Cap. XVII - Of Higinus, and Pius

Summary

Of Higinus and Pius, as they are represented in the Pontifical; and of a notable Forgery in the name of Hermes: Where you have the Testimony of an Angel, concerning the Celebration of Easter, cited by no body, while the matter was in controversie.

Higinus sate, saith the Pontifical, four years, three moneths, and four days. Binius saith, He sate four years, except two days; counterfeiting as much exactness as the other. If we should follow him in his Consuls, saith he, we should make Higinus sit twelve years.

But the Pontifical is guilty of a more arrogant and ambitious errour: the Hierarchy of the Church, it saith, was made by Higinus, to wit, the Order wherein Presbyters were inferiour to Bishops, Deacons to Presbyters, the people to Deacons. Binius mendeth it as well as he is able, interpreting it only of a Reformation of Collapsed Discipline. But it suiteth so exactly with the distinction before made in S. Clement's second Epistle, who will have the Priesthood divided into the Order of Presbyter, Deacon, and Minister, that the design seemeth deeper than so. He doth not say, the Hierarchy of the Church was corrected, but made by Hyginus: which strikes at the Root of Episcopacy; as if it were not of Divine, but Humane Institution: and being made by the Pope alone, depended only on the Popes pleasure.

Binius is not able to name the time wherein the Discipline of the Church was (in this respect) corrupted so, as to need the Reformation pretended.

Next after Hyginus, the Pontifical bringeth in Pius, an Italian, the Brother of a Shepherd. He sate nineteen years, four moneths, and three days, in the times of Antoninus Pius. Hermes his own Brother wrote a book, in which a Commandment was contained, given him by an Angel of the Lord, coming to him in the Habit of a Shepherd, that Easter should be observed on the Lords Day. This man ordained, that an Heretick, coming from among the Jews, should be baptized, &c.

This Hermes, saith Binius, in his Notes on the place, is the same whom S. Paul mentioneth in his Epistle to the Romans. Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobus, Hermes, &c.