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A great number even of bishops and presbyters acquired, by this criminal compliance, the opprobrious epithet of Traditors; and their offence was productive of much present scandal and of much future discord in the African church.
Excluded from the civil and religious communion of mankind, they boldly excommunicated the rest of mankind, who had embraced the impious party of Cæcilian, and of the Traditors, from which he derived his pretended ordination.
Excommunicated themselves, "they boldly excommunicated the rest of mankind who had embraced the impious party of Cæcilianus, and of the traditors, from whom he derived his pretended ordination.
"No," he repeated, "Caecilianus was not a traditor, nor Felix of Abthugni either who consecrated him bishop. The documents are there to prove this. And even supposing they were, can the fault of a single man be charged to the whole Church?... Then why do you baptize the Catholics under the pretence that their priests are traditors and as such unworthy to administer the Sacraments?
Public opinion branded with the names of traditors, or traitors, those who had weakened and given over the sacred books to the pagans. The danger once over, the Numidians, whose behaviour had been so little brilliant, determined to redeem themselves by audacity, and to prove with superb impudence that they had been braver than the others.
The great bulk of the laity had honoured him in his lifetime, and continued to revere his memory. Men like Locke, and Somers, and Addison were loud in his praise. Even those who were accustomed to regard the Low Churchmen of their age as 'amphibious trimmers' or 'Latitudinarian traditors' were by no means unanimous in dispraise of Tillotson.
And again, if ignorance would have been an excuse, in his judgment, for the Catholic world's passing over the crime of the Traditors, had Cæcilian and his party been such, much more, in so nice a question as the Roman claim to the orbis terrarum at this day, in opposition to England and Greece, may we fairly consider that he who condemned the Donatists only in the case of "quæstio facillima," would excuse us, even if mistaken, from the notorious difficulties which lie in the way of a true judgment.
Cyprian himself, that an unworthy priest could not administer the Sacraments. The local prejudice would not yield: all were rebaptized who had been baptized by the Catholics that is to say, by the supporters of the traditors. The theological question was complicated with a question of property which was all but insoluble.
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