LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE
ROMAN CATHOLIC CLAIMS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Church and the Ministry. Revised by
C. H. TURNER, M.A. 8vo.
The Theological Bearings of Certain Extra-
Liturgical Uses of the Blessed Sacrament.
Reprinted from the English Church Review,
With a Preface in Reply to Dr. Stone. Crown 8vo.
The Title 'The Son of Man.' (Liverpool Diocesan
Board of Divinity Publications* )
The Solidarity of the Faith. (Modern Oxford Tracts.)
LONGMANS, GREEN, CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
'ROMAN CATHOLIC
CLAIMS,
BY
CHARLES GORE, D.D., D.CL., LL.B
LATE BISHOP Oi-' OXFORD
HON. FELLOW OF TKIN. COLL. OXON.
ELEVENTH
111190
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
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1920
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LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE
PREFACE TO THE ELEVENTH
EDITION
THIS is a reprint without any considerable changes, save
that I have rewritten the account of the early history of
the Roman Church (pp. 93-4) in view especially of the in-
vestigations of Mr. Edmundson, Church in Rome in the First
Century (Longmans, 1913), a book which has not, I think,
received sufficient attention.
NOVEMBER, 1919.
PREFACE TO THE TENTH EDITION
So much has been written from time to time, since this
book was first published, more than twenty years ago, on
what is called the Roman controversy, and some of it has
been so good, that I should have been disposed to treat
my little work as antiquated. But probably because it
attempts to deal more or less comprehensively with the
different aspects of the controversy, it continues in some
demand. The chief point, as far as I am aware, on which
it is obviously not up to date, is that it does not attempt
to deal with Modernism and the trenchant action of the
Roman Church in suppressing it. I cannot now supply
this omission. So far as concerns Biblical criticism, and
the claim of free inquiry in matters of religion, all the
recent authoritative action of the Roman Church, including
the Encyclical Pascendi^ is entirely on the lines of the
Encyclical of 1893, which is dealt with on pp. 185 ff.
I have read Dom Chapman's criticism of my book l and
I have made, in consequence of his criticism, the following
alterations :
On pp. 101-2 I have re-translated some words in the
28th Canon of Chalcedon. See Dom Chapman's remarks
on p. 86 of his work. (The diro in aTroSefioxcacrt has the
same force only as in dirfvctpav just below).
On pp. 111-12 I have obliterated a passage speaking of
4 interpolations ' in St. Cyprian, as some modern scholars
accept Dom Chapman's own vindication of these interpola-
tions for St. Cyprian himself. See Batiffol, DEglise
Naissante (Paris, 1909), pp. 440 ff. : but see also E. W.
Watson in /. T. 5., April 1904, pp. 432 ff. I have substi-
tuted a remarkable passage from Lord Acton on Ultra-
montane methods.
On p. 117 I have altered a phrase in deference to Dom
Chapman's criticisms on p. 76.
On p. 118 I have somewhat strengthened the argument
from the De Aleatoribus in view of his criticism on p. 82.
EASTER, 1909.
1 Bishop Gore and the Catholic Claims, by Dom John Chapman,
O.S.B, (Longmans, 1905.)
FROM THE PREFACES TO FORMER
EDITIONS
IT is always important to explain what exactly is assumed
at starting in every book, or in other words, for what class
of readers it is written. This book then is written for
persons who accept, or are disposed to accept, the Catholic
position ; that is, who believe that Christ instituted a
visible Church, and intended the apostolic succession of
the ministry to form at least one necessary link of connec-
tion in it : who accept the Catholic Creeds and the
declared mind of the Church as governing their belief :
and who believe in the sacraments, as celebrated by a
ministry of apostolic authority in its different grades, as
the covenanted channels or instruments of grace. Further,
this book is addressed to catholic-minded persons who are
members of the Church of England, or Churches in com-
munion with her. Such persons find themselves attacked
from the side of Rome, and hear it denied that it is possible
to be Catholics without being Roman Catholics. It is
against such claims made upon us from the side of the
Roman Church that the following pages are intended to
be a defence, mostly in the way of explaining positively
the Anglican position, and showing it to be both Catholic
and rational. For the Roman Catholic claims may be
dealt with by those who cannot accept them, in one of two
ways. They may be examined and shown to be in them-
selves in conflict with history, and untenable. This has
been often done.
* * * * *
But there is another method of dealing with the Roman
claim. It is by strengthening the fabric of a positive
Catholicity, which is not Roman. Such a defensive method
it has been my aim to follow in this book. So far as
attack is a necessary part of defence, it has not been
possible to avoid it. But my purpose is positive, not
negative to build, not to destroy.
I believe, with a conviction the strength of which I could
hardly express, that it is the vocation of the English
Church to realise and to offer to mankind a Catholicism
FROM THE PREFACES TO FORMER EDITIONS *tt
which is Scriptural, and represents tht whole of Scripture:
which is historical, and can knovr itself free in face of
historical and critical science ; which is rational and con-
stitutional in its claim of authority, free at once from law-
lessness and imperialism. That the English Church for
her many sins will need the purification of much discipline
and suffering before she can in any adequate measure
realize her vocation, cannot be doubted. There will be
trials calculated to test the loyalty of the staunchest hearts :
but only through such trials is any great vocation realized.
And those who continue with the Church of England in
her temptations have surely appointed to them a position
and a work of privilege and fruitfulness in the kingdom of
Christ.
It was then in the belief that no labour is lost which goes
to strengthen the fabric of the English Church, and
enable her to realize with security her catholic polity and
life, that this book was written (in 1888), and has been
several times corrected and amplified.
*****
Thus Chapter I. is a general explanation of the Anglican
position as the "via media? and a general statement of our
attitude towards the Roman Church. After that follows
an answer in detail to each article of the Roman assault.
Thus Chapter 11. vindicates the Anglican or Catholic con-
ception of Church unity as against the Roman modification
of it. Chapter in. endeavours to explain the true or
primitive conception of Church authority, and Chapter iv.
the true relation of the Church to the Bible. Chapter v.
examines the Roman interpretation of our Lord's promise
to St. Peter. Chapters vi. and vn. bring to the test of
history the modern claims of the Roman see. Chapter vin.
expounds the meaning of schism, and clears the English
Church from the charge of it. Chapter IX. is occupied in
vindicating the validity and jurisdiction of the Anglican
episcopate; and Chapter x. in defending the Anglican
Church on the charge of heresy. Chapter XI. deals with
some more recent topics ; and among the appended notes
is a paper dealing at some length with the Roman theory
of development. C. G.
CONTENTS
CHAF. PAQ
I. THE VIA MEDIA AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC
DEVELOPMENT, i
II. THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH, .... 25
III. THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH AND THE
DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE, ... 37
IV. THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH, .... 60
V. THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER, .... 75
VI. THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH, . . 93
VII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY IN LATIN
CHRISTIANITY, 106
VIII. THE NATURE OF SCHISM 125
IX. ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS 141
X. ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY, 168
XI. THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES, . . 185
APPENDED NOTES.
I. THE BEARING OF THE THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT
ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, .... 203
II- THE CONCEPTION OF CHURCH UNITY IN ST.
HILARY 211
III. ST. BASIL AND ST. HILARY ON DOCTRINAL CON-
FUSION IN THE CHURCH, .... 212
IV. THE COMMON DIFFUSION OF THE SCRIPTURES
AMONG CHRISTIANS OF THE EMPIRE, . . 213
V. THE DOUBTS AS TO THE DOCUMENT ON ABYSSINIAN
ORDINATIONS 214
CHAPTER I.
THE VIA MEDIA AND THE ROMAN CHURCH.
THE English Churchman is constantly liable to be
told and to be told from very opposite quarters that
if he were only * logical ' he would join the Roman
Church : that belief in a visible Church and in its
authority, in the apostolic succession, and the jurisdic-
tion of the episcopate, leads legitimately and logically
to the conclusion of submitting to the see of Rome. 1
Thus Anglicanism is represented as an impossible via
media between pure Protestantism and Rationalism on
the one hand and Roman Catholicism on the other.
We are perhaps a little encouraged to meet these
claims made in the name of logic with a good heart by
the consideration that logic, in the sense of argument,
is apt to be most efficacious when it is most one-sided,
and content to ignore everything in the facts which does
not suit its case. " Reason " it has been most wisely
said " is wide, and manifold, and waits its time ; and
argument is partial, one-sided, and often then most
effective, when least embarrassed by seeing too much." 2
1 This is the argument not only of Roman controversialists but
also of Dr. Hatch in his reply to Dr. Liddon Contemporary
Review June 1885, p. 864. In fact, as is pointed out on p. 124
the theory of the Papacy involves a quite <:i'~";rent principle from
that of the Episcopate. See also an excellent argument in The
Guardian of May 15, 1889, p. 758.
2 Church Human Life and its Conditions p. 85.
A
a THE ' VIA MEDIA ' AND
The most plain case is by no means always the most
true. Thus Hooker remarks about the early heresies
on the Incarnation that "because this divine mystery is
more true than plain, divers having framed the same to
their own conceits and fancies are found in their exposi-
tions thereof more plain than true." So in effect in the
early centuries it was the heretics who were notorious
for one-sided appeals to * logic,' while the Church was
for this very reason called the ' via media ' because she
held on her way between opposite extremes, persisting
in holding together a complex scriptural idea or truth
which one-sided heresies would have torn asunder. 1
1 This has been drawn out by Professor Mozley in a passage
which has become famous : see The Theory of Development pp.
41-43: "In this way the logical controversy proceeded on the
great doctrines of Christianity in the first centuries : different sects
developed these in their own way ; and each sect appealed trium-
phantly to the logical irresistibleness of its development. The
Arian, the Nestorian, the Apollinarian, the Eutychian, the Mono-
thelite developments, each began with a great truth, and each
professed to demand one, and only one, treatment for it. All suc-
cessively had one watchword, and that was, 'Be logical.' Be
logical, said the Arian : Jesus Christ is the Son of God ; a son
cannot be coeval with his father. Be logical, said the Nestorian :
Jesus Christ was man and was God ; he was therefore two persons.
Be logical, said the Apollinarian : Jesus Christ was not two
persons ; he was not, therefore, perfect God and perfect man too.
Be logical, said the Eutychian : Jesus Christ was only one person ;
he could therefore only have one nature. Be logical, said the
Monothelite : Jesus Christ was only one person ; He could there-
fore only have one will. Be logical, said the Macedonian : the
Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Father, and therefore cannot be a
person distinct from the Father. Be logical, said the Sabellian :
God is one, and therefore cannot be three. Be logical, said the
Manichean : evil is not derived from God, and therefore must be
an original substance independent of him. Be logical, said the
Gnostic : an infinite Deity cannot really assume a finite borlv. Be
THE ROMAN CHURCH. 3
We have in fact no cause to be ashamed of this phrase
the via media which common consent has fixed upon
Anglicanism. It was a phrase in which the Church of
old gloried as a proper description of her position. And
in what sense ? It did not mean the way of modera-
logical, said the Novatian : there is only one baptism for the
remission of sins ; there is therefore no remission for sin after
baptism. Be logical, to come to later times, said the Calvinist :
God predestinates, and therefore man has not free will. Be logical,
said the Anabaptist : the Gospel bids us to communicate our goods,
and therefore does not sanction property in them. Be logical,
said the Quaker : the Gospel enjoins meekness, and therefore
forbids war. Be logical, says every sect and school : you admit
our premisses ; you do not admit our conclusions. You are incon-
sistent. You go a certain way and then arbitrarily stop." ....
" The whole dogmatic creed of the Church has been formed in
direct contradiction to such apparent lines of consecutiveness.
The Nestorian saw as clearly as his logic could tell him, that two
persons must follow from two natures. The Monophysite saw as
clearly as his logic could tell him, that one nature must follow
from one person. The Arian, the Monothelite, the Manichean,
saw as clearly as their logic could tell them on their respective
questions, and argued inevitably and convincingly to themselves.
To the intellectual imagination of the great heresiarchs of the early
ages, the doctrine of our Lord's nature took boldly some one line,
and developed continuously and straightforwardly some one idea ;
it demanded unity and consistency. The Creed of the Church,
steering between extremes and uniting opposites, was a timid arti-
ficial creation, a work of diplomacy. In a sense they were right.
The explanatory Creed of the Church was a diplomatic work ; it
was diplomatic, because it was faithful. With a shrewdness and
nicety like that of some ablest and- most sustained course of state-
craft and cabinet policy, it went on adhering to the complex original
idea, and balancing one tendency in it by another. One heresi-
arch after another would have infused boldness into it ; they
appealed to one element and another in it, which they wanted
to be developed indefinitely. The Creed kept its middle course,
rigidly combining opposites ; and a mixed and balanced erectiop
of dogmatic language arose, "
4 THE ' VIA MEDIA ' AND
tion, the ' middle way ' of steering clear of all thorough
and intelligible and free statement of principle. It
meant rather the way of combination, the way of com-
prehension and synthesis. The Church held together
what a hasty logic would have torn asunder. In * the
Word made flesh ' we have a complex or double fact
a union of Godhead and manhood and the Church
had to be true to both parts of her creed, to the Divinity
and the humanity, letting neither be ignored in the
interest of the other. The same duty presented itself
in regard to the doctrine of God : here again she had
to maintain both God's unity as against Tritheists, and
the Trinity as against Unitarians. Thus the Qui-
cunque vult is a document full of balanced and anti-
thetic clauses, just the sort of clauses which are irritating
to a hasty logic. " Like as we are compelled by the
Christian verity to acknowledge every Person by Himself
to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catho-
lic religion to say [what seems the 'logical' conse-
quence] there be three Gods, or three Lords." But
this principle of combination holds beyond the area
of theology proper. When we are considering the
function of the Church and the relation of the Church
as a society to the individual, we have to guard the
same principle. You may press the claims of the
individual to freedom to the extent of annihilating all
real unity, or you may press Church authority so as to
annihilate the free development of the individual. The
former extreme we call individualism, the latter im-
perialism or absolutism. Both are * logical,' that is to
say both are the logical application of a true principle,
Tff& ROMA& CHURCH. 5
but they are the one-sided applications of it, and we
should be inclined to call Protestantism on one side
individualistic, and Romanism absolutist, on the other :
while the via media undertakes the more difficult but
not the less necessary task of preserving the balance by
keeping hold of both terms. The case is just the same
with authority and private judgment it is in fact only
the same problem in the intellectual sphere. The ideal
state is a via media in which the due authority of the
Church nourishes the spiritual judgment of the indi-
vidual into mature life and freedom till "he that is
spiritual judgeth all things yet he himself is judged of no
man." The extremes are represented by a dogmatism
which crushes instead of quickening the reason of the
individual, making it purely passive and acquiescent, and
on the other hand by an unrestrained development of
the individual judgment which becomes eccentric and
lawless just because it is unrestrained. If there is much
of this latter extreme in modern life, there is also in
the Roman Church a great deal of the former. Once
again and for the last time, the life of the soul is
intended to be nourished by a due correspondence be-
tween external gifts of grace, of which the sacraments are
the visible channels, and the internal action of faith. Now
in this case also the doctrine of the sacraments has with-
out a doubt been preached and accepted in such a way as
to lead to their being treated as charms, or substitutes
for personal spiritual effort ; and on the other side the
sufficiency of faith has been proclaimed in a way that
made men ignore the necessity of the sacraments. The
mean lies in the belief both in the validity of sacra-
6 THE ' VIA MEDIA ' AND
mental grace and in the necessity for the responsive
action of faith. Thus in all departments of religious
life we come upon this principle of the Via Media, and
the English Church may well be proud of the title. It
is not indeed the case that we could reasonably claim
to have realized this ideal standard with any degree of
completeness : but it represents the ideal which the pro-
vidence of God has made it our special responsibility to
maintain, because circumstances have linked us at once
to the ancient organization and authority of the Church
and to the freer life and scriptural appeal of the Refor-
mation, and have thus given us the special opportunity
of showing that Church authority is not incompatible
with the appeal to Scripture and to reason. We are in-
vested to an exceptional degree with the responsibility
of being true to the whole of the deposit of truth : of re-
sisting the fascination of one-sided developments : and
thus standing ready with the whole treasury of Christian
truth unimpaired to meet the demands which a new age
makes upon it with its new developments of character
and circumstance.
So, speaking broadly, the complaint which we should
make of the Roman Church is not that she is heretical
nor that she does not represent a real development
of principles which are truly Christian, but that she
represents a one-sided development, and by this very
one-sidedness has been prevented, both in our time and
at the epoch of the Reformation, from expressing at all
adequately the whole of Christianity, and that thus in
claiming (as in fact she does claim) to be the whole, she
has taken up a position which is essentially schismatic :
THE ROMAN CHURCH. J
for that is essentially schismatic which makes for a part
the claim of the whole.
Broadly, it is very easy to justify this view of the
Roman Church. Each race has had in the Catholic
Church its own particular function. It was the function,
for instance, of the Greek race with its peculiar intel-
lectual subtlety and philosophical power to bring out
into clear light the ' treasures of wisdom ' which lay hid
in Christ, to grasp and enunciate the principles of the
Incarnation and the Trinity in a word, to be the
theologians of the Church. In theology proper the
Roman Church has been by comparison weak, but her
strength lay in the gift of government. It was hers to
bring out all the wealth of authority which the facts and
forces of Christianity contained within their scope.
The faculty of empire passed from pagan to Christian
Rome transformed in purpose and motive, but funda-
mentally the same. In the exercise of this power lay
the glory of the Papacy but also its danger. Just as
the danger of Greek Christianity had been the tendency
to degenerate into an aimless theological accuracy a
barren subtlety of intellectual or verbal distinctions, so
the danger of Roman Christianity lay in imperialism.
