kolozsvar being evacuated by all but his followers.

With the growth of the episcopate, however, the deacons became the immediate ministers of the bishop. Their duties included the supervision of Church property, the management of Church finances, the visitation of the sick, the distribution of alms and the care of widows and orphans.

But at length the hopelessness of the Stewart cause and the growth of congregations outside the establishment forced the bishops to dissociate canonical jurisdiction from royal prerogative and to reconstitute for themselves a territorial episcopate.

After his return to England in 1808, he still took an active part in matters connected with India, and by his book entitled Colonial Ecclesiastical Establishment (London, 1813), he assisted in settling the controversy of 1813, which ended in the establishment of the Indian episcopate.

Jablonski's next plan was to reform the Church of Prussia by introducing into it the episcopate, and also the liturgy of the English Church, but here again he was unsuccessful.

The foundation upon which Irenaeus bases his system consists in the episcopate, the canon of the Old and New Testaments, and the rule of faith.

The episcopate was now recruited from the great families in the same way as the imperial and the municipal public services.

But though he felt the ascendant influence of Christian teaching, he was not really penetrated by its spirit; a professing Christian, and a friend to the episcopate, Clovis remained a barbarian, crafty and ruthless.

For a bibliography of documents relating to his episcopate see "Episcopat de Gobel" in vol.

The sole argument, though a very weighty one, is found in the undeniable relation, revealed in an astonishing similarity both in expressions and composition, which exists between these forgeries and some other documents certainly fabricated at Le Mans, under the episcopate of Aldric (832-856), notably the Actus Pontificum Cenomanis in urbe degentium, in which there is no lack of forged documents.

Even in the Liberal ranks the question aroused furious differences of opinion;Senor Montero Rios, the president of the senate, denounced the infamous attacks on the church; the government itself showed a wavering temper in entering on long and futile negotiations with the Vatican; while in January 1907 the cardinal archbishop of Toledo presented a united protest of the Spanish episcopate againit the proposed law.

He survived Oswald, and died shortly after the murder of his friend Oswine of Deira, on the 31st of August 651, in the 17th year of his episcopate.

All of this would seem directly applicable to the present Church of England debate about the ordination of Women to the Episcopate.

Fifth, there is the question of the means whereby British Methodism should receive the historic episcopate.

The House has not agreed either that it is right to open the episcopate to women or that this is the time.

In fact such actions were to typify Pope Linus ' whole episcopate.

In opposition to the efforts of the Anglicans to procure the establishment of an American episcopate, he wrote an open Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord, Bishop of Llandaf (1768), and edited and in large measure wrote the "American Whig" columns in the New York Gazette (1768-1769).

Third Conference (July 3-27, 1888), convened and presided over by Archbishop Benson; 145 bishops present; the chief subject of consideration being the position of communities which do not possess the historic episcopate.

In this is proclaimed the doctrine of the one church founded upon the apostle Peter, whose "tangible bond is her one united episcopate, an apostleship universal yet only one - the authority of every bishop perfect in itself and independent, yet not forming with all the others a mere agglomeration of powers, but being a tenure upon a totality like that of a shareholder in some joint property."

We may attribute the origin of the episcopate to the need felt of a single official to preside at the Eucharist, to represent the church before the heathen state and in the face of rising heresy, and to carry on correspondence with sister churches.

A valid episcopate, then, is one derived in an unbroken series of "layings on of hands" by bishops from the time of the apostles (see Holy Order).

With the constitutional changes of the 18th and 10th centuries, however, a corresponding modification took place in the character of the English episcopate; and a still further change resulted from the multiplication of colonial and missionary sees having no connexion with the state (see Anglican Communion).

This is the " monarchical episcopate " which first meets us in the letters of Ignatius, early in the 2nd century (see Church History).

From an active instrument of the religious society, the archiepiscopate degenerated into a purely formal power; while the episcopate itself, which the sincere reformers wished to liberate and purge in order to strengthen it, emerged from the crisis sensibly weakened as well as ameliorated.

The first years of his episcopate were tranquil; then the storms in which the remainder of his life was passed began to gather round him.

In his dealings with Turkey, the suzerain power, he displayed considerable acuteness; he gained the confidence of the Sultan, whom he flattered and occasionally menaced; and aided by the ambassadors of the friendly powers, he succeeded in obtaining on two occasions important concessions for the Bulgarian episcopate in Macedonia (see Macedonia), while securing the tacit sanction of the Porte for the technically illegal situation in the principality.

The troubles of his episcopate no doubt shortened his life.