Historical collections concerning church affairs

in which it is shew'd, from the ancient church historians, fathers, and other ecclesiastical writers, that the right to dispose of bishops, purely in relation to their charges, in their respective districts, was believed to be subjected in the clergy alone, as a separate independent body from the lay power, during the reigns of Constantine and Constantius, the two first Christian emperors : and that it was the judgment of the Catholick Christians, in those days, if the secular magistrate, or any irresistible party did assume the same right, upon any consideration whatever, that they were not to be recev'd nor obey'd in the execution of it : to which are added, some occasional observations upon Dr. Hody's book, called, The case of the sees vacant, by an unjust and uncanonical deprivation, stated

by Simon Lowth