The whole idea of the Church becomes under her
treatment in a measure secularised. The Church be-
comes a great world-empire for purposes of spiritual
government and administration. Hence, for instance,
the primary conception of her unity becomes that of
unity of government, the sort of unity which most
readily submits itself to secular tests and most naturally
postulates a visible centre and head ; and the dominant
9 THE ' VIA MEDIA ' AND
force in all religious questions becomes authority rather
than truth. Indeed all the needs of the early mediaeval
period tended to add strength to this tendency. The
untamed, undisciplined races which formed the material
of our modern nations were subjected to the yoke of the
Church (mostly at the will of kings or chiefs) as to an ex-
ternal law, which was to train, mould, restrain them. The
one need of such an age was authoritative discipline, and
the Church became largely a 'schoolmaster to bring men
to Christ.' She had in fact to do with children in mind;
with children whose one religious faculty, which was in
full exercise, was faith, in the form of a great readiness
to accept revelations of the unseen world and to respect
their ministers the sort of faith which asks for nothing
but a sufficiently firm voice of authority. Christianity
thus became, by a one-sided development, a great
imperialist and hierarchical system, The peremptory
needs of government tended to overshadow earlier con-
ceptions of the Church's function even in relation to the
truth. Compare the Roman Leo's view of the truth
with that of the Alexandrian Didymus or Athanasius,
and the contrast is marked. Both Easterns and Westerns
insist on the importance of the Church's dogma, but to
the Easterns it is the guide in the knowledge of God,
to the Westerns it is the instrument to subdue and dis-
cipline the souls of men. Thus the authoritativeness
of tone which becomes characteristic of the Western
Church makes her impatient of the slow and complex
methods of arriving at the truth on disputed points,
which belonged to the earlier idea of the 'rule of
faith.' The comparison of traditions, the elaborate
THE ROMAN CHURCH. 9
appeal to Scripture, these methods are too slow and too
indecisive : something more rapid and imperious is
wanted. It is no longer enough to conceive of the
Church as the catholic witness to a faith once for all
delivered. She must be the living voice of God, the
oracle of the Divine Will. And just as the strength
and security of witness lies in the comparison and
consent of independent testimonies, so the strength of
authoritative oracular utterance lies in unimpeded, un-
qualified centrality, and Christendom needs a central
chair of truth, where Divine Authority speaks and rules.
Such has been broadly the Roman development of
the Christian religion. It has been a real and powerful
development of principles really Christian, but a one-
sided, and for this reason an incomplete development,
and one which, as soon as it claims to be the whole,
becomes schismatic.
That Roman Catholicism is an incomplete develop-
ment is plain to us at the present time, as we look at
the matter from outside, on several grounds.
(i) It is unscriptural. Scripture says a good deal
about authority, and therefore there are certain passages
of Scripture with which Rome is thoroughly at home
which she has thoroughly made her own. But with the
whole of Scripture she is not at home. This is shown
by the immense gulf between practical current Romanism
and the general tone of the New Testament a gulf
which is partly the cause and partly the effect of the
prevalent ignorance and disuse of Scripture, as a whole,
which is notorious and admitted amongst Roman
Catholics. Thus M. Henri Lasserre who has made a
10 THE ' VIA MEDIA AND
name by his devotion to our Lady of Lourdes, recently
published, with the imprimatur of the Archbishop of
Paris and under the special benediction of the Roman
Pontiff, a translation into French of the four Gospels.
He did this, he tells us in his preface, on account of
" a fact notorious and universal " a fact which is re-
garded as " the primary cause of the diminution of the
Christian spirit" namely, that the Gospel "is very rarely
read even by those who profess to be fervent Catholics.
Never at all by the multitude of the faithful." "In fact,"
continues M. Lasserre, "ask your neighbours and your
friends, all who make up your circle ; ask yourself, my
deai reader : and you will not hesitate to affirm, not
perhaps without a profound astonishment, that for a
hundred persons who practise the sacraments, there is
often not a single one who has ever opened the Gospels,
except at hazard, and to go through or to meditate here
and there upon a few isolated verses." Anything like
continuous knowledge of the Gospels, he goes on to ex-
plain at length, simply does not exist. 1 Such a state of
things Cardinal Manning appears not only to recognise
as a fact, but to justify. "Catholics readily admit," he
says, that " they do not go to the text of Scripture for
their devotion, as others do who are out of the unity of
the Church." " The Church puts into the hands of its
people books of devotion which represent the whole order
1 I quote from the twenty-third edition. Shortly after, this book
was suppressed, on the ground of inaccuracies of translation. If
this had been the only ground, we should, of course, have expected
that another translation, freed from such inaccuracies, would at
once have appeared with the same imprimaturs and benedictions.
There was an obviously boundless demand for a version of the
Gospels in French. [1889.]
THE ROMAN CHURCH. II
and completeness of revelation, and not the partial
and unordered aspect of Scripture." 1 Now we English
Churchmen feel that there is a very natural reason why
Roman Catholics should not know more than select
passages of Scripture. Their favourite devotions to the
blessed Virgin and the Saints, the doctrines of indul-
gences, and of purgatory, as commonly held amongst
them, find no countenance at all in the New Testa-
ment. A man cannot be at home in the current Roman
doctrine of ' good works ' and in St. Paul's Epistles.
And this unscripturalness of the Roman Church has a
further result : we do not, we cannot, look to her for
much help in interpreting the New Testament as a
whole. Immense progress has been made in Scriptural
interpretation within the last thirty or forty years, 2 but
how singularly little has the Roman Church helped in
it, or is she likely to help in it. We go to older Roman
1 Manning's Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost pp. 210, 211.
P. 208 he speaks of "the level and dim surface of the Sacred
Text." There may be eyes to which the surface of nature is level
and dim ; otherwise it would be inconceivable how any one could
apply such epithets e.g. to the Epistles and Gospels.
3 I do not, of course, mean that we should not desire in many
modern commentators, and expounders of Scripture, a much
greater reverence for the mind of the Church, but I do say that
such commentators as Westcott, Lightfoot, Trench, or out of
Presbyterian communities Milligan, Godet, Delilzsch, and
others, with such preachers and writers as Benson, Holland,
Liddon, Keble, Church, Mozley, Pusey, and Newman (almost
wholly in his Anglican days), represent for our age a really fresh
and genuine drawing out of the meaning of the inspired books,
and give us as a result immense help in understanding them. By
the united labours of many devout spirits, Holy Scripture is being
gradually made to live again. [1888.]
I* THB ' VIA MEDIA ' AND
commentaries (such as that of Cornelius a Lapide) for
accumulated information on the various opinions, good,
bad, and indifferent, which have been held as to the
meaning of Scripture, and sometimes for valuable sugges-
tion : we go to Father Coleridge and others for a great
deal of suggestive practical commentary on the Gospels
but for the legitimate and critical and real interpreta-
tion of the New Testament, especially of St. Paul or St.
John, we look with very little hope to the Roman Church
(2) It is unhistorical. The Roman Church has dragged
along with her as a heritage of the past, from which she
cannot break, a 'rule of faith' which makes a new
dogma once for all equivalent to a false dogma. It has
therefore been forced upon her to maintain that dogmas
which have been rendered necessary by the accentuation
of authority or by the exigencies of popular devotions
which it was not possible or expedient to restrain, such
as Papal infallibility and supremacy, the Immaculate Con-
ception and the doctrine of Indulgences, are portions of
primitive Christianity, at least in substance. This hopeless
task she can only accomplish by a treatment of antiquity
which is absolutely inconsistent with any honest attempt
to read its record. Thus practically Roman writers deny
that antiquity has a real record which we can read, and
ought to read freely. Cardinal Manning says: "the ap-
peal to antiquity (i.e. the appeal behind the present
teaching of the Church) is both a treason and a heresy.
... I may say in strict truth that the Church has no anti-
quity. It rests upon its own supernatural and perpetual
consciousness. . . . The only divine evidence to us of
what was primitive is the witness and voice of the Church
THE ROMAN CHURCH. 13
at this hour." 1 Roman writers generally bid us use
the living voice of the Church as a witness to what the
Church of the past did think, and appear to suppose the
argument of the * difficulty ' 3 of reading the past records
of the Church a sufficient reason for ignoring them.
Thus almost the whole of their recent literature has
become saturated with a spirit of unfaithfulness to his-
torical fact. There is a great deal of Romanism in the
Church from the fifth century downward, and this they
produce with an excessive willingness they have it at
their fingers' ends. But we have ceased almost to hope
to find in a modern Roman writer a candid review of
the whole facts of a case where the Roman Claims or
dogmas are in question. Candour, an attempt to
fairly produce the whole case, a love of the whole
truth this seems to have vanished from their literature,
1 Temporal Mission, Third ed. 1877, PP- 238-240. Elsewhere,
p. 29, he calls the appeal to Scripture and antiquity whether by
individuals or local Churches " essentially rationalistic." We on
the other hand should hold that the Church is the primary teacher
of the individual, but that her teaching, because it is Catholic and
nothing more, must admit of being verified by the individual for
himself, if he has adequate knowledge and patience, in the
field of antiquity. Morinus' work de Sacris Ordinationibus is
a magnificent instance of a current church doctrine in the Roman
Church having been in former days altered by a free examination of
the past records. See The Church and the Ministry p. 68, note I.
2 Rivington's Authority p. 29. P. 56 he quotes a remark of
St. Francis "that the early Church," on the Protestant showing
"must have had a long speaking-tube indeed to make itself audible
to Luther across the centuries, without these centuries hearing
what it said." Luther put his ear very little to the speaking-tube,
and perhaps there was too much noise during the Reformation to
make it very easy to listen to the voice, but I should have thought
that the revival of the knowledge of Greek among other things
was of the nature of a speaking-tube from the early centuries.
14 THE VIA MSDIA ' AND
and its place is taken by an abundant skill in making
the best of all that looks Homewards in Church
history, and ignoring the rest. Indeed it seems to be
not only in dealing with the Papal claims that the
Roman Church is disqualified from dealing broadly
and frankly with facts. She has adopted a fatal tone of
distrust towards the critical reason altogether, so that
she seems by her whole method to put herself at a
disadvantage in dealing with some of the most pressing
problems of our time which are coming up for solution.
For example. Some fifty years ago a very powerful
attack was made on the genuineness of New Testament
documents, and consequently on the historical character
of the Gospel record. On the whole we can claim that
this attack has been met and repulsed, and that the
cause of the New Testament history and records the
authorship, for instance, of St. John's Gospel, the his-
torical trustworthiness of the Acts of the Apostles, and
the genuineness of St. Paul's and St. John's Epistles
stands now on stronger ground than ever before, in
proportion as the attack was more scientific, more
radical, and more searching. It has been met by men
who combined with a strong faith in the Christian Creed
and Scriptures a courageous belief in evidence, a fear-
less love of frank inquiry, and it is not therefore
surprising that the victory has been won with little aid
from the Roman Catholic Church. Now the attack
has moved backwards, and is directed against the Old
Testament. On this field the whole problem is still in
solution, and the victory is still to be won. But it will
be won, we are sure, by students who, on the one hand,
hold with a sure confidence to the Inspiration of Scrip-
THE ROMAN CHURCH. i$
ture, and take a careful view of what the Church seems
actually to have committed herself to on this subject ;
and, on the other hand, face with a determined boldness,
and patience, and accuracy the critical problem, the
evidence as it actually is. This field of controversy is
still in the main before us, but the experience of the
past leads us surely to expect the champions of Holy
Scripture in the fray to come from some other quarter
than amongst Roman theologians for this reason, that
instead of the temper required for dealing with the pro-
blem, they seem to exhibit a mixture of exaggerated
dogmatism with undue scepticism as to our faculties for
the discovery of truth. And it cannot be pretended that
the question is one only for the learned. There is no
question which more cries out for solution amongst
the working classes than what they are to think about
the historical truth of the whole Bible. Hitherto, cer-
tainly, the Roman Church, as it has not done much to
help us on the ground of the New Testament, so again
has no ready answer as to the Old. For while Car-
dinal Manning declares that the authoritative teaching
of the Holy Catholic Church " excludes the supposition
that falsehood and error can be found " in any of the
Canonical books, on the other hand an able Roman
layman l has vindicated his liberty to maintain in the
1 I allude to Mr. St. George Mivart's articles in the Nineteenth
Ccntiuy of July and Dec. 1887. It does not seem as if the Roman
Church was in fact more committed on this subject than our own.
There is the same variety of opinion. The Vatican Council has
expressly defined that the books of the Old and New Testament
"have God for their author." Newman, however, Nineteenth
Century Feb. 1884 p. 188, makes 'author' (auctor) mean no
giore than 'primary cause.' Most recognized Roman writers
1 6 THE ' VIA MEDIA ' AND
public press an acceptance of the conclusions of ' ad-
vanced critics' on the Old Testament, and even of
conclusions which would go far to undermine the histori-
cal trustworthiness of the New Testament documents.
I have been endeavouring to indicate two points in
which the Roman development of Catholicity, because
it is one-sided, has had the effect of maiming Chris-
tianity, and disqualifying it from dealing with some
of the tasks assigned to it. The over-development
of authoritativeness has led to the Roman Church be-
coming both unscriptural and unhistoricaL Thus we
Anglicans are sure that to accept the Roman Church
as being the whole Catholic Church would be to betray
a great trust, and to make ourselves instrumental in
letting Christianity become narrowed as it comes down
the ages. " There are more things " in Scripture and
in Catholicism " than are dreamt of in her philosophy."
The Church of the first ages was richer in possible
developments of character and power than the Church
of Rome.
I may then attempt to put the case of an Anglican
Churchman at starting in this way :
We find ourselves by our baptism members of a
Church which claims to be part of Christ's Holy Catho-
lic Church, and which, at the same time, has become
separated from the rest of Western Christendom by a
refusal to submit to the claims of the see of Rome.
e.g. Comely Hist, et Crit. Introd. in V. T. Compendium Paris
1889 pp. 273-278, appear to regard themselves as bound to defend
the historical truth even of Judith and Tobit. [1889. The above
paragraph contains an element of prophecy. For later events, and
ihe Papal Encyclical on the subject* see Chapter XL]
THE ROMAN CHURCH. I?
We do not find on examination that we fail to comply
with any of the conditions of catholic communion
which the ancient and undivided Church recognized.
We cannot in the face of history treat the present
claims of the Papal see as tenable or just. In particular,
the force of these claims is broken, as by an immense
breakwater, by the whole Eastern Church with her
millions of Catholic Christians, long before it reaches
us. For history forces us to recognize in the Roman
claims the main cause of the schism of East and West :
it forces us to see in the Papal system a development
of Christianity which is less than catholic,
On the other hand, we see in the ancient and un-
divided Church a coherent system of beliefs and institu-
tions and practices, which has been continuous under
the development of Rome and in the traditions of the
East, and which is richer and fuller in possibilities of
life than either the one or the other taken apart.
To this richer and completer life of the undivided
Church we make our appeal. From it we would
start afresh. For while we thankfully recognize that,
in God's good providence, nothing occurred in the
English Reformation which broke the continuity of our
Church in any essential matter with the Church of the
past, it is not to the Reformation we wish to appeal so
much as to antiquity. The Reformation was a time of
reaction rather than of settlement We see the 'fresh
springs ' of a life constantly new rather in the principles
of the ancient Church and in the present power of the
Holy Ghost. And to reassure us in appealing back to
the undivided Church and claiming our continuity
18 THE ' VIA MEDIA ' AND
with her, God has blessed with results beyond what
its first leaders would have dared to ask, the revival of
religious life amongst us, which, during the last fifty
years, has stirred and taken form on the basis of this
very appeal. Just in proportion as the Anglican Church
has been content to act as if she were Catholic, and
to stir up the gifts within her, in that proportion we
find she is so and has the living Spirit in her body.
What is reassuring is not merely that the faith of
individuals, whether priests or people, finds its response :
it is not merely that we are allowed to realise our
catholicity in this or that parish, this or that institution :
it is not merely that all the prophecies of evil which
those who left us forty years ago ventured to utter, have
been signally falsified J it is true further and beyond
this, that our Church is driven in her formal and
corporate action more and more to take her stand on
the only basis which is tenable and enduring, the basis of
catholic principle. It is surely remarkable that in the
Conference of Bishops of the Anglican Communion in
1 Cf. for instance Dr. Newman's Loss and Gain p. 288. "They
[Catholic-minded people] will keep going one by one as they
ripen." . . . " Their Catholic principles lead them on, and there
is nothing to drive them back." On the other hand, in the articles
by the Editor of The Month (July 1885 p. 350), we discern a
different tone after a lapse of many years, and in the light of the
experience they have brought. "Their eyes [i.e. of those who
represent the Tractarians now] are no longer turned to the city of
God. . . . They are quite content with their position. Cf.
Rivington Dependence p. 157 : " Of late years this attitude [of
preference for Rome] has very much disappeared. It is now
taught that it is a comparative blessing to have been born in the
Anglican Branch, as it is called, and not in the Roman Com-
TffS ROMAN CHURCH. 19
the year 1888, a proposal which was made (if report
speaks true) subversive of the principle of the apostolic
succession, 1 should not have been able to get a hearing ;
or be allowed to appear in the official report. It is
surely remarkable how the bishops take their stand not
so much on the Articles, as on the Catholic creeds and
Ecumenical Councils 2 not, that is, on a document
which represents rather the best compromise which
could be arrived at locally, at a time when questions
were not ripe for settlement, but upon the mature and
abiding decisions of the whole Church. 8
Forty years ago Cardinal Newman made the fol-
1 A proposal (in effect) to recognize Nonconformist orders as
1 valid ' in some sense, though irregular. It was sufficiently
notorious to be the subject of public sermons.
' See the Conference of Bishops at Lambeth 1888. Encyclical
letter and reports pp. 18, 28, 105 ff., esp. p. no. It was
especially the real adherence of our Church to the ancient dogmas
and apostolic succession, as having still a living meaning, which
could be doubted fifty years ago. " You are so few " (who hold
to such things) "that we can count you." See Loss and Gain
p. 214. In spite of many fears entertained about the ' Pan-
Anglican Conference,' it has wrought much good in this way
that the bishops present were in large majority members of
unestablished Churches in different lands, and thus the whole
basis of discussion was taken off the temporary and accidental
basis of an English Establishment.
8 The Creeds represent decisions. Their who. ^urpose is to
determine. There is no doubt, on the other hand, that, except
where the Articles simply express over again the mind of the
ancient Church (as in 1-9, 33-34), or pointedly exclude certain
mediaeval abuses (as in 30 and 32), or Reformation excesses
(38, 39), the purpose which governed their wording was to avoid
an issue rather than to seek it to shelve questions, leaving a large
tract of open country, rather than to decide them, This charac-
teristic of the Articles is at once their weakness as formulas and
their strength as temporary safeguards.
