have made divers Rules to remedy it. In the year of our Lord 347, the Council of Sardis in these terms, set down the words of their last Canon: If violence be done to a Bishop, and that he be cast out unjustly through malice, for the Discipline he has exercised, or for the Catholick Faith which he confessed, or for the truth which he defended, and that being innocent, and flying from danger, he comes to another Church, let him not be hindered to abide there, until such time as he can return, and that an end be put to the trouble which he suffers; for it would be cruel not to receive with all humanity and good will, him which suffers persecution:
The Council of Chalcedon which forbids to quit the Church one has served in from the first time of ones promotion, Excepts those which having been con∣strained to forsake their Country, have passed into another Church; according to which Gregory the First establish∣ed a certain Bishop call'd John, which had been driven away from his Church by the Enemy which had taken possession of the place; I say he setled him in another, on condition to return back to his former Church as soon as it recovered its ancient liberty. It was also in the same manner he served Agnellus Bishop of Fundi, which upon a like occasion he preferred to the Church of Terracina; the same was practised in France in the IX. Century, in regard of Actard Bishop of Nants, the City having been sack'd and plundered by the Brittans and Normans, he was made Archbishop of Tours, as Hinomar affirms, who lived in that time, and at large relates the History in his 45 Epistle, which we cited on the foregoing Article; and all that he blames in Actard is, That he would have held both Churches of Tours and Nants, contrary to the prohibition of the Council of Chalcedon; excepting this, he approves, that when a Pastor is persecuted and driven from his Church, he