The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. VIII] OF SCOTLAND 12 o
esse subject! justa exemplum primi doctoris illius, qui non
episcopus sed presbyter extitit et monachus." From this passage
the Presbyterian argues that if a presbyter possessed the
supreme government of the church, it must have been essentially
a Presbyterian church, and overcomes the objection derived
from the mention of bishops by asserting that the word had a
different signification in the Culdee church from that in other
churches, and did not imply a distinct or superior order of
clergy. The Episcopalian justly argues that Bede must have
used the word episcopus in its ordinary sense, and consequently
that the church must have been an Episcopalian one ; but he
attempts to explain the anomalous circumstance of these bishops
being subject to a presbyter b}- asserting that the monastery of
lona possessed a bishop as well as an abbot, and that the
episcopi who were subject to the presbyter abbot were merel\'
those bishops of lona over whom the abbot had some jurisdiction
in temporal matters. But it is manifest that neither of
these explanations are satisfactory, and that an impartial con-
sideration of this passage would bring us to a very different
conclusion from either. By
the use of the words "ordine
anomalous circumstance
inusitato," it is plain that the only
connected with lona was the subjection of the bishops to its
presbyter abbot. By confining the expression
to this circum-
stance, he clearly implies that the church possessed an order of
bishops exactl}- ;
in the same manner as other churches nor, if
the episcopi were not a separate and superior order, but merely
implied certain missionaries, as the Presbyterians allege, do we
see any room for the remark that their subjection to the abbot
was an unusual institution.
On the other hand, if the Episcopalians are right in asserting
that there was nothing unusual or anomalous in the constitution
of the Culdee church with the exception that the Abbot of lona
exercised jurisdiction over the Bishop of lona in some temporal
matters, independently of the fact that we cannot trace either
in the Irish Annals, which contain many particulars regarding
lona, or in other historians, the smallest trace of any Bishop of
lona different from the Abbot of lona, it is difficult to suppose
that Bede would have intimated the existence of an unusual
form of government in the strong and precise terms which he