20 THE ' VIA MEDIA ' AND
lowing enumeration of the steps which would constitute
a 'mortal operation' upon the Anglican Church and
destroy its essence or definition : " Take its bishops out
of the legislature, tear its formularies from the Statute
Book, open its universities to Dissenters, allow its
clergy to become laymen again, legalize its private
prayer-meetings." Since then three of the contingencies
contemplated have actually occurred. Would any one
now imagine that the occurrence of the first two would
make the operation mortal? Truly God hath done
great things for us already, whereof we rejoice. 1
I shall hope to show in succeeding chapters that
Anglicanism is not a mere appeal to precedents that
a real and intelligible groundwork of reason and prin-
ciple underlies our action and our hopes. For the
present I have only two brief remarks to make in order
to bring this introductory chapter to a conclusion.
It would be a fatal mistake to suppose that the atti-
1 See Newman Discourses to mixed Congregations p. 251. I am
sure that so far as there is wilfulness amongst us or within us, we
shall all be grateful to Mr. Rivington for making public the private
warnings of so great a teacher as Dr. Pusey (Authority^, u).
Such warnings we always need. Shall I return good for good, by
recalling to Mr. Rivington 's notice a public warning of Cardinal
Newman's of a similar character to his own fellow-clergy ? " There
are those among us " he wrote (Letter to the Duke of Norfolk
1875, ? 4) " as it must be confessed, who for years past have
conducted themselves as if no responsibility attached to wild
words and overbearing deeds ; who have stated truths in the most
paradoxical form, and stretched principles till they were cl )se upon
snapping ; and who at length, having done their best to set the
house on fire, leave to others the task of putting out the flame."
He goes on to allude to "the chronic extravagances of knots ot
Catholics."
THE ROMAN CHURCH. 21
tude we maintain is that of "Romanism without the
Pope." The Roman temper has coloured all her
doctrine. It is not only the case that certain doctrines
and practices are wholly destitute of authority, except
in the Papal system such doctrines as those of the
Treasury of Merits and the Immaculate Conception;
but the temper of Rome has coloured further her use
of doctrines and practices that are really catholic, not
least, perhaps, her doctrine and practice with reference
to the sacrament of the Eucharist. 1 The whole logic
of Anglicanism forces us, not indeed God forbid to
1 See further p. 176. It will surprise many of us, I think, to
read the following statement by Cardinal Newman (1877) of the
authoritative Roman doctrine of the Real Presence ( Via Media ii.
p. 220) :
" Our Lord is in loco in heaven, not (in the same sense) in the
sacrament. He is present in the sacrament only in substance,
substantial^ and substance does not require or imply the occupation
of place. But if place is excluded from the idea of the sacramental
Presence, therefore division or distance from heaven is excluded
also, for distance implies a measurable interval, and such there
cannot be except between places. Moreover, if the idea of dis-
tance is excluded, therefore is the idea of motion. Our Lord
then neither descends from heaven upon our altars, nor moves
when carried in procession. The .visible species change their
position, but He does not move. He is in the holy Eucharist
after the manner of a spirit. We do not know how ; we have no
parallel to the ' how ' in our experience. We can only say that
He is present, not according to the natural manner of bodies, but
sacramentally. His Presence is substantial, spirit-wise, sacra-
mental : an absolute mystery, not against reason, however, but
against imagination, and must be received by faith."
We cannot but feel as we read this, that this supra-local, spiri-
tual, presence which is not susceptible of change of place while
it agrees very well with the ancient use of the Eucharistic mysteries,
agrees very ill with some modern practices, attractive as they arc,
connected with the Tabernacle and the Monstrance*
aa THE ' VIA MEDIA ' AND
ignore the great record of mediaeval Christianity, or
to cease to venerate the mighty saints of those ages,
but to make our appeal on all points behind Roman
and mediaeval churchmanship to the c rich depositary '
of Scripture and the ancient Church, and make a fresh
start from these.
Secondly, it needs to be emphasized that supposing
true principles do not force us to accept the present
Roman claims, they by that very fact do make the
acceptance of them by individuals a grievous betrayal of
trust. God has, we must believe, special tasks in store
for the Anglican Church, tasks for which the Roman
temper and the Roman theology are by their very
character and tone disqualified. To some of these we
have alluded. It seems likely that it will belong to us,
rather than to Rome, to work out the relations of
religion to critical knowledge, and to vindicate the true
character of inspiration in its relation to historical
research. And if these are intellectual problems, there
are others in the missionary field and at home of a
much more practical sort, over and above the ordinary
work of conversion and edification which belongs at
all times to all Churches. Now these special tasks of
the Church belong to special men. God will raise up,
He is raising up, specially gifted men to fulfil them.
But we can only do our special tasks through our special
men, if we ordinary churchmen and churchwomen are
playing our ordinary parts manfully and well. These
special vocations, intellectual and spiritual, require a
strong background of ordinary church life. It is this
thought which ought to enable us all to feel almost
THE ROMAN CHURCH. 23
equally responsible for the general work of the Church
equally bound to merge our individual interests and
fears and hopes, even for our own salvation, in the
larger interests and fears and hopes of the kingdom of
God. Christ, Who said " what is a man profited if he
gain the whole world and lose his own soul (life) ? "
said also, and immediately before it, " whosoever would
save his soul (life) shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose
his soul (life) for my sake shall find it." 1 Nothing can
be so important as to save our soul, our true self, our
true life, but we are to look to save it not by selfishly
isolating it and sparing it, but by abandoning it to bur-
dens which Christ would lay upon us, and giving it up
to His work and His kingdom. The call of Christ to
salvation comes not in the way of panic ' amazement '
and failing courage, but in the way of endurance, and
patience, and forbearance, of greater hope, and firmer
ventures of faith and love.
God has a great work to do in reviving the catholic
i St. Matt. xvi. 25-27. See Revised Version. The word for
' soul ' or ' life ' is in all cases the same in the Greek and in the
Vulgate. I have been led to make the remarks in the text above
by Mr. Rivington's intimation (p. 59) that he went to Rome to
save his soul from hell. I cannot think that the Bible leads us to
suppose that we should save our soul by submitting to the loudest
voice, which threatens us with the severest penalties, but rather by
following the path of imposed duty with the greatest possible
measure of patience and hope, and the venture of faith which
holds on to God through all darkness. I should desire a Noncon-
formist to be brought to the Church by the increasing sense that
In proportion as he became unselfish, and threw himself upon the
body he belonged to, he became conscious that as a body, as an
organization, it did not represent the Divine kingdom, but human
self-will.
24 THE ' VIA MEDIA ' AND ROMAN CHURCH.
and free life of the Church of England, and He needs,
in different ways, every member of the Church to play
a part in it by patience and faith. Who would not
rather have stayed in the Church of England forty
years ago with Dr. Pusey, patient and faithful, than
have left it with others less stable, if more brilliant?
The strain, thanks to the faithfulness of him and others
like him, has become much less in our day, and the
burden less severe. But yet there is much more to be
done than God can do in our lifetime, and we mean-
while must see that no cowardice or faintheartedness
or impatience of ours hinders its progress.
' List, Christian warrior, thou whose heart is fain
To loose thy mother from her present chain,
Christ will avenge His Bride yet ere He save
Thy lot shall be the grave.'
CHAPTER II.
THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.
IT is a question often asked of English churchmen
In what sense do you believe in one Holy Catholic
Church ? You do not claim that the English Church is
of itself and alone the whole Church; you admit the
Roman and Eastern branches to be, equally with your
own, parts of the Church : that is to say, you admit per-
manent and apparently radical divisions in the Church
in matters of doctrine no less than of government, and
yet you say the Church is one. Surely you are here
giving words an unreal meaning. Surely the Romanists
can call the Church " one " in a much more intelligible
sense. What they mean by church unity is plain and
tangible. Their Church is one.'
Thus Mr. Rivington has recently said J : " I saw that
the plain t obvious meaning of our Lord's words to St.
Peter involved the institution of a visible Head to His
visible Church, besides the fact that His Church is
described as an organized body, and that the talk of a
body without a head in the same order of life as the rest
of the body, is to use words without meaning. An
invisible body may have only an invisible head ; but a
1 Authority p. 5.
15
26 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.
visible body, to be a body at all, must have also a
visible head."
In this argument, just quoted, and in the sort of
questioning described above, we have specimens of the
way in which we are pressed in the English Church to
acknowledge that 'logically' the belief in the visible
Church leads to Rome ; and we make our reply to this
solicitation, first, by endeavouring to explain positively
the primary sense of church unity, as taught in Scripture
and held by the Fathers, so as to show that it covers our
position and enables us to give a rational account of
it: and then, negatively, by pointing out in what we
consider the weakness of the Roman conception of
church unity to consist, considered as a primary con-
ception.
Primarily, then, the Church is the Spirit-bearing body,
and what makes her one in heaven and paradise and
earth is not an outward but an inward fact the indwell-
ing of the Spirit, which brings with it the indwelling of
Christ, and makes the Church the great ' Christbearer,'
the body of Christ. The principle of unity in any in-
stitution or object depends on what it is on what its
essence consists in. The unity of a stone and the unity
of a state are different things. The House of Commons
is one, and Nature is one ; but in different senses. A
family again is one, however much brothers may be
separated by oceans or kept apart from all intercourse
by bitterest feud, because of a community of descent, a
common heritage of nature, which runs in the blood and
physical constitution, and makes it one. Once more, the
Church is one, in a sense to which other unities may
THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 27
supply analogy and illustration, but which is none the
less special and unique. She is one because she alone
of all societies of men possesses a supernatural indwelling
presence and relation to God in Christ. This is a unity
which underlies all external separations of place or
time, all external divisions and hostilities which result
from the marring of the sacred gift by human sin.
It is consistent with anything which does not break
the channels down which the Church's essence is con-
veyed from the centre and source of life to all who
share it.
Of course this fundamental unity of life is not the
only unity. There is a unity of faith, and a unity of
love or fellowship also, which we shall have to take into
account shortly, but a little examination will show us
that this is the principal sense in which Scripture speaks
of the Church as one. She is one as the branches are
one with the vine 1 : that is, one because the sap of
Christ's Life is derived into her, and to be in connec-
tion with Christ the source of life is therefore the con-
dition of being in the unity of the Church. Again, Christ
prays that His disciples " may be perfected into one "
by being taken up through Himself into the fellowship
of the life of God. 2 Again when St. Paul speaks of
the unity of the Church, he makes it depend not on
subordination to one external government, but on the
1 St. John xv. 1-5.
8 St John xvii. 22-23 [R.V.]. It should be remarked that
Christ did not, strictly, speak of one fold, but of one flock, on*
shepherd-. They shall become one flock.' St. John x. 16 [R.V.].
This is worth notice, though it is sometimes quite unduly insisted
upon.
28 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.
reception of one food, which is the Life of Christ 1
Partaking of one Bread we become one Body, * holding
the Head' we share His Life. 2 The unity of the
Church is specified to consist in ' one body ' thus under-
stood, 'one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith,
one baptism, one God and Father of all, over all,
through all, in all.' 8 It is because the Church pos-
sesses this unity that she ought to express it in outward
fellowship and peace amongst her members : because
we have been " baptized into one body and made to
drink of one Spirit," it is incumbent upon us to avoid
" schism in the body " 4 : it is because we have the "unity
of the Spirit " that we are to endeavour to maintain the
"bond of peace." 6 But the unity does not consist in
the bond of peace : it does not consist in outward
fellowship, though it ought to result in it.
Metaphors must not be pressed without a very strict
regard to the sense in which they are used, and I have
been trying to show what is the primary sense in which
the one life of the Church is compared in Holy Scrip-
ture to the one life of the body and of the vine : it is in
the sense that it transmits one life from one source into
all its limbs or branches. It is a natural consequence of
this way of thinking of Church unity that in Scripture and
the early writers it is spoken of as progressive. If the
unity of the Church were primarily a unity of outward
government it could not grow. It would be an external
bond once for all imposed. But a unity which is the
result of an infused life increases and grows as this new
* I Cor. x. 14-17. 2 Eph. iv. 13-16. * Eph. iv. 4-6,
4 i Cor. xii. 13-25. 8 Eph. iv. 3,
THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 29
life gains force and absorbs the older elements: so
Christ prays that His disciples may be " perfected into
one"; and St. Paul speaks of the whole Church growing
up " into a perfect man " i.e. into a closer and completer
unity of life. So in the Shepherd of Hermas, sometimes
reckoned as Scripture in the early Church, the picture
is presented to us of the Church becoming one by
gradual purification: "so also shall be the Church of
God after it has been purified and the wicked and
hypocrites and blasphemers and double-minded have
been cast out; after these have been cast out the
Church of God shall be one body, one purpose, one
mind, one faith, one love" (Sim. ix. 18).
The unworthy lives of Christians prevent the Church
from manifesting the life of Christ in her, as she is
meant to do, and from being the light of the world, but
all Christians who believe in a visible Church must
admit that there have been times when the Church has
been extraordinarily corrupt without losing that intrinsic
holiness which belongs to her, because she has the Holy
Spirit within her. Again the Church's indolence in
Mission work has kept her back from showing to the
world that she is truly Catholic and truly adapted to all
races. In the same way the divisions in the Church
prevent her from bearing the witness she ought to bear
to the one life by which she lives ; but she no more
ceases to be ' one ' by outward divisions, than she ceases
to be 'holy' by tolerating sin, or 'catholic' because
she has so slothfully put up with two-thirds of the world
remaining in heathendom. Indeed no one who studies
church history can be surprised that a Church which
30 THE UNfTY OF THE CHURCH.
has often looked so utterly unholy, which had even in
the fifth century to be described by Salvian as a " sink
of vices," should also have grown to look disunited.
It would be wonderful if sin had not been as busy to
spoil the beauty of the bride of Christ in one way as
in the other. The vision of the Church utterly holy,
actually catholic, utterly one, is the vision of heaven
and the hope only of earth.
We maintain then that, primarily, the unity of the
Church is in Scripture a unity of inward life, an invisible
fact : it is in this that her essential unity primarily consists.
' But then ' it will be said ' you are saying that Church
unity is primarily invisible.' We reply that even at this
primary stage the unity is external as well as internal.
It is quite true that every one who possesses a certain
inward, gift so far dwells in the unity of the Church.
But it is the sacramental principle that the spiritual is
imparted (since the Incarnation) through the material.
This inward life depends on outward means. Without
Baptism, without the " laying on of hands," which gives
the gift of the Holy Ghost in His personal indwelling,
without the Eucharist, without absolution, we cannot
have or retain the inward gift; and those external
channels depending, as we all acknowledge they do, on
the apostolic ministry, connect the inward life of the
Church at once with her outward organization. Every
one who has a certain inward gift is in Church unity,
but none can, I do not say possess but, make good their
claim to possess that gift in its fulness * save those who
i All baptized persons are in a subordinate sense inside the
Church.
THE UNITY OF THE CHURCtt. 31
dwell within the unity of the apostolic organization
which is the visible Church. It is only through this
visible organization that God has covenanted to give us
this invisible Life.
"We have from Holy Scripture," wrote Dr. Pusey,
" as means and conditions of the unity of the Church,
one all-perfect Author, the 'One God and Father of
all ' ; one end to which all tends, the * one hope of our
calling ' ; ' one Head,' the Head of the Church, our ' one
Lord ' ; ' one Spirit,' giving life to every living member ;
the same sacraments, ' one baptism,' and ' one bread,'
by which we are all ingrafted into or maintained in the
one Body of our one Head ; one apostolic descent of
the bishops and pastors of the flock, coming down from
One; 'one' common 'faith,' that which was given
once for all with the anathema that we hold no
doctrine at variance with it, although an angel from
heaven were to preach it. Of these we are receivers
only.
"These, if any wilfully reject, they reject Christ.
They sever themselves not only from the Body of
Christ, but directly from the Head, loosing the band
which binds them unto Him. These while Christian
bodies retain, they are, so long, like the river which
'went out of Eden to water the garden; and from
thence it was parted and became into four heads/
They come from the fountain of blessedness; they
flow down to the ocean of the Eternal Love of God ;
they water the parched land ; they cool and refresh the
weary and the thirsty in the places which God has
appointed for them with the one stream coming down
3 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.
from Him. They are one in their one Original, from
which they continually and unchangeably derive their
being. They adore God, the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, with the same new song of the Gospel ; they
confess Him in the same words of apostolic faith;
they offer to Him the same incense of praise, and the
same holy offering whereof Malachi foretold, 'from
the rising of the sun to the going down of the same,'
pleading on earth to the Eternal Father that one sacri-
fice, as presented in heaven; they receive the same
f bread which came down from heaven to give life to
the world.' Unknown in face, in place separate, differ-
ent in language, opposed, alas ! in some things to one
another, still before the throne of God they are one holy
catholic apostolic Church ; each several portion praying
for itself and for the rest, united in the prayers and obla-
tions which it offers for all, by the one bread and the
one Spirit which dwelleth in all. ' In which mystery '
(the holy Eucharist), says St. Cyprian, ' our people are
shown to be united, so that, as many grains collected
and ground and mingled together make one bread, so
in Christ, Who is the heavenly bread, we may know
that there is one Body wherewith our whole number is
conjoined and united.' " l
It will appear plainly enough that this conception of
Church unity does not confine it to this world, but
includes within it the departed who are, like us, 'in
Christ.' It does not allow us to separate off the Church
1 Dr. Pusey's Truth and Office of the English Church pp. 56,
57. A number of patristic passages will be found collected by
him p. 45 f. See also in this volume, App. note ii. p. 211.
THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 33
Militant and treat it as a separate entity. 1 Further it
does not suggest a Head on earth. As the instrument
of this unity is the Spirit, as its basis is Christ the
Mediator, so the source and centre of it is in the
heavens, where the Church's exalted Head lives in
eternal majesty human yet glorified. As the bishop is
an essential element of the organization of each local
Church on earth, so he is the centre of local unity.
