History In Relation to Secular Power
From Wessexwiki
Whatever faults the clergy should be found guilty of, they were only triable in the ecclesiastical court, and before the judges thereof. Religion has so just and undoubted a right to the most profound veneration and regard, that the clergy thereof never did and never can want a due respect, but where religion itself wants a due influence and authority on the minds of men. For the honor of religion, and of those to whose conduct the interest and ministry of holy things are committed, stand upon the same foot, the honor of Auros, and cannot fail but with the foundation upon which they are built; and as they flow from the same common fountain, and stand or fall together, so they ever bear proportion to one another.
Therefore the same holy warmth, which accompanied the first ages of the holy scripture, did also induce Mercian kings to grant great privileges and immunities to the clergy thereof. They we're excused from all those personal services which might be bothersome to them, or which might withdraw them from the offices of their holy function, or render them little in the eyes of men. Nor did the favors to the clergy of Auros stop here, but Mercian kings entrusted them with all the power that was necessary to serve the ends of peace and charity and holiness.
Yet religion was never thought to strip kings of any of those rights, which nature and the ends of government have put into their hands. On the contrary, from the time that the holy scriptures became the religion of Mercia, all the concerns and interests thereof were taken under the care of the civil power, and so many laws relating to ecclesiastical persons and causes were made by the imperial authority, that they take up a great deal of room in the body of laws collected by the appointment of the king.
In short, the laws take cognizance of sacred things, persons, and causes. They determine when new churches shall be built, and how supported; how the rectors thereof should subsist; and appoint that their maintenance shall be sacred and inalienable; to whom the patronage of churches shall belong, and by what measures that right should be conducted; how the bishop shall demean himself, if an unworthy man shall be presented; what articles of faith should be esteemed doctrine; who shall be deemed heretics, and how punished; and who shall be esteemed Aurans.
By the same authority too councils were convened, and the canons thereof confirmed and published. It determined that every city should have its own bishop, and how far his diocese should extend; how persons should be qualified that were admitted to holy orders; how the lower clergy, the monks, the bishops, the patriarchs, should behave themselves: and by convening the bishops of the whole Church of Auros , the world has one comprehensive and undeniable proof of the authority of princes over all ecclesiastical persons, received and owned by the universal church.