" There is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ," so
cried the father Ignatius, who had lived in the apostolic
age, " and one cup unto union in the blood : there is one
altar as there is one bishop, together with the presbytery
and the deacons." But as the Church in each place
exists only to bring man into relation to Christ and to
the redeemed humanity which Christ is gathering to
Himself in the unseen world, so the catholic Church,
the society which each local Church represents, has its
centre of unity in Christ. " Where the bishop appears,
there let the people be ; as where is Christ Jesus, there
is the catholic Church." 2 Each local Church exists to
keep open the connection of earth and heaven : to keep
the streams of the water of life flowing. Of course each
has a necessary connection with all the others in the
witness of truth and in the fellowship of love we will
go on to think of that but their primary point of union,
1 F. Richardson What are the Catholic Claims ? p. 46, complains
of me for refusing to treat the Church on earth as a separate unity,
complete in itself. He might as well complain of me for refusing
to treat of One Person of the Trinity apart from the others.
8 Ignatius ad Smyrn. 8. " The bishop is the centre of each
individual Church, as Jesus Christ is the centre of the universal
Church. " Lightfoot.
C
LIBRARY ST. MARY'S COLLEGE
34 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.
the centre to which they all con verge, is nothing lower than
Christ. The matter cannot be summed up better than
in a typical quotation from St. Augustine, which puts this
thought in vivid simplicity : " Since the whole Christ is
made up of the Head and the body the Head is our
Saviour Himself, who suffered under Pontius Pilate,
who now, after He has risen from the dead, sits at the
right hand of God : but His body is the Church ; not
this Church or that, but the Church scattered over all
the world; nor that only which exists among men
now living, but those belonging to it also who were
before us and are to be after us to the end of the world.
For the whole Church, made up of all the faithful,
because all the faithful are members of Christ, has its
Head situate in the heavens which governs this body :
though it is separated from their sight, yet it is bound
to them by love." l
When therefore Roman Catholics speak thus 2 : "There
are two intrinsic notes of the Church, viz., one regarding
its constitution, viz.> that unity of government which
excludes all schismatical divisions within the body of
the Church; and one regarding its life, viz., holiness
of government " ; when they speak of the Church as
"' compacted and fitly joined together' with a head
appointed by Christ Himself" in virtue of an ordered
hierarchy centering in the Pope 3 ; when they argue that
1 St. Aug. on the Psalms Ps. Ivi. I.
a The True Basis of Christian Fellowship, Bishop Meurin, S.J.,
D.D., p. 32. (It was this book in view of which these papers were
first written. )
1 The True Basis etc. p. 70. Cf. Father Gallway's Lectures on
Ritualism v. p. 175 f. He challenge* us to say that " the Head "
THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH. 35
two parts of the Church permanently diverging must at
last annihilate unity, as a civil war carried to its bitter
end makes one nation two when they argue thus, they
are making the unity of the Church primarily an external
one, a unity of visible association, the unity which comes
of subordination to the same external rule. That this is
thoroughly unscriptural has been shown above. That
it is inadequate will be seen sufficiently from the con-
sideration that it would exclude the faithful departed
from the unity of the Church in its primary sense.
For the faithful departed are beyond and above the
visible hierarchy on earth. They are in the unity
of the Church because that unity is not only of this
world because the Body of Christ has, so to speak,
but its lower limbs here on earth. The Church on
earth is but the visible portion of a great invisible
whole bound all together in the same order of super-
natural life.
" One army of the living GOD,
To His command we bow ;
Part of the host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now. "
Mr. Rivington again is making the same mistake
when he postulates in the passage quoted above a visible
head to the Church on earth. He implies that the un-
seen Christ and the faithful departed belong to a differ-
ent " order of life " from the visible body. He would
make the Church on earth a complete thing in itself.
whom St. Paul exhorts us ' ' to hold " is the Invisible Head, Christ !
Only ' a Low Churchman or dissenter ought to say so. ' Then we
may safely be low churchmen or dissenters in company with St.
Augustine and the fathers, and the best Roman Commentators,
36 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH,
It is enough to point out how blankly his words contra-
dict what was just quoted from St. Augustine. The
Pope becomes, according to this idea, not a primus
inter pares among bishops, but a quasi-sacramental
head, as being the mediator between Christ and
His people. Mr. Rivington, indeed, so describes
him. 1 I shall have occasion in a later chapter to trace the
growth of this quite unprimitive and uncatholic idea.
Meanwhile I think enough has been said to show that
the true idea of Church unity makes it consist primarily
in the derivation of the life of the Spirit from Christ,
down the channels of His organized society; not in sub-
jection to an external hierarchy centering in the Pope.
And this true theory as logically excludes a "sacra-
mental " headship on earth, as the false theory certainly
postulates it.
1 St. Peter (as Head of the Church) is " the sacrament of the
administrative power of the one Lord over all " p. 72. " The
Papacy is, as it were, the Eucharist of Christ's government in His
Church," p. 21. Cf. the Primary Charge of the Bishop of Lincoln
(Parker), p. 28 : " though we would grant the See of Rome her
ancient primacy, yet we cannot accept it as it is now offered,
transformed into a ^m'-sacramental Headship."
CHAPTER III.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.
HITHERTO we have been brought to the conclusion
that the primary constituent of Church unity is that
inward supernatural life, that life of the Spirit, which she
derives through sacramental channels from Christ her
Head. But besides this unity of life there is a unity of
truth, for truth, as well as grace, came by Jesus Christ.
There is not only ' one body ' but ' one faith.' There
is a ' tradition,' ' a form of sound words ' committed to
the Church in the persons of the Apostles, which is to
be the 'mould' 1 of the Christian character so long as
the world remains. To the holding of this truth every
Christian person or community is bound, and its wilful
rejection is what constitutes heresy.
It follows that the Church is not only, through her
sacraments, the household of grace: she is also the
" pillar and ground of the truth " : she has the authority
of a divinely authorized teacher, and her legislative
enactments in the sphere of truth, no less than of
discipline, have a divine sanction, What she binds on
1 Rom. vi. 17 : " The mould of truth into which ye were de-
livered " (literally).
87
38 THE A UTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.
earth is bound in heaven. And thus Tertullian 1 has
two questions to ask of any claimants to represent the
Church not only ' have you the apostolic succession ? '
but also 'do you hold the apostolic truth?' It is
then our present task to inquire what this teaching
authority of the Church means, in order to be able to
answer the question whether the infallibility of the
Roman bishop is its logical outcome.
First let it be clear that the Church's function is not
to reveal truth. The revelation given once for all to the
Apostles cannot be either diminished or added to. It is
a. "faith once for all delivered," 2 and the New Testa-
ment emphasizes the Church's duty as simply that of
1 holding fast ' and teaching what she has 'received.' The
apostle St. Paul claims that his converts should repu-
diate even him should treat him as anathema if he
were to teach anything else than what he taught at first. 1
It is thus of the very essence of the Christian revelation
that as originally given it is final. Whatever is new to
Christian theology in substance, is by that very fact
proved not to be of the faith. This is a commonplace of
patristic theology, and it is admitted by the modern
Roman Church. " First of all " says Dr. Newman " and
in as few words as possible, and esc abundanti cautela :
every Catholic holds that the Christian dogmas were in
the Church from the time of the Apostles ; that they
were ever in their substance what they are now ; that
they existed before the formulas were publicly adopted,
in which as time went on they were defined and re-
1 de Pratscrip, 32. 2 St. Jude 3 [R,V.].
Gal. i. 8, 9.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 39
corded." 1 Even the Montanists in ancient time who
had a theory of development in discipline, maintained
the unchangeableness of the 'rule of faith.' On this
subject the 'Reminder' (Commonitorium} of Vincent
of Lerins has been commonly taken as a summary of
patristic teaching, and it is this recognised ancient
text - book on the question of Church authority
which elaborates the famous formula to express the
true creed that it is what has been held in the
Christian Church 'everywhere, always, and by all*
Vincent, then, is never weary of reiterating that novelty
is the test of error, antiquity of truth. " To teach any-
thing to catholic Christians 2 besides what they have
received, has never been allowed, is nowhere allowed,
never will be allowed": "St Paul repeats and reiterates
that if any one announces a new dogma, he is to be
anathematized." 3 An inquirer who would know the
truth when any novel error tries to spread its conta-
gion over the whole Church at once, is " to cling to anti-
quity, which is quite beyond being seduced by any
deception of novelty." 4 He is, as Cyprian says, $
when the stream of present Church teaching becomes in
any way defective, to go to the source and repair what
1 Tracts Theol. and Eccl. p. 287. We have it on Lord Acton's
authority English Hist. Rev. Oct. 1890, p. 723, that 'after sixteen
years spent in the Church of Rome, Newman was inclined to guard
and narrow his theory [of development]. ' Cf. Keenan's Controver-
sial Catechism ed. 1846 p. 117. "Can a General Council frame
new matters or articles of faith?" "No; a General Council can
only explain what has been already revealed : it belongs to God
only to reveal new articles of faith. "
1 He excludes not only what is contrary to (contm) but what is
' beside' the original deposit (prater), cc. 20 and 28.
1 C. 9. 4 C. 3. Ep. 74, 10.
40 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.
is amiss. Manifestly these writers would not tolerate
any depreciation of ' primitiveness ' as a test of truth. 1
It is not then a matter which needs proving, that
novelty in revelation is equivalent to error, according to
the fathers. But this evident proposition leads to an
important conclusion. It follows that the authority of
the Church is of a more secondary character than is
sometimes supposed. She is not a perpetual oracle of
divine truth, an open organ of continuous revelation:
she is not so much a ' living voice ' as a living witness
to a once-spoken voice. And it will be observed that
whereas the former idea of the Church's function
would naturally suggest the probability of a 'central
shrine/ where the oracle would be given, a central
teaching chair of Christendom on the other hand the
latter idea, that of a witness, suggests the concurrence
of manifold traditions. The strength of promulgative
authority is centrality; the strength of witness is
the consent of independent and distinct voices. Now
it is this latter idea of Church authority which is un-
deniably that of the fathers, always excepting those of
the papal school 2 in and after the fifth century. When
Tertullian confronts the Gnostics with the consent of the
different Churches who derived their life and doctrine
1 As Bp. Meurin depreciated it, True Basis etc. pp. 30-34.
Antiquity is, in Vincent's conception, an additional test of truth,
besides universality, chap. 27.
2 I believe, pace Mr. Rivington, that this phrase, as I use it,
expresses the truth. Papalism began, like the Immaculate Con
ception, in being the opinion of a school, however much it after-
wards won general acceptance in the Churches of the Roman
obedience.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 4!
from the Apostles, in a creed the opposite of theirs,
when he bids them attend to this consent of Corinth,
Ephesus, and Rome, when he asks, in one of his in
comparable epigrams whether it is probable that so
many Churches of such importance should have
hit by an accident of error upon an identical creed;
and adds that what is found the same amongst so
many, can owe its identity only to its being received
by all from a single source, 1 it is obvious that he
is viewing the Church's authority as based on the
convergence of independent testimonies. He is but
taking his idea from Irenaeus, 2 who appeals to the
fact that whatever languages the different Churches
talk, be they civilized or barbarous, they bear witness
to the same creed. This is the principle underlying
the authority of general Councils that their 'genera-
lity ' secures the elimination of what is merely local or
individual and the exaltation of the common heritage.
So Vincent of Lerins explains the procedure of the
general Council of Ephesus. The authorities of eastern
fathers, he tells us, were first recited on the question
at issue : then " that not Greece and the East only,
but the West and the Latin world as well might be
proved to have always held the same sentiments," some
authorities were quoted from Rome. After that, "that
not the head of the world only but the outlying
portions (sides) of it also might give their witness to
the judgment," authorities of previous ages were cited
from Africa and Milan. 8 Here then is a clear in-
1 df Praencr. 24-36. 2 i, 10. 2, iii. 4. 2.
3 Cimm, 30.
4* THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.
telligible principle of consentient witness, eliminating
local and individual peculiarities, and it must be
allowed to be the principle of the fathers in general
and of the Ecumenical Councils. Indeed it is only
when we keep this principle in mind that the deference
we pay to the decisions of general Councils becomes
intelligible. The tone of the actual meeting was some-
times polemical and embittered ; that is true at least of
the Council of Ephesus, so that it does not present the
appearance of a trustworthy spiritual guide, or of a good
court of final appeal. But our deference to them be-
comes quite intelligible when they are considered simply
as machinery for registering the agreement of the
Churches, and when it is further borne in mind that
their authority only became decisive after their verdict
had been accepted in the Church at large. 1
The authority of the Church then is the subordin-
ate authority of a witness to the truth, a guardian,
a teacher of it; she has no authority to promul-
gate or reveal new truth. This is very clearly shown in
the difference which St. Athanasius notices between the
1 Three points need to be remembered with reference to these
councils : (i) That what was finally authoritative was not the mere
council, but the decree of the council when the bishops had
separated and their decision had obtained general acceptance.
(2) That the councils simply professed to register and enforce
the traditions of the Churches, leaving argument to the theologians.
(3) That our justification in accepting the decisions of the
councils lies in the verification of their results taken together. It
is most reassuring to find that they represent, not the tyranny of
chance majorities, but the gradual working out into a balanced
formula of the complex scriptural truth of the Incarnation
guarding it from being overbalanced on one side or the other.
The mind of the Spirit is apparent in the result.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCff. 43
formula used by the Fathers of the Council of Nicaea,
when settling the Paschal controversy, a matter of dis-
cipline and when settling the question of faith. ' With
reference to Easter' he says, 1 'such and such things
"were determined" (&>e and at such a date), for at
that time it was determined that all should obey a
certain rule ; but with reference to the faith they wrote
not "such and such things were determined" but
" thus the Catholic Church believes." And they added
immediately the statement of their faith, to show that
their judgment was not new but apostolic, and that
what they wrote was not any discovery of theirs, but
was what the apostle taught.'
Thus when the popes began to speak of the ' secret
stores ' of divine truth (arcana) committed to the see of
Peter upon which she can draw so as to be the central
oracular voice of Christendom, giving replies to the
Church in her need, 2 they are beginning to speak in
a quite new strain and to give to the Church's authority
a new meaning. And it must be observed that this
papal idea of a central voice, while it is the natural
expression of the idea of promulgative authority, and
falls in with the general imperialist tendencies of the
Roman Church, is disastrous to the Church's function
as a consentient witness. The very centralization of
the Roman development removes the security, which
the general Councils, truly used, were calculated to
1 Athan. de Synodis 5, quoted by Stanton Authority in rtligious
belief, p. 132.
3 See on the beginning of this tendency in the utterances of
Pope Innocent I. in the fifth century, Langen's Geschiihte der
rbmischen Kirche I. p. 737
44 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CffURCtt.
provide, against any local tendency becoming dominant.
Thus the Roman centralization is the main cause of
what we have already noticed in Roman Catholicism
its one-sidedness. The counter tendencies of other
parts of the Church ought to have kept the whole
deposit of the faith unnarrowed, by preventing Roman
ideas being elevated into catholic dogmas.
According then to the older and really catholic view,
the later Church can never know what the early Church
did not. She can never have substantially clearer light
about the intermediate state, for example, or the relation
of the departed to the living, or the ' treasury of merits,'
or the position of Mary, than the Church of the second
century had. The revelation receives no augmentation,
and what for our discipline was left obscure at first,
must remain obscure, according to God's providence,
till our fragmentary knowledge 1 becomes complete in
the Day of Light. It is in fact, as Dr. Salmon remarks,
absurd to suppose that the Church's tradition can come
to convey additional assurance. You cannot have
increase of knowledge by tradition. Thus if " the idea
of Purgatory had not got beyond a 'perhaps' at the
beginning of the fifth century (i.e, in St. Augustine's
day), we are safe in saying that it was not by tradi-
tion that the later Church arrived at certainty on the
subject" 2
Thus we mean broadly by the doctrine which comes
on the authority of the Church, the doctrine which
i i Cor. xiii. 9 12. We know ' in part,' not all : we see a dim
reflexion in a mirror.
8 Salmon Infallibility p. 133,
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 4 5
has been recognised and explicitly taught * by the legi-
timate members of the Christian brotherhood in all ages
and all parts of the world : we mean ' historical Chris-
tianity/ Is there such a thing ? Undoubtedly : and we
may add that the whole body of catholic theologians,
Roman no less than Anglican, are committed to there
being this body of catholic truth, held ' ubique,' that is
in all parts, as opposed to any one particular Church :
'semper' always, as opposed to only in recent ages : 'ab
omnibus ' by all, i.e. by the general body of the Church,
as Vincent explains, not merely as the private opinion
of particular teachers. It will be worth while to quote
the summary of the catholic tradition as it is given us
for example by Origen in the East, early in the third
century, and by Irenaeus in the West, in the latter part
of the second.
Tradition, according to Origen, " tells us that there is
one God, who created all things out of nothing, who is
just and good, the Author of the Old as of the New
Testament, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ : that
Jesus Christ was begotten of the Father before every
creature, that through Him all things were made, that
He is God and Man, born of the Holy Spirit and the
Virgin Mary, that He did truly suffer, rise again, and
ascend into heaven : that the Holy Ghost is associated
in honour and dignity with the Father and the Son,
that it is He who inspired the saints both of the Old
and of the New Dispensation : that there will be a
resurrection of the dead, when the body which is sown
1 Explicitly, thus Tertullian specially excludes all idea of a
Wet tradition < Prwscr. 215-27.
46 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.
in corruption will be raised in incorruption, and that in
the world to come the souls of men will inherit eternal
life or suffer eternal punishment according to their
works : that every reasonable soul is a free agent, plotted
against by evil spirits, comforted by good angels, but in
no way constrained : that the Scriptures were written by
the agency of the Spirit of God, that they have two
senses, the plain and the hidden ; whereof the latter can
be known only to those to whom is given the grace of
the Holy Spirit in the word of wisdom and knowledge." 1
This he " gives as ' the teaching of the Church ' trans-
mitted in orderly succession from the apostles, and
remaining in the Churches to the present day," as the
authoritative standard of belief.
Now let us listen to Irenaeus: "The true know-
ledge" (so he calls the Christian religion) "is the
doctrine of the Apostles, and the ancient system of
the Church in all the world : and the character of
the body of Christ, according to the successions
of the bishops, to whom they (the Apostles) delivered
the Church in each separate place: the complete use
(moreover) of the Scriptures which has come down
to our time, preserved without corruption, receiving
neither addition nor loss; its public reading without
falsification ; legitimate and careful exposition according
to the Scriptures, without peril and without blasphemy :
and the pre-eminent gift of love." Again, "The way
of those who belong to the Church is encompassing the
whole world, because it holds the tradition firm from
1 See Dr. Bigg's Bampton Lectures p. 152. This 'rule of
faith ' is abbreviated from the Preface to the De Principals,
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 4?
the Apostles, and enables us to see that the faith of all
is one and the same, while all accept one and the same
God the Father, and believe the same dispensation of
the Incarnation of the Son of God, and acknowledge
the same gift of the Spirit, and meditate the same
precepts, and preserve the same form of that ordination
which belongs to the Church, and expect the same
coming of the Lord, and await the same salvation of
the whole man, both soul and body." 1
Origen and Irenaeus are not speaking exhaustive^
and there can be no reasonable doubt that as a
matter of historical evidence, the Church always believed
not only the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation,
of the Atonement won in Christ, of the inspiration of
Scripture, of resurrection and judgment, of the visible
Church, and of the apostolic ministry; but also the
doctrine of the sacraments as channels of grace, and of
the Eucharist as a sacrifice. 2
Of this sort then is the historic creed of Christendom,
which has been held and publicly taught as Christianity
over the whole area of the Church. The denial of any
of these elements of belief has always brought a man
under suspicion and in the last resort constituted him a
formal heretic or schismatic. The Church had indeed
immense difficulty in formulating her theology for
example, in making out of human language a formula
to guard the truth of the Trinity. There is therefore
a certain ambiguity of language on some points in the
1 See Irenaeus, iv. 33. 8, v. 20. i.
2 On the four last points I may refer to The Church and the
Ministry (Longmans) and The Body of Christ (Murray).
48 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.
early theology, though this fact easily admits of being
exaggerated. But there is in substance an outspoken
expression of this body of truth, in the strictest sense
catholic, in the Church. It does not require any very
profound or wide reading to discover that the early
Church did believe in the sacraments, though the belief
was not formulated into dogmas, and did not believe
in a treasury of merits which the pope could dispense
in indulgences, or an immaculate conception of the
blessed Virgin, or an infallibility of the pope. But of
this somewhat more hereafter.
And how does this ' general consent ' express itself?
Let Vincent of Lerins answer. Let us hear what he
bids the perplexed inquirer do, amid the manifold
heresies of the fifth century, to ascertain the true faith.
First he is to seek the authority of general Councils,
where such have been held. Their decrees rank first,
as authorized and final interpreters of Scripture. But
if a new question arises on which no such Council has
spoken, then he is to collect the sentiments of the
ancients; of those, that is, who remained in the com-
munion of the Church, masters of repute, And here
care is to be taken to adhere to no individual opinion of
however great a Christian, but to that teaching only in
which they are found to agree. 1 This advice is given
to ordinary individual Christians again and again.
And now what is the Roman objection to the idea
of authority which has just been explained ? It may be
said to be threefold.
(i) It will be said 2 : * It is not easy then to find out
1 cc. 28, 29. a As by Mr. Rivington p. 29.
THE AUTHOR I TV OF THE CHURCH. 49
what is catholic on your showing. We have contra-
dictory statements made about what the fathers teach.
How are we not professed theologians or even students
to find out the 'rule of faith'? The Roman idea of
Church authority gives a simpler remedy for our diffi-
culties. Theirs is a rule of faith of easy access."
To this the answer is that with us too the proximate
rule of faith is of easy access. The individual Church-
man begins by submitting himself to be moulded by the
rule of faith which he receives. The proximate autho-
rity for each of us consists of the personal teachers to
whom by God's providence we are subject, though,
from the first, side by side with the personal teachers,
and controlling them, are the written formulas of the
Church, which she propounds to guide the faith and
practice of all her members, the creed and the
catechism, the offices and ceremonies. Thus the per-
sonal teachers and the formulas, taken together, con-
stitute the proximate rule of faith. In the assimilation
of this each individual finds his primary responsibility.
For the apprehension of it there is no need of research.
'The word is very nigh thee.' Nor, if it is defective or
superstitious, will God's requirement of truth extend
beyond each man's opportunities.
But this proximate rule of faith is not the ultimate
authority. It is this ultimate rule of authority the
* remoter rule ' with which we have been occupied in
this chapter. So far as this again is based on Scripture,
all Christians have easy access to it, but with that we are
not yet concerned. This remoter rule of faith involves,
as we have now seen, a comparison of records, a
D
50 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.
searching into the past traditions of the Church. Such
research is only possible, comparatively, for a few, and
only a few are capable of undertaking it. But the few
act for the many. The fact that competent persons
are constantly engaged in this verifying process of
comparison and research guarantees that the current
Church teaching is being kept pure from accretion.
No doubt, however, this verifying process involves
difficulty, and it is one in which to a certain extent
all are concerned. What shall we say in regard to
the charge that it is difficult ?
We reply that there is no reason why it should not
be difficult. The fathers do not seem to shrink from
recommending, even to ordinary inquirers, a difficult
way of arriving at the truth. They do not speak as
men who have any 'short and easy' method to re-
commend, 1 and we would add that in the early centuries
such short and easy method was, it would appear,
1 See Mahan's Exercise of Faith (J. G. Palmer, London, 1877)
p. 68. " Let us take such a case, for example, as that so graphically
described by St. Chrysostom ; a case which might have occurred at
any time during the first six centuries, and which may occur everyday
now. A heathen comes forward desiring to be a Christian. He con-
sults so eminent and enlightened a bishop as St. Chrysostom. He
says, ' I desire to be a Christian, but to 'whom shall I attach myself?
In the contention, and division, and confusion among you all, which
dogma shall I take ? Which shall I prefer ? Since all of you profess
to hold the truth, which shall I believe? I know nothing at all
of Scriptures ; and they who profess to know, produce the same
proofs for their respective tenets.' To this Chrysostom replies,
' I am glad that all parties agree thus far ; for if we referred you
only to reason, you might be justly at a loss ; but if we send you
to the Scriptures, and they are simple and true, your decision is
easy : for -whoever accords with them, he is a Christian ; but who-
ever is at variance with them is very far from it. ' But the man
rejoins, ' I have searched the Scriptures, and find that they teach
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 51
more ' imperatively needed ' than it has ever been since.
There was never, perhaps, a time of confusion in the
Christian Church equal to the second century. Chris-
tianity seemed to the philosopher outside a chaos of
dissentient sects, " agreeing in nothing but the name." l
The various forms of Gnosticism were so seductive that
Tertullian witnessed in his day the spectacle of "one
and another the most faithful, the wisest, the most
experienced in the Church, going over to the wrong
side." 2 The points under discussion were the most
fundamental conceivable, the questions of the creation
of the world, the unity of God, and the reality of the
Incarnation. If ever a clear rule of faith, a papal
voice, a centre to Christendom was needed, it was then.
But not only had the Church at that time to struggle
through her difficulties without an infallible teacher,
she had not even yet formulated her creeds or settled
her canon. Once more, the years of the Arian contro-
one thing, and you another. What, then, am I to do? Must I
make myself a teacher, when I know nothing of the matters at
issue, and desire merely to be a learner ? '
" Now here is the point at which, if anywhere, the infallible
guide is needed. This is the case that demands the simple explicit
answer to the question, ' Whom and what shall I believe ? ' And
if Chrysostom and other Church teachers of the first six centuries
could give no such single test of truth, and no such absolute direc-
tion as the case demanded, it proves either that they knew no such
simple direction ; or else, if they knew it, that they handled the
word of God deceitfully, and perplexed the simple souls whom
it was their business to guide. In this particular instance, St.
Chrysostom, after asking the man whether he had not a mind and
judgment of his own, proceeds to give him such marks of the true
Church as he could, and leaves him to make his way clear through
the mazes of this complex guidance." (St. Chrysostom Homilies
on the Acts, xxxiii. in Library of Fathers part ii. pp. 462-7.)
1 Origen c. Celt, iii. 12. * dt Praescr. 3.
52 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCft.
versy l were years of deepest distress. Again a papal
voice of authority was sorely needed, if ever. But in
the moment of uttermost strain and profoundest peril,
the pope did something very different from giving a
clear voice for the guidance of Christians. He re-
pudiated Athanasius the great upholder of the truth,
and left him alone * against the world.' 2 The fact is,
the argument from the supposed needs of man to the
existence of an infallible teaching chair breaks down
historically from the fact that, in the hours of greatest
need in the Church, there was no remedy such as it is
now suggested that man imperatively requires there
was no quick method of finding out the truth. And
indeed is not this difficulty, this requirement of patience,
in finding out the truth, part of the probation of faith ?
It is just what is suited to our time of discipline. At
any rate we have no right to claim of God the removal
of certain difficulties. We must take His revelation
under the conditions on which He gives it, and endure
what the fathers endured. We make a great mistake
about the essence of faith if we imagine that faith is
merely the surrendering of our reason and the passive
acceptance of an unmistakable voice of external
authority. Faith, in the Bible, is opposed not to
reason, but to sight. It was not Christ's will to re-
veal Himself beyond all possibility of doubt. He
did not utter a dogma about Himself and bid men
bow down to it. The fai*h which could accept Him
had to see through a veil. When men complained
that He kept their souls in uncertainty, when they
importunately asked to be 'told plainly,' 3 He made
1 See App. note iii. p. 212. * See Chapter VI. ' St. John x. 24,
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 53
no response to their complaint, except to attribute
their unbelief to their not being * His sheep.' Faith
is an inner sense which faithfully and perseveringly
apprehends God in spite of difficulties and through
the veil. The faith which was required to believe in
Christ in spite of ambiguities is the same faith which
is required to believe in the Church. And practically
a prayerful and patient Christian can find out the
mind of the Church with quite sufficient security. The
current teaching of the Church about what is contained
in the Creeds, and about the Sacraments and Ministry
has almost always been sufficiently explicit and clear
for simple minds, and has afforded a basis of security
in the strength of which it is good for most of us to feel
a certain amount of hesitation and to experience the
necessity of feeling our way.
(2) But it is objected further: 'an authority which
leaves you partly dependent on your own reason and
judgment is no authority at all. To accept authority is
the opposite of what you call "feeling one's own way."'
Thus Father Richardson defines the authority of the
Church as ' the absolute, peremptory power from which
there is no appeal, exercised by a living existing voice,
commanding the assent of the intellect in God's name,
and speaking as God's instrument.' l To this it is only
necessary here to give a brief answer. God deals with
us as with sons, not as with slaves. He makes us par-
takers of His counsels, intelligent co-operators with
Him. Our attitude towards Him is not 'abject.' 2 It
1 What are the Catholic Claims? p. 51.
2 As Mr. Ward described it : see W. G. Ward and the Oxford
Movement^ by Wilfrid Ward (Macmillan, 1889) p. 216, but tf
St. John xv. 15.
54 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.
is only to put this in other words to say that autho-
rity is not the same thing as absolutism, which is
only an exaggerated and perverted form of it. True
authority does not issue edicts to suppress men's
personal judgment or render its action unnecessary, but
it is like the authority of a parent, which invigorates
and encourages, even while it restrains and guides
the growth of our own individuality. I do not wish
to enlarge on this idea here, but I am sure I shall
do well to repeat a question asked long ago on this
subject. " Is a limited, conditional government in the
State such a wise, excellent, and glorious constitution ?
And is the same authority in the Church such ab-
surdity, nonsense, and nothing at all, as to any actual
power? If there be such a thing as obedience upon
rational motives, there must be such a thing as au-
thority that is not absolute, or that does not require
a blind, implicit obedience. Indeed, rational creatures
can obey no other authority; they must have reasons
for what they do. And yet because the Church claims
only this rational obedience, your Lordship explodes
such authority as none at all." 1 I must protest that
the authority of the Church is, as we Anglicans under-
stand it, a most real guidance of our spirit and intellect
to which, by God's mercy, we love to submit our-
selves. Submission to that authority is in the first
instance the putting ourselves to school under the
Church's primary teaching. Beyond this, as we grow
in knowledge, it is the merging of our mere indi-
vidualism in the whole historic life of the great
1 Law's First Letter to the Bishop of Bangor in his Wtrkt
fed. 1762] i. pp. 10, 31.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 55
Christian brotherhood; it is making ourselves at one
with the one religion in its most permanent and least
merely local form. It is surrendering our individuality
only to empty it of its narrowness. One with the
Christianity of history, the Christianity of creeds and
councils, we enter into the heritage of her dogmas and
of something as great as her greatest dogmas, the whole
joy of her sacraments, the security of her ministry,
the communion of her saints, the fellowship of her
Spirit. We can read her great fathers and find
ourselves one with them in all important matters of
faith l over the lapse of ages. The hearts of the fathers
are seen to be turned towards their children. We
believe in the Holy Catholic Church.
(3) ' But,' it is said and it is the last objection I will
consider ' on your own showing the final court of appeal
is no longer open to you. You can no longer summon
a general council, or what you would acknowledge as
such.' To this our answer is partly that we admit our
grievous loss, but it is not our fault. With what infinite
joy would we hail its possibility ! But there is a further
answer. A general council is not a necessity. It was
impossible from one set of causes for the first three
hundred years, but all through that period men like
Irenaeus and Tertullian were not prevented from arriv-
ing at the mind of the Church by the comparison of
traditions. "The judgment of the Church diffusive"
says Mr. Wilberforce " is no less binding than that of
the Church collective" 2 The consent of the Church as
1 Not of criticism or of science, however, which are progressive
in a. sense in which Revelation is not.
2 Principles of Church Authority p. 77
56 THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.
it was discoverable before general councils were pos-
sible from one set of reasons, so is still discoverable by
us since they have become impossible from another.
Beyond this we must content ourselves with councils
less than ecumenical, though resting on their basis, and
it is quite possible that it was not intended in God's
providence that the formulation of ecumenical dogmas
should go beyond defining the basis of the Christian
faith and life, as it is given in the Creeds. The imposi-
tion of a dogma as a condition of communion is a
necessary evil which should be kept within the smallest
limits possible in view of the Church's safety : and a
Church shows her life not by creating new dogmas but
by living on the old faith and 'commending it to every
man's conscience ' by rendering it intelligible ; r\ view of
new needs to new generations of men.
It is necessary to lay down briefly, before we conclude,
the sense in which we can accept of ' development ' in
Christian truth. 1 In such sense as makes it concerned
only with the statement of truth, we accept and indorse
the idea. In this sense Vincent of Lerins makes it the
Church's duty to develop truth. His words are exact
and well worth quoting 2 : "The Church of Christ, the
anxious and careful guardian of the truths committed to
her, never changes anything in them, diminishes nothing,
adds nothing, neither cuts off what is needful, nor
appends what is superfluous : does not lose what is her
1 See also App., note i. p. 203.
* Common, c. 23. The whole chapter should be read. The
earlier part speaks of the growth of * religion' as a whole. It
grows as a child grows to manhood. Each limb increases in
size, but no new limb is added, or old one removed. Then it
passes to the development of the doctrine of the Church-
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 57
own, nor incorporate what is not, but devotes all her
pains to this one task by dealing faithfully and wisely
with old truths, to give perfection and finish to whatever
was of old left shapeless and inchoate ; to consolidate
and establish what has been already expressed and
developed; to preserve what has been already established
and defined. . . . When she was roused by the novelties
of heretics, the catholic Church, by the decrees of
Councils, has ever effected this and nothing more
that she should consign to posterity in the security of a
formal document, what she had received from her
ancestors by mere tradition, summarizing great matters
in a few words, and generally, with a view to greater
clearness, stamping with the speciality of a new term an
article of the faith which was not new."
In reference then to the Church's terminology we
accept the principle of development in the rule of faith,
but no further. 1 In such sense as can make it cover
the extension of the substance of the faith, so as to
include an article such as the Immaculate Conception,
1 That is, as touches the faith. In discipline there is confessedly
development and in the use of the sacraments, provided there is no
alteration in doctrine. Thus the practice of reserving confirmation
to a later age, and making it the occasion for a renewal of vows,
or again the practice of encouraging those who are not at the
time communicants to assist at the Eucharist, are develop-
ments in practice and discipline, which involve no development
in doctrine. I think the maximum of development which is to
be found in the early Church is that involved in the recognition of
ordinations administered by heretics. I have briefly traced the
history of this in The Church and the Ministry pp. 170-178
(ed. 1919). But in any case the development did not touch the
faith of individuals : all that was in question was how the official
Church was to act in the light of her faith about orders, in view of
a difficulty where antagonistic truths seemed to collide.
5* THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.
an icfea utterly outside the horizon of a Chrysostom
or an Augustine in such sense we repudiate it.
Indeed in her official documents the Roman Church
herself prefers to take the line which puts her most in
conflict with history, and setting aside the larger idea
of development, proclaims her modern dogma of the
Infallibility as belonging to the "tradition received
from the beginning of the Christian faith."
On the other hand some modern Roman theologians,
of whom the ablest is Cardinal Franzelin, convinced
apparently of the impossibility of showing that the
modern Roman dogmas were recognized, in substantial
reality at least, if not in set terms, in the early Church,
repudiate the Vincentian canon, in its only intelligible
sense, or, in other words, in the sense of its author. " The
rule of Vincent " says Cardinal Franzelin " is true in its
positive sense (i.e. any doctrines which have been openly
taught and believed * ubique, semper, ab omnibus,' are
necessarily of faith), but it cannot be admitted in a nega-
tive or exclusive sense." " It is contrary to the whole
economy of the faith " to say that " only those things
which have been explicitly believed from the first are
contained in the deposit of the faith." " It is enough
to have shown a consent of faith prevailing in the
Church a* any time in the apostolic succession " e.g.
the present time "in order to vindicate the divine revela-
tion and apostolic tradition of any head of doctrine." l
It is only necessary to point out that this is not to
interpret Vincent, but to repudiate him. Vincent un-
i Franzelin De Divina Traditione et Scriptura ed. 3. Rome
1882. Thesis ix. Cfroll. I. p. 87. Thesis xii. Schol. u Princip. ii.
Coroll. 4 p. I2i. Thesis xxiv. p. 22
THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH. 59
doubtedly meant to make his rule an exclusive test, He
excludes not only what is contrary to (contra), but
also what is * beside' (praeter) the original deposit 1
Further, he makes antiquity an additional test of truth,
besides present consent. a In the sense then that would
make the obligatory Christian doctrine or common rule
of faith, a germ developing in content and extent, we
exclude development.
There is indeed another sense in which the whole life
of the Church is constantly developing, as she expands
to embrace new material, and brings forth out of her
treasury, like a wise householder, things new and old.
But such developments to cover new needs can never
antiquate the rule of faith. That is adequate for all
races, all ages, all contingencies, and as it is with it
alone that we are at present concerned, so we protest
that for our ' rule of faith ' we own with the ancient
Church nothing narrower than what was held and taught
in all parts of the world, and from the first, and as the
common tradition of the Church at large ; and we are
sure that any advantages which may be gained by
narrowing its basis are more than compensated for
by the infinite evils which accrue from limiting the tra-
dition of truth within the channel of a single, however
powerful, Church.
1 Capp. 20, 2& 8 Capp. 3, 9, 27.
CHAPTER IV
THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH.
IN this discussion it may be assumed as a point out-
side controversy that the Bible does not stand alone as
the rule of faith, any one being permitted to interpret it
according to his or her isolated judgment. 1 The Church,
in fact, existed before the books of the New Testament
were written; they were written for those who were
already members of the Church and had received her
primary instruction ; 2 they continually refer back to that
primary instruction and pre-suppose it ; 3 the Church
1 It is important to observe, however, that most of the books of
the New Testament, considered merely as historical documents,
will stand alone without needing any witness of the Church, beyond
merely such historical witness as church writings give to their
existence and diffusion. Thus we must trust to purely critical
grounds for justifying the historical character of the Gospel history
and the Acts of the Apostles. Mere historical evidence has
justified the belief that St. John wrote the fourth Gospel, and that
St. Paul wrote the epistles ascribed to him. Once more historical
evidence requires us to believe that the anonymous Epistle to the
Hebrews was written by an "apostolic man" before the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem. But these books of the New Testament, thus
historically certified, bear witness to the Church, and refuse to be
detached from her.
3 St. Luke i. 4 ; I Cor. i. 5, xi. 2, 23, xvi. 5 ; Heb. v. 12 ;
2 Peter i. 12 ; Jude 3 ; i John ii. 20.
* See reff. in last note and i Timothy iii. 15. The Church is
the basis upon which the human witness to the revealed tintb
ultimately rests.
60
THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. 61
gradually collected them into a canon and drew the
line between the Epistle to the Hebrews in which she
recognised primary or apostolic authority, and the
Epistle of Clement or the Shepherd of Hermas in which
she did not ; and finally in history the Bible came out
into the world simply as the sacred books of a certain
society, the Church, accessible to her members and
belonging to her alone. All this being so, it may be
taken for granted that the Bible does not stand alone
as giving the Christian rule of faith, but the Bible
interpreted by the Church. The Spirit in the society
interprets the Spirit in the books.
Thus we may even assume, at starting, the extreme
position of Tertullian when he refuses (rhetorically, not
in fact) even to argue the meaning of Scripture with
people who do not belong to the historical Christian
Church. 1 "Our appeal (in argument with persons
outside the Church) must not be made to the Scriptures,
nor must controversy be admitted under circumstances
where victory will be either impossible or uncertain or
not certain enough. For even if a comparison of
Scripture should not turn out in such a way as to put
the disputants on a level, still the logical order required
another question, as yet the only question, to be first
propounded, To whom does the faith itself belong ?
Whose are the Scriptures ? From whom, and through
whom, and where, and to whom has been handed down
that discipline by which men become Christians ? For
wherever it shall appear that the reality of the Christian
discipline and faith are to be found, there will be also
1 dtPrcuscr, 19.
62 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH.
the reality of the Scriptures and of the interpretations
and of all Christian traditions."
Assuming this general position as lying behind the
divergence of the Anglican and Roman branches of the
Church, a further question arises as to the relation in
which the authority of the Church tradition stands to
the authority of Scripture. The view of the Anglican
Church is clear. Scripture is the final court of appeal
in matters of faith, " so that whatsoever is not read
therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be re-
quired of any man that it should be believed as an
article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary
to salvation." The Church finds her sphere of autho-
rity only in interpreting and teaching the faith contained
in Scripture. A canon of the convocation which im-
posed on the clergy subscription to the Articles, directs
preachers " to be careful that they never teach aught in
a sermon, to be religiously held and believed by the
people, except what is agreeable to the doctrine of the
Old and New Testaments, and what the catholic
Fathers and ancient bishops have collected from that
same doctrine." The Bible is the ultimate record of
the faith : the Church is the interpreter. The Church
is the primary teacher of the truth to her children but she
sends them to the Scriptures to verify it for themselves.
With this position of the Church the Romanist
writers and authorities are not in the main satisfied.
The Council of Trent l declares that " the truth " of the
Christian Revelation " is contained in the written books
and in the unwritten traditions " and that the Council
* Sess, iv.
THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. 63
" receives and venerates with an equal feeling of piety
and reverence all the books of the Old and New Testament
. . . and also the traditions relating as well to faith as to
morals > as having, either from the word of Christ Him-
self or the dictation of the Holy Ghost, been preserved
by continuous succession in the catholic Church." The
teaching of the Roman Church thus makes tradition an
authority independent of holy Scripture, so that Scrip-
ture is only the chief source * of catholic truth, but an
article of the faith may rest on church teaching alone,
as a sufficient basis in itself. This theoretical departure
from what we propose to show to have been the primi-
tive conception of the authority of Church tradition, has
resulted in a corresponding departure from primitive
practice. The early Church, believing the Bible to be
the guide of individual Christians m faith and conduct,
would have all her members well versed in its contents.
They could safely read the Scriptures for themselves
and be earnestly exhorted to do so, if only the Church's
teaching had first given them the right point of view for
their study. Thus guided by the 'mind of the Church,
they were bidden to see for themselves whether the
whole teaching of the Church was not to be found in
1 Comely Hist, et Crit. Introd. in V. T. Compendium Paris
1889 p. i, speaks thus of the Holy Scriptures: "Ex illis utpote
praecipuo revelationis fonte, ecclesia dogmata sua hausit, haurit-
que." It has been questioned whether the Roman Church is
dogmatically committed to the view of tradition which makes it
an independent source of truth, parallel to Scripture. The words
of the Council of Trent have been explained in a more moderate
sense, and there are some Roman theologians on this side. But the
practice of the Roman Church and her common teaching is as in
dicated above. See on the subject Palmer On the Church ii. 10-18.
64 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH.
Scripture. Thus the familiarity of the whole body of
the people with the original record would serve to
maintain a scriptural tone and to keep the Church's
current teaching and system from deterioration. The
Roman Church, on the other hand, practically makes
ordinary Christians only come in contact with the
Bible at second-hand. The Church teaches and the
laity receive. They are not encouraged to drink for
themselves at the fountain-head of Scripture. 1 It is
obvious enough what danger this must involve of the
Church system becoming autocratic, arbitrary, external,
when the check is removed which a generally diffused
knowledge of Scripture, always antagonistic to such
tendencies, is alone calculated to supply. It is also
obvious what audacity is involved in this withdrawal
of Scripture into the background, if our Lord's inten-
tion was that Scripture should be the constant practical
guide ot individual souls. We proceed, without further
discussion, to illustrate by some quotations the relation
in which the Fathers conceived the Church to stand
towards the Bible, and the urgency with which they
pressed on the laity the free study of Scripture.
Let us listen first to Vincent of Lerins, who holds, as
we saw in our last discussion, so remarkable a position
in relation to the theory of Church authority.
" Often " he says, 2 " have I inquired with great care
1 This is admitted by Cardinal Manning in a passage quoted
in chap. I, and I do not suppose it will be denied. I am of course
aware that Lacordaire and others recommended the freer use of
Scripture, but they represented tendencies other than Ultramontane,
and the fact at least is as Cardinal Manning states,
3 Common, c. ii.
THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH, 65
and much earnestness, of very many men eminent for
holiness and doctrine, how I might, by some certain,
and, as it were, general and regular way, discern the
truth of the catholic faith from the falsehood of hereti-
cal depravity : and have always received, from all of
them, an answer of this sort : that I, or any other
person, wishing to detect the frauds of heretics as they
rise, and avoid their snares, so as to keep himself
in a faith whole and sound, must, with the help of
the Lord, fortify his faith in a twofold manner; first,
namely, by the authority of the law of God ; and
then, in the next place, by the tradition of the catholic
Church.
"Here, perhaps, some one will ask, What need is
there seeing that the canon of the Scriptures is perfect,
and in itself suffices to the full, and more, for all demands
that the authority of the ecclesiastical interpretation
should be joined to it ? Because the holy Scripture, for
its very depth, is not taken of all in one and the same
sense ; but its expressions are interpreted diversely, by
one man in one way, by another in another, so that it
seems as if almost as many opinions may be gathered
out of it as there are men It is, therefore, very
necessary, on account of the vagaries of errors so
manifold, that the line of interpretation of the pro-
phetical and apostolical writings be drawn by the rule
of the ecclesiastical and catholic sense."
Again, at the end of his little treatise 1 he sums up
thus :-
"We said in the premises, that this always hath
1 Common, c. xxix.
E
66 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH.
been, and even at this day is, the custom of Catholics,
to try and examine the true faith, by these two
methods. First, by the authority of the divine canon :
secondly, by the tradition of the catholic Church ; not
because the canonical Scripture is not of itself suffi-
cient for all things, but because very many expound-
ing GOD'S word at their own pleasure, conceive
hereby divers opinions and errors. And for that
cause, it is necessary that the interpretation of the
heavenly Scripture be directed according to the
one only rule of the Church's understanding: only,
be it observed, especially in those questions upon
which the foundations of the whole catholic doctrine
depend."
Now I cite an eastern and earlier authority, Origen l :
" In the two testaments every word that pertaineth unto
God may be sought and discussed, and out of them all
knowledge of things may be understood. And if any-
thing remains which Holy Scripture does not determine,
no other third scripture ought to be received to authorize
any knowledge, but we must ' commit to the fire ' what
remains, that is, reserve it unto God. For God did not
will us to know all in the present life, as the apostle
specially says we know in part. . . . Do not let us, then,
with the presumption of rashness, assume to ourselves
the knowledge of everything, lest the same apostle rebuke
us as knowing neither what they speak nor of what they
affirm" How, on the other hand, Origen insisted on
ecclesiastical tradition as guiding our search into Scrip-
ture, appeared in the citation from him in the last
1 Horn, in Lev, v. 9 torn. ii. p. 212,
THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. 67
chapter. I will only quote one other authority in this
matter the authority of the great name of St Athana-
sius. 1 There is no father more scriptural than St.
Athanasius in his method of argument. He insists
strongly on the sufficiency of Holy Scriptures " in which
alone is the instruction of religion announced to which
let no man add, from which let no man detract
which are sufficient in themselves for the enunciation
of truth," but he also insists that a ( point of view ' is
necessary in reading and interpreting Scripture, and this
point of view is the * Church's mind.' Where the mean-
ing of Scripture is doubtful in itself, it is enough that it
* admits ' an interpretation in accordance with the Faith.
1 It would however be easy to multiply references, see esp. Palmer
On the Church ii. pp. 10 ff. Harold Browne Thirty-Nine Articles
on Art. vi. The reference above is to Athanasius adv. Gentes init.
and Fragm. jFest. Ep. xxxix. St. Basil has a passage de Spir.
Sanct. xxvii. 66, which, when divorced from its context, appears
to countenance the Roman view, and to give * the unwritten
tradition' 'the same force' as Holy Scripture in what the Church
holds and declares. But in illustrating what he means, he speaks
under the head of tradition only of church practices and rules of
discipline (turning to the east, formulas of consecration, ceremonies
of baptism, etc.). Such are the ' dogmata ' or ordinances ' which
he assigns to tradition. On the other hand, when writing De Fide
c. i, he makes the Scripture the sole source of the faith. " It is
a manifest falling from the faith, and an argument of arrogancy,
either to reject any point of these things that are written, or to
bring in any of these things that are not written." The fathers in
general draw a distinction between the authority of Scripture for
doctrine and the authority of unwritten tradition for practice. Cf.
Tertul, De corona 3, 4. St. Chrysostom on 2 Thess. ii. 15, and
Epiphanius Haer. Ixi. 6, should be interpreted in accordance with
this principle. Cf. Salmon Infallibility pp. 142-3, and Mason Con-
ditions of Our Lord's Earthly Life (Longmans, 1896) pp. 6 f., who
adds : " I do not know one article of belief which is asserted by the
Fathers to bederived from tradition outside ofthecanonofScripture,"
68 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH.
That is to say, the Church is neither more nor less than
the authorized interpreter of Scripture.
The following references will indicate how free the
Fathers are in urging on Christians the direct study of
Scripture. "Do not" St. Cyril of Jerusalem says, 1
speaking even to catechumens, "do not believe me
simply, unless you receive the proof of what I say from
Holy Scripture." And, exhorting his hearers not to
study the apocryphal books, he bids them give zealous
attention to the canonical Scriptures. Again, in his
next lecture, 2 he bids them " keep that faith only which
the Church is now giving to you and which is certifi-
cated out of the whole of Scripture." Again, " 'Tis from
ignorance of Scripture," says Chrysostom, in the begin-
ning of his Homilies on the Romans? " that all our evils
arise ; hence the plague of so many heresies, hence our
careless lives, our fruitless labours. . . . They err who
look not to the bright rays of the divine Scriptures,
because they walk in darkness." * When he is preaching
his running commentaries on the New Testament, he
recommends his hearers to read the passage on which
he is preaching before they come to Church, and after-
wards to keep quiet at home and study it with their
families. "The source of error," says Pope Leo in his
famous tome, 5 "is that when men are hindered by some
obscurity in knowing the truth, they run not to prophets,
or apostles, or evangelists, but to themselves " ; they will
not "labour in the broad field of Holy Scripture."
1 A.D. 348 Catech. iv. 17, 33.
* A.D. 348 Catech. v. 12. * Tom. ix. p. 426.
4 Horn, in Matt, i v. torn. vii. pp. 13, 72. 8 Ef. xxviii. |,
THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. 69
These few examples must suffice. But such quotations
might be multiplied indefinitely. They illustrate two
facts : the theory of the fathers that Scripture is the sole
source of revealed truth and their practice, based on
this theory, of enjoining on all Christians its free
study. 1
The patristic conception of the rule of faith finds it,
as we have seen, (a) in the Bible, (3) in the witness of
the general Church interpreting the Bible. Let us
briefly indicate to what results the application of this
test will lead us. It will lead us to accept first of all
those central doctrines of the faith, the Incarnation, and
the Trinity, which the Church has formulated in definite
dogmas, and which we can, guided by the Church, find
clearly enough for ourselves in Scripture and also the
doctrines of the Inspiration of Scripture and of the
Atonement, which Scripture declares and which the
Church has always believed and inculcated, though there
is a remarkable absence of definite dogmas to make an
exact claim on our belief on these subjects. Next we
shall accept all that body of truth, which is the ' exten-
sion of the Incarnation' the doctrines of Baptismal
Regeneration, of the gift of the Spirit in Confirmation,
of the Eucharistic Presence and Sacrifice, of the
Ministry with its authority in Absolution, and of the
visible Church. Two of these doctrines are more or
less explicitly stated in the creeds. The rest are
parts of the universal Church's teaching and are
also contained, as we can verify for ourselves, in the
1 That it was practicable for Christians of the Roman Empire
to possess and read for themselves the books of Scripture, see
App. note iv. p, 213.
70 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH.
language of Scripture. 1 These too we shall receive as
' of faith,' even though the absence of definite dogma
must make us careful in imputing heresy to those
whose teaching on the subject is not explicit. 2 When a
doctrine is plainly stated in Scripture, like the doctrine
of eternal punishment, or of man's free-will on the one
hand, and fallen nature on the other, then the general
consent of the Church will confirm us in maintaining
them, and we shall not be restrained from doing so by
the aberrations of individual teachers. 3 Where a doctrine
has been commonly held by churchmen, like the actual
sinlessness of the blessed Virgin, but cannot either plead
quite universal consent nor the authority of Scripture,
it will rank rather as a pious opinion than as an article
of faith. Where an opinion has been held commonly in
Christendom for a while and then abandoned, without
being explicitly condemned, as out of harmony with
Scripture and reason, like the notion of Christ's offering
His death as ransom to the devil, then we shall not
scruple to reject what lacks permanent Church authority
and scriptural basis. Where finally doctrines, lacking
any scriptural warrant, come to prevail only in a later
age of the Church, and only partially then, like the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, or of Indul-
gences on the basis of the Treasury of Merits, doctrines
1 If any one doubts whether the Eucharistic sacrifice is implied
in Scripture, he should refer to Willis' Sacrificial Aspect of the
Holy Eucharist.
2 See Keble's Letters of Spiritual Counsel cxviii-cxxi.
* See Vincent of Lerins' Com monitor ium on the trial of the
Church which consists in the errors of single great churchmen
(cc. 17 and 18),
THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. Ji
ignored or rejected explicitly in the earlier ages, then,
even without condemning them as positively heretical,
we shall have no hesitation in declining them with em-
phatic decision. 1
It is hardly possible to exaggerate the supreme im-
portance of holding to nothing else than this ancient
idea of the rule of faith as lying in the consent of the
Church and the appeal to Scripture. After all, the
Church's dogmatic decisions are rather negative than
positive. They were passed in order to warn us off
certain false lines of thought and development, while
for positive information, for growth in spiritual know-
ledge, they still throw us back on the Christ of the
Gospels and on the fresh teaching of the apostles.
Thus it is only by keeping the whole surface of Scrip-
ture constantly before the eyes of the Church at large,
that we can have amongst us the real mind of the
1 I think these, with the Infallibility of the Pope, are the best test
questions for the rule of faith. Take for instance the immaculate
conception of the blessed Virgin. There is no passage in Scrip-
ture which even suggests more than her pre-eminent sanctity
and beatitude. There is further no ancient consent even for
her actual freedom from venial sins no evidence at all of any
one having held her immaculate conception. When the opinion
arose in the Gallican Church of the I2th century, it is well
known how St. Bernard denounced the festival instituted in
honour of it, in the see of Lyons, and in the strongest terms
repudiated the doctrine. His sentiments were constantly repeated
by men of note and authority in the Church, and St. Thomas
Aquinas summed up against the doctrine. Yet the opposite school
has prevailed, and what was at first undreamt of, what Scripture
does not hint at, what when it appeared, appeared as the opinion
of a school repudiated by the greatest mediaeval theologians, has
finally been raised to the position of a dogma binding on the faith
of every Catholic.
72 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH.
Spirit in all its richness and freedom, so that the
Church can make fresh starts in view of new needs,
so that she can bring forth out of her treasures
things new and old, applying the old faith in new
ways, because she is drinking constantly through her
whole body at the original fount of inspiration. It
is the complexity of our rule of faith taking in the
whole Church and the Scriptures and the individual,
which is the gaurantee that the faith will not be central-
ized and narrowed, as it goes down the ages.
In the strength of such considerations we shall be
better able to meet the reproaches which are some-
times aimed at us. For instance, we often hear much
which would encourage the notion that the Church
shows her vitality by the ready multiplication of dogmas,
by the clearness and explicitness and frequency of
her anathemas. We are far from minimizing the im-
portance of dogmatic clearness : and we are far from
denying that the English Church has had too little of it.
But we must urge that a scriptural tone in theology, a
scriptural spirit pervading all a Church's literature, is
at least as essential a sign of healthy life, and there is
a great deal in Scripture which puts a severe curb on
the dogmatic temper. 1
Further, let us not be alarmed when we are told that
our rule of faith admits of no certainty. It admits
indeed of as much certainty and definiteness, as a
Christian who recognizes that truth is not coincident
1 See on this subject some remarks in Mill's Sermons on the
Nature of Christianity Serm. I. The scholastic dogmatists,
resenting the reserve of mystery, simply explain away such utter-
ances as that of Christ, St. Mark xiii. 32.
THE BIBLE hV THE CHURCH. 73
with dogmatic formulas can need to ask. Dogma is
not a substitute for truth, but a guide to its apprehen-
sion. To accept a dogma on the Church's external
authority is only the first step to apprehending it for
ourselves. Indeed till c dogma ' has ceased to be a mere
dogma, and become part of our own spiritual apprehen-
sion, we are not developed Christians, " spiritual men," l
and private judgment is only in error where it refuses
to be enlightened by the catholic judgment. Scripture,
the Church's mind, our own spiritual apprehension, are
the three elements which must combine to produce in
us the true holding of the Christian creed.
41 These are the three great chords of might,
And he whose ear is tuned aright
Will hear no discord in the three,
But the most perfect harmony."
In conclusion let us explain in what sense we can
believe the Church to be infallible. It is in the sense
that the real mind of the Church is the Holy Spirit, 8
and where that mind is clearly expressed we can
accept its guidance with confidence. It is expressed
in her ecumenical creeds and dogmas about the
central doctrines of the faith, and also with quite
adequate clearness in her ordinary catholic teaching.
But there is and has been a great deal in the
1 I Cor. ii. 15.
2 St. Thomas Aquinas like earlier Western teachers prefers the
phrase * I believe that the Church exists ' to ' I believe in the
Church.' But " if it is said ' I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,'
this is to be understood in the sense that our faith is referred to
the Holy Spirit who sanctifies the Church, so that the meaning
is: 'I believe in the Holy Spirit sanctifying the Church.'"
Sutnnia Theol. Pars 2da 2dae Quaest. i. art. 9,
74 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH.
Church, that is not of her, for the Holy Spirit
suffers in His organ, through men's unfaithfulness, and
His voice speaks not always as plainly as He would
fain let it speak, through human sin. Hence there has
been a good deal taught in the Church, from time to
time, that was not truth. If the truth has always
been taught, yet it has sometimes been clouded by
error. Indeed this imperfection in the Church's
witness must be admitted by every thinking man. A
Roman Catholic must recognize with us that a theory
about Christ's ransom referred to just now a theory
at present almost universally rejected was once for
many generations almost universally held, and taught
as part of the faith. He must admit that the Roman
Church held through the Middle Ages, and taught
authoritatively, a view of the ' matter ' and ' form ' of
the Sacrament of Order now condemned. He must
admit that the Gallican Church, and the Irish Church
under its influence, repudiated for centuries the Papal
Infallibility and described it as " no article of catholic
belief." What does this mean ? That on all showing
the infallibility of the Church is not inconsistent with
a great deal of error being also taught within her pale.
To get at the Church's true mind we must not be con-
tent to accept the nearest or the loudest voice, but
according to our opportunities "inside the Catholic
Church we must look to the consent both of uni-
versality and antiquity, that we be neither carried away
from sound unity to the side of schism, nor yet cast head-
long from antiquity of religion into heretical novelties." 1
1 Vincent, Common. 29.
CHAPTER V.
THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER.
A PERSON anxious to arrive at the true conception of
Church unity and Church authority, who had followed
us thus far, might fairly urge that we had hitherto taken
no account of some very remarkable words of our Lord
to St. Peter. " The papal claims," such a person would
urge, " are made to rest upon Scripture. They are made
to rest upon the position assigned by our Lord Himself
to St Peter in relation to the whole Church, and upon
the permanence of this relation in the ministerial succes-
sion." l To this promise of Christ to St. Peter, then,
we will now turn our attention. St. Peter, acting as the
spokesman of the other Apostles, had just given expres-
sion to the great conviction which had been slowly
growing in the minds of the whole band, that the Son
of Man was the Christ the Son of the living God, This
outspoken confession of His Divine mission and Nature
Christ meets and confirms with His most solemn bene-
diction : ' Blessed art thou ' (so we may venture to
paraphrase it) ' Simon Bar-Jonah : for this conviction is
not derived from weak human nature, it is a super-
1 St. Matt, xvi, 13-20.
76 THE PROMISE TO ST. PETE&.
natural communication from above : and (in virtue of
this thy profession of it) I also say unto thee that thou
art Rock-man and upon this rock I will build my
Church, and the gates of death shall not prevail against
it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom
of heaven ; 1 and whatsoever thou shalt prohibit on
earth shall be prohibited in heaven, and whatsoever
thou shalt permit on earth, shall be permitted in heaven.'
This passage is, on the face of it, one involving
several ambiguities. It is difficult, I think, to feel any
doubt that our Lord is here pronouncing the person
Peter to be the Rock. The Church as a human society
is to be built on human characters, and in virtue of
St. Peter's courageous act of faith in Himself, his
deliberate acceptance of His Divine claim, our Lord
sees in him, what he had hitherto failed to find among
men, a solid basis on which His spiritual fabric may
be reared, or at least a basis capable of being solidified
by discipline and experience, till it become a founda-
tion of rock on which the Church can rest. So far
our Lord is dealing with St. Peter as a human char-
acter, but He goes on beyond all question to promise
1 i.e. the power of opening and shutting, and generally the office
of the steward, see Isa. xxii. 20-22. On this expression and on
the whole passage I must refer to what I have said elsewhere more
at length The Church and the Ministry ', pp. 31 fT. and 20 1 ft.
The underlying idea of the passage is admirably expressed by Mr.
Holland Creed and Character p. 37 f. ' The Rock of the Church.
It is obvious to remark that the more we realize that Christ
intended by ' the rock ' the man Peter in his personal character,
the less support can we suppose the passage to give to the Roman
argument. This point was thoroughly argued in an article in the
Guardian of May 22 1889 pp. 800 f.
THE PROMISE. TO ST. PETER. 77
to invest him with an office, the office of steward in
the Divine kingdom, and with a supernatural legisla-
tive authority. So far our Lord's words bear a plain
meaning, but after this we enter upon the region of
ambiguity. St. Peter speaks in this passage as one
of a body of twelve. Is Christ dealing with him
as distinct from the others, or as their representative ?
Is the office to belong to him only or in a special sense,
or is it to be given to all who share the apostolic com-
mission ? The ground for this question is left the more
open by the fact that Christ is not here bestowing an
office but promising it. The passage is an anticipation,
a promise (* 1 'will? not '/<&') which waits its interpre-
tation in our Lord's future action, just as His discourse
about ' eating His flesh ' in St. John and His promise to
'give His flesh' (St. John vi. 51) waits its fulfilment at
the institution of the Eucharist. We contend then that
this is just one of those passages which want interpret-
ing one of those passages about the meaning of
which it is not possible to arrive at any certainty with-
out the aid of the interpretation, whether of Scripture
itself or of the Church, which is given us to fix its
meaning, positively and negatively, so far as it can be
fixed.
The interpretation put on it by the modern Roman
Catholic Church, involves two doctrines first, a doc-
trine about St. Peter, and, secondly, a doctrine about
the permanence of the Petrine position in the Church
of all ages.
i. Our Lord here promised to constitute St. Peter,
as the Rock of the Church, the supreme representative
78 THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER.
of Christ the Rock. He is to be the Vicar of Christ
to the Church on earth, To him alone is primarily
given the pastorate of souls and the authority of the
keys. To the other Apostles these are only given
mediately through him. Whatever they have, they
have not directly from Christ, but indirectly from
Christ through Peter. 1
2. Furthermore this position which St. Peter holds
relatively to the whole Church, lives on in the Roman
see in which St. Peter's 'privilege' abides unto
the end, in the form of the universal pastorate and
(as recently defined) infallibility, of the Bishop of
Rome.
Now, without discussing the inherent probability of
1 This position first finds expression in St. Leo Serm. iv. 2 :
" Great and wonderful, beloved, is the fellowship in Its own power
which the Divine condescension gave to this man. And if It
willed the other rulers of the Church to have anything in common
with him, It gave only through him whatever it did not withhold
from the others." cf. Ep. x. I : "The mystery of this gift the
Lord willed to belong to the office of all the Apostles in such sense
as that He made blessed Peter, the chief of all the Apostles, the
original depositary of it, and that He wills that from him as from
a sort of Head, His gifts should flow down to the whole Body."
The same idea is expressed by St. Francis de Sales in a passage
quoted by Mr. Rivington Authority p. 28 : " The Apostles all
have the same power as St. Peter, but not in the same rank, in as
much as they have it as delegates and agents, but St. Peter as
ordinary head and permanent officer." The power of the Apostles
relatively to Peter, is compared to that of representatives of a king
relatively to the king. Fr. Richardson pp. 80-8 1 repudiates this
mediatorial view. But my contentions would apply equally to the
view which he accepts. The other apostles, according to him
(quoting Allies), received jurisdiction directly from Christ, but in
such sense that they could only exercise it in subordination to
Peter as their head.
THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER. 79
this interpretation (which is here stated very briefly,
but not with any exaggeration of the claim made), and
assuming simply, with what is almost excessive modera-
tion, that the passage does not necessarily involve it,
but is susceptible of others, we propose to examine
whether it can hold in view of the commentary on the
promise which is afforded
(1) by our Lord's own subsequent words and con-
duct :
(2) by the language of the Acts and Apostolic
Epistles, including St. Peter's own :
(3) by the interpretations of the Fathers.
(i) It must, we think, be admitted that our Lord's
subsequent language and conduct do not confirm
the stronger and more exclusive meaning which has
been put upon His promise to St. Peter. The solemn
delegations of ministerial authority given by our Lord
after His Resurrection, are so given as to imply the
essential equality of all the Apostles. They positively
exclude the 'mediatorial' position of St. Peter. "As
the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you " the
Apostles in general : " and when He had said this, He
breathed on them and saith unto them, Receive ye the
Holy Ghost ; whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are for-
given unto them ; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are
retained." " All authority hath been given unto Me in
heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore and make dis-
ciples of all the nations, baptizing them .... teaching
them." Thus the Mission to represent Christ, as
endowed with His authority to baptize and to teach, to
8o THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER.
remit and to retain sins (which is the power of the keys
in its application to individuals) is given to the whole
apostolic body at once and equally. To all equally had
the Holy Eucharist been committed before His passion.
It would seem then that what is promised to St. Peter
in virtue of his confession of Christ's name, is bestowed
by our Lord equally on all after His Resurrection, and
that the primacy which St. Peter undoubtedly held in
the apostolic college, carried with it no distinctive powers,
but was a personal leadership amongst equals. There
are indeed special dealings of our Lord with St. Peter.
Thus before His Passion, when he is warning the
apostles that ' Satan has asked to have them that he
may sift them as wheat,' He tells Simon in particular
that He has ' prayed for him that his faith fail not ' and
bids him ' when he is converted, to strengthen his
brethren.' Mr. Rivington interprets this to mean that
it was * unnecessary ' for our Lord to pray for all the
Apostles because * there was one head among them with
whom they were to be joined ' : so that He prayed for
one, in order to protect all ! How strangely is this idea
in contrast with the fact of our Lord's prayer in St. John,
xvii. 9, 10. On this occasion the motive for His singling
out St. Peter is plain to all who are not blind to facts.
Thus St. Chrysostom commenting on this incident l says
it is because his presumption, as indicated by his self-
confident professions of loyalty, required rebuke. " He
1 Tom. vii. p. 785 Horn, in Matt. Ixxxii. 3, but there is a
tendency to see in the charge ' strengthen thy brethren ' a sign of
Peter's primacy in Horn, in Act. Apost. iii., torn. ix. p. 26; but
cp, on these Homilies, Salmon Infallibility p. 339.
THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER. Si
said this sharply rebuking him, and showing that his fall
was more grievous than the others and needed more
assistance." " Why, if [Satan] asked for all, did He not
say * I prayed ' for all ? Is it not plain that it is as I said
above because He is rebuking him and showing that
his fall is more grievous than that of the others that He
turns His speech to him ?" Again after the Resurrection
Christ's threefold appeal to St. Peter and threefold
pastoral charge, suggests irresistibly the interpretation
given by the fathers, 1 viz. that St. Peter is here reinstated
in the apostolic commission that his threefold denial
might be supposed to have lost him ; it is no peculiar
dignity which is being committed to him. Thus St.
Cyril of Alexandria : " through the thrice-repeated con-
fession of the blessed Peter was annulled his sin in
thrice denying : and through our Lord saying, Feed
my lambs, there is conceived to be a sort of restoration
of the apostolate already given to him."
Speaking generally then, we should say that the
'mediatorial' position of St Peter in the ministry is
excluded by our Lord's delegation of official power to
all the Apostles directly, equally and together, and that
there is nothing in the Gospels to suggest that St. Peter's
position among the Apostles was any less personal or
any more destined to be an abiding fact in the Church's
ministry than that of St. John. 2 Even when our Lord
1 e.g. St. Cyril in loc. and St. Augustin (substantially). So
also St. Chrysostorn, who however speaks here of St. Peter's
primacy as the reason of his being singled out : see a little further
on.
8 On this subject we quote the following interesting passage from
the end of St. Augustin's Homilies on St. John : "Two state* of
82 THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER.
was on earth it was not of a sort to prevent James and
John asking for the foremost positions of honour in His
kingdom, or the apostles discussing * which of them is
accounted to be greatest ' (St. Matthew xx. 21; St. Luke
xxii. 24).
(2) As we advance from the Gospels to the Acts of
the Apostles, the history of the early Church suggests to
us an obvious interpretation of St. Peter's primacy. He
was the leader the ' coryphaeus ' of the apostolic band.
He spoke and acted at first as such, and, as holding
life, the life of faith on earth and the life of sight in heaven, were
symbolized by Peter and John, the one by the one, the other by
the other ; but in this life they both of them walked for a time by
faith [which Peter represents], and the other sight [which John
represents], they shall both of them enjoy eternally. For the
whole body of the saints, therefore, inseparably belonging to the
body of Christ, and for their safe pilotage through the present
tempestuous life, did Peter, the first of the Apostles, receive the
keys of the kingdom of heaven for the binding and loosing of sins ;
and for the same congregation of saints, in reference to the perfect
repose in the bosom of that mysterious life to come, did the Evan-
gelist John recline on the breast of Christ. For it is not the
former alone, but the whole Church, that bindeth and looseth sins;
nor did the latter alone drink at the fountain of the Lord's breast,
to utter again in preaching those truths of the Word in the begin-
ning, God with God, and those other sublime truths regarding
the Divinity of Christ, and the Trinity and Unity of the whole
Godhead, which are to be yet beheld in the kingdom face to face,
but meanwhile till the Lord's coming are only to be seen in a
mirror and in a riddle ; but the Lord has Himself diffused this
very Gospel through the whole world, that every one of His own
may drink thereat according to his own individual capacity " (In
Joh. Evang, Tractat. cxxiv. 7)-
St. Peter and St. John each represent, in their single personalities,
among the Apostles, qualities and powers belonging to the uni-
versal Church. They stand as types of the Church in certain
aspects, but the one embodiment is no more permanent than the
other.
THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER. 83
'the keys of the kingdom of heaven,' opened the door
to the Gentiles. But his position of leader does not
seem to carry with it any prerogative of primary import-
ance. The Apostles at Jerusalem are described as
"sending him" 1 with St. John to Samaria, Later again
he occupies no governing position in the Council at
Jerusalem. Christ's revelation to him, indeed, when
he opened the door to the Gentiles, 2 was a fact which
must have been conclusive of the question before the
meeting ; but the formal authority, the formal " I
decide," 3 comes from St. James, and the decree goes
out in the name of "the Apostles and elders" 4 gener-
ally. 5 Moreover, St. Peter retires into the background
of history after this, as St. Paul rises into prominence.
The history would seem to suggest that St. Peter's special
function was one which had to do with the opening of
Church history,* and this impression is augmented by
the utterly ' unpapal ' tone of St. Peter's own Epistles.
The 'fellow-elder' who speaks to the other ' elders'
1 Acts viii. 14. 2 Acts xv. 7-11.
3 Acts xv. 19. 4 Acts xv. 23.
6 Bishop Meurin in the controversy which originally gave
rise to these papers interpreted Acts xv. 12 'all the multi-
tude held their peace ' "as an instance of th deference paid to
St. Peter in the Council of Jerusalem," and had likened it to "the
present order of the Catholic Church, in which, when the succes-
sor of St. Peter speaks as such, on a matter of faith, the multitude
hold their peace. " This interpretation, which is common among
modern Roman Catholics, is inconceivably misleading and per-
verse. The multitude held their peace for no other purpose than
to listen to Paul rid Barnabas.
6 This is Tertullian's view (de Pudicitia c. 21), but his very
powerful exposition is reduced in authority by the Montanist
animus of the passage, which is aimed against the perpetuity of the
power of ' loosing ' in the Church.
LIBRA
84 I HE PROMISE TO ST. PETER.
but as a * witness of the sufferings of Christ and a par-
taker of the glory that shall be revealed' 1 gives no hint
that he stands in any special relation to the "Chief
Shepherd" beyond that in which the other apostles
stood.
As to the evidence of the rest of the New Testament,
it goes very strongly in the direction of minimizing the
position of St. Peter. The ' twelve foundations ' of the
Church equal and co-ordinate 2 are the twelve Apostles,
and this implication of St. John's vision accords well
with St. Paul's language. 8 Moreover, if one view can
exclude another, St. Paul's assertion of his own essential
apostolic independence,* and his language about the
1 pillar Apostles/ exclude the idea of his receiving his
authority in any way mediately from St. Peter, though
his visit to him at Jerusalem was no doubt due to a
1 i Pet. v. 1-4.
2 Rev. xxi. 14. 3 Eph. ii. 20.
4 "Paul an Apostle not from man, neither through man"
Gal. i. I. " I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it,
but by revelation of JESUS CHRIST" i. 12. "They of repute"
(i.e. the pillar Apostles, James and Cephas and John) "imparted
nothing to me"ii. 6, etc. "The Gospel of the uncircumcision
was committed unto me, as the Gospel of the circumcision was
unto Peter " ii. 7. There is no sort of dependence of St. Paul on
St. Peter which these words do not exclude. The Church officers
of the next generation to the Apostles, like St. Timothy and St.
Titus, received their authority and the tradition, not indeed from
men, but through men. On the other hand the apostles received
immediately from CHRIST. When Theodoret, wishing to please
St. Leo, to whom he was appealing, speaks of St. Paul as " be-
taking himself to Peter that he might carry back from him an
explanation to those who were raising questions at Antioch"
his language must have had a ring of irony to one as well versed
in Scripture as St. Leo.
THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER. 85
certain deference to him as Captain of the Apostolic
band.
We conclude, then, from our review of Scripture that
the notion of St. Peter's * mediatorial ' position relatively
to the other Apostles is excluded positively by St. Paul's
language and conduct, and (by implication supporting
this positive evidence) by the silence of the rest of
Scripture as to any inequality amongst the Apostles.
St. Peter's peculiar position, we should judge, given him
in virtue of our Lord's promise, was a leadership in the
Apostolic band which has its special exercise in the
Church's earliest days, retires into the background with
the spread and growth of the Church, and gives no sign
of its being perpetuated any more than the special
mission of St. Paul.
(3) It remains to summarize briefly the evidence of
the Church Fathers on three points (a) the meaning
of 'the Rock' in St. Matt. xvi. 18; (b) the special
position of St. Peter amongst the other Apostles;
(f) the permanence of his prerogative in the 'see of
Peter ' at Rome.
(a) As regards the meaning of the Rock there is no
fixity of interpretation amongst the Fathers, and many
of them, like St Augustin, give different interpretations
in different parts of their works. Thus the comments
of, say, St. Augustin and St. Chrysostom will convince
any candid reader of what is certainly significant,
namely, that they did not think the interpretation of
this word a matter which at all affected the basis of
Church authority, or indeed a very important question
at all
86 THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER.
St. Chrysostom on St. Matt. xvi. 18 comments thus:
11 ' On the rock ' that is, on the faith of his [Peter's]
confession," and passes on. But just below he speaks
of God as having "made a man that is a fisherman
more solid than any rock." A little later 1 he speaks
again of Christ having 'built his Church on his con-
fession' St. Augustin finally 2 bids his readers choose
between the interpretation of the Rock as St. Peter,
which was his earlier view, and Christ as confessed by
St. Peter, his later. In the Collect for the Vigil of
St. Peter and St. Paul in the Roman Breviary, the rock
is interpreted of the apostolic confession 'apostolicae
confessionis petra ' : in the hymn for Sundays at
Lauds, on the other hand, Peter is 'ipsa petra
ecclesiae. 8
(b) As regards the position of St. Peter amongst the
other Apostles we have statements from a number of the
fathers. Thus Origen 4 writes : "But if you think the
whole Church built upon Peter alone, what will you say
of John, the son of thunder, or each one of the Apostles?
And are we to dare to say that the gates of hell shall
1 Horn. Ixxxii. 3, torn. vii. p. 786.
2 Retract. I. xxii.
8 But the balance of Liturgical refs. to the passage, with which
I have been kindly supplied by the Rev, F. E. Warren, goes in
favour of the former interpretation.
4 Mr. Allnatt (Cathedra Petri p. 30) quotes Origen as main-
taining how highly St. Peter transcends ' ' the others " in power.
The words are put in capitals. The context when examined shows
that "the others " means not the other Apostles, but the members
of the Church generally, and that the point in which he transcends
is having authority in "heavens" (plural) not in "heaven**
(singular)
THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER. 87
not prevail against Peter only, but that against the other
Apostles and those who are perfect they shall prevail ?
Are not the quoted words, * The gates of hell shall not
prevail against it,' and ' Upon this rock I will build my
Church,' said of them all, and of each single one of
them ? Are the keys of the kingdom of heaven given
to Peter only, and shall no other one of the blessed men
receive them ? And if the words, ' I will give to thee
the keys of the kingdom of heaven ' are common to the
others, how are not all the words, said before and said
after, said as they seem to be to Peter, also common to
the others ? For in this place the words, ' Whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth, etc.,' seem as if they were
spoken to Peter. But in the Gospel of John, the
Saviour giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples by means
of the Breath, says 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost,'" etc. 1
So again from Alexandria, Cyril, in one of his letters to
Nestorius, which have ecumenical authority, speaks of
Peter and James as of ' equal honour ' as Apostles and
disciples. 2 So much later Theophylact on Matt. xvi.
18-19: "They who have obtained the grace of the
Episcopate as Peter had, have authority to remit and
bind. For though the ' I will give thee ' was spoken
to Peter alone, yet the gift has been given to all the
Apostles. When ? When He said, ' Whosesoever sins
ye remit, they are remitted.' For this 'I will give'
indicates a future time the time, that is, after the
Resurrection." 3 St. Chrysostom very frequently recog-
1 in Matt. torn. xii. n. a ad Nest. Ep. iii. 5.
8 Tom. vii. p. 647 in Matt. Horn. Ixv. 4 : cf. torn. x. p. 329 in
I Cor. Horn. xxxv. 5.
SS THE PROMISE TO ST. ?RTER.
nizes the ' primacy ' of St. Peter, and calls him " the
chief of the apostles, the mouthpiece of the disciples,
the leader of the band." 1 He speaks of St. John and
St. Paul ' allowing him the primacy.' But this cannot
be strained to imply any essential difference of rank, for
where he speaks of St. Paul as going up to visit St. Peter,
on account of this primacy, he adds "not as needing
anything of him nor of his voice, but as being his equal
in honour." 2 So he constantly speaks of St. Paul as
1 the teacher of the world/ and characterizes St. John
4 as the pillar of the Churches over the world, having
the keys of heaven." 8
In Western theology the only definite view given us
of St. Peter's relation to the other Apostles (till we come
1 Tom. viii. p. 525 in loan. Horn. Ixxxviii. I : 2/c/cpiros r&v
diroffT6\uv Kal <rr<fyia ruv fjiadyruv Koi KOpvcf>T] TOV xo/>ou. Here he
distinguishes 'the apostles' from 'the disciples.' Just below
where he says "He intrusts to him [Peter] the presidency of the
brethren . . . and says, 'If thou lovest me preside over the
brethren'" he means ' the brethren' to represent 'the sheep 'of
Christ i.e. the flock generally. Where lower down he speaks of
him (p. 527) as appointed by Christ ' the teacher not of this see
(of Jerusalem) but of the whole world,' it is by contrast to St.
James who received only 'the throne of Jerusalem.' The term
' coryphaeus ' he applies also to Andrew, James, and John, who
make up ' the two pairs of coryphaei.' (Horn, in Matt, xxxvii. 4 ;
torn. vii. p. 420. ) It is noticeable that when he is speaking of the
election of Judas' successor he mentions three possible methods of
making it. St. Peter might have asked Christ to give him a suc-
cessor to Judas simply : or the apostles might have elected simply :
or St. Peter might have chosen some one himself, see Horn, in Act.
Ajjost. iii. I ; torn. ix. pp. 23-25.
9 in Gal. i. 18 ; torn. x. p. 677 I<r6rifj.os &v atfry.
8 Cf. in Gen. Horn, xxxii. 3 ; Ix. 3 ; xxiv. 4 ; torn. iv. pp. 320,
581, 222. For St. John cf. In loh. Horn. i. I ; torn. viii. p. 2;
cf. torn. vii. p. 368.
THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER. 89
to the ' mediatorial ' theory, referred to above as belong-
ing to the Papacy and derived from Leo the Great) is
that propounded and developed in the African Church
by her great theologians St. Cyprian, St. Optatus, and
St. Augustin. This theory may be briefly stated in St
Cyprian's language. It is, that while "the other Apostles
were what Peter was, endowed with an equal fellowship
both of honour and power," while "the Lord after His
resurrection gives equal power to all the Apostles " and
gives them all equally the pastoral commission, yet He
built His Church upon one (Peter), to " make the unity
of His Church plain." l This institution of the Church
in the person of one man first, was a symbolic act to
emphasize Christ's intention of unity. Peter, when
Christ speaks to him, after his great confession, is
addressed (as St. Augustin often says) as the " repre-
sentative of the Church." This is an interpretation of
our Lord's words to St. Peter which we can all accept,
and which is quite intelligible. It is quite distinct from
the mediatorial view, according to which St. Peter is
something which the other apostles are not, and the
source to them of what they are. This latter view
is indeed markedly excluded by the language of the
fathers generally, except indeed by those like St. Leo
who constitute what can be truly called the "papal
school " of writers.
(c) It remains for us to inquire what, is the patristic
view about the permanence of St. Peter's privilege, in his
see. On this subject it is not necessary to say much
now, as it will come under discussion in the next chapter
1 De Unit. 4.
90 THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER.
on the growth of the Roman see. For the present it is
only important to make one point clear that the claim
of the Bishop of Rome to be what Peter was among the
Apostles becomes a claim which, even if recognized,
does not carry us far when we have once gained a true
conception of what Peter was among the Apostles. The
exaggerated claim which we hear through the lips of
Leo, and which has been referred to above, is based on
a conception of St. Peter's position the unfoundedness
of which we have already seen. Meanwhile, even when
this claim has been reduced to its proper limits and
made only a claim to be among bishops what Peter
really was among Apostles, even so the claim of the see
of Rome to the * Privilege of Peter ' cannot show any-
thing approaching ancient consent in its favour. Allnatt
in his Cathedra Petri can at least be trusted to accumu-
late all the legitimate references to the Fathers in support
of a papal view indeed he does not often stop here
but under the heading " St. Peter lives and teaches in his
successors " and " rules in his own see " he cannot quote
a single Father of the first four centuries, except one
pope, Siricius (A.D. 386) ; and under the head of " the
see of Peter" he cannot quote a single Oriental Father
of the first four centuries, 1 except indeed Firmilian of
Caesarea* who is violently protesting against Pope
Stephen's conduct, presumably based upon his claim
to sit in Peter's chair, and mentions the claim without
expressing his own attitude towards it : " Stephen who
1 e.g. St. Chrysostom in his voluminous works, including letters
to the Pope, affords no testimony, though he speaks often of
Peter's ' primacy ' among the other apostles.
THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER. 91
announces that he holds the see of Peter by succession
is stirred by no zeal against heretics." l I believe indeed
that none of the Greek Fathers of the first six centuries
connects the position of the Bishop of Rome with the
promise to St. Peter? In the African Church the theory
that the Bishop of Rome occupies that same position
as the ' symbol of unity ' in the whole Church, which
St. Peter occupied in Apostolic days, came to prevail
through the influence of St. Cyprian. This interesting
view, which in St. Cyprian's sense we should be heartily
glad to accept, will come under discussion shortly. For
the present the matter must be brought to a close with
two observations.
There is a marked contrast "between the authority
which such a doctrine as the Real Presence of Christ
in the Eucharist can plead, and that which supports the
papal view of the 'privilege of Peter.' We accept
the Real Presence because (a) it was taught by the
Fathers of East and West from the first ; (b) it is con-
firmed by the natural meaning of our Lord's words,
and the language of St. Paul in his epistles. We
reject the papal interpretation of Christ's promise to
St. Peter, because (a) it cannot show in its favour
anything approaching to a consent of the fathers
indeed there is something much nearer consent in a
1 ap. Cypr. Ep. Ixxv.
3 This position was suggested to me, and I cannot find any
instance to the contrary. (Even from later days the instances
seem very rare, and rather by way of casual implication. Theo-
phylact on St. Luke xxii. 32 says simply that Peter by the example
of his penitence is to 'strengthen his brethren' to the end of
time.) But a universal statement is somewhat hazardous.
92 THE PROMISE TO ST. PETER.
view which excludes it ; () it does not appear to be the
obvious meaning of our Lord's words at first, and is
rendered still more improbable by His later language ;
(f) it is excluded by St. Paul's language about his own
authority, discountenanced by the general language of
other New Testament writers, while it cannot even plead
anything in the New Testament, outside the Gospels, in
its support.
It is undoubtedly true that the papacy has possessed
itself of the promise of our Lord to St. Peter in popular
imagination, just in the same way as Protestantism of
an un-catholic sort has possessed itself of certain
portions of St. Paul's epistles about justification by faith,
and the superiority of the spirit to the letter. Thus
there are a number of texts about which we start
with a kind of 'false conscience,' which we have to
deal with, not (as we are apt to do) by avoiding
them, but by dealing with them with attention and
prayer, in the light of the mind of the Church, of
the general sense of Scripture, and of the reason
which God has given us and His Spirit enlightens,
till we are familiarized with their true meaning and
it has taken its proper place in the context of our
catholic faith.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.
IT is important for us, at the present stage of our
argument, to have before us a clear historical summary
of the position occupied by the see of Rome in the suc-
cessive ages of the Church, such a historical summary
seeming an essential condition of any sound judgment
as to what our relation towards the Roman Church
ought to be.
Already when St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans
(about A.D. 57) the Church there was considerable in
numbers and (to quote Dr. Hort's words) " an object of
love and respect to Jewish and Gentile Churches alike."
Now St. Paul in writing to them seems on the whole
to imply (i. 13, xv. 22) that he had been oftentimes
hindered in fulfilling his strong desire to visit them
through his resolution "not to build upon another
man's foundation." If so, he regards the Church in
Rome as "another man's foundation," and that other
man, who had founded the Roman Church before
St. Paul wrote to it, may well have been St. Peter. 1
Anyway it is practically certain that he wrote his First
Epistle from Rome, and quite certain that he died
1 The above represents a change of view, as compared with
earlier editions of this book, in accordance with the view of men
as dissimilar in opinions as Dr. Kirsopp Lake (Early Epistles of
St. Paul pp. 378-9) and Mr. Edmundson (Church in Rome in the
First Century, Longmans, 1913) which should by all means be read.
98
94 THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.
there a martyr's death in the persecution under Nero
(about A.D. 65). It is also certain that St. Paul was in
Rome during his first and second captivities and was
martyred there for his faith during the same persecu-
tion (perhaps A.D. 67). Thus St. Dionysius of Corinth
(A.D. 171) speaks of the Churches of Rome and Corinth
as ' planted ' by Peter and Paul, and Irenaeus a few
years later writes of " the most great and ancient and
universally known Church established at Rome by the
two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul," and speaks
of both apostles as joint authors of the episcopate there.
The prominence in which the Christian Church of
the capital of the world must have inevitably found her-
self among other Churches, the glory which accrued to
her from her apostolic and other martyrs, 1 and not least,
the early munificence of her almsgiving, gave the
Roman Church a special position in Christendom from
the earliest days. Attention has been called to the fact
that when the Epistle which bears St. Clement's name
is sent by the Roman Church to Corinth, in order to
exhort a recalcitrant party in the Church there to submit
to their presbyters, it speaks with a tone of considerable
authority. 2 " If any disobey the words spoken of God
through us, let them know that they will entangle them-
selves in transgression, but we shall be clear from this
sin." " You will cause us joy and exultation if, obeying
the things written by us through the Spirit, you cut out
1 "That happy Church" Tertullian calls her "for which the
Apostles poured out with their blood their whole teaching" (de
Praescr. 36).
2 c. 59. The epistle is generally dated about A.D. 95, but
by Mr. Edmundson A.D. 70.
THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. 95
the lawless passion, etc." This tone of authority may
be due to the prestige of the Church at Rome ; l or to
the quasi-apostolic authority of St. Clement writing to
a Church in which as yet there were no officers higher
than presbyters. 2 He was no doubt ( bishop of Rome/
in fact if not yet in name, in the late years of the
first century. But it is remarkable that the episco-
pate seems to have been less prominent in the Church
at Rome than was the case in the East. 3 The Church
is there more important than the bishop.
It is towards the end of the second century, when the
line of Roman bishops comes into clearer historical
light, that we begin to discern dimly the first beginnings
of their claim to be successors of St. Peter ; and it is in
A.D. 196, in the person of Victor, that we have our first
anticipation of the aggressive spirit which is to be a
distinguishing characteristic of the see of Rome in
later ages. Victor ventured in a domineering spirit to
excommunicate the Asiatic Churches who held to their
Johannine tradition and insisted on keeping Easter on
the day of the Jewish passover, whatever day of the
1 "St. Ignatius" says Mr. Allnatt "writes to the 'presiding'
Church of Rome " : Yes, ' presiding,' but where ? " In the place
of the region of the Romans," and there too "having the pre-
sidency of love."
2 See this discussed The Church and the Ministry pp. 286-8.
8 Thus Dr. Salmon Introd. to N. T. p. 565 n. calls attention
to the fact ' ' how all through the first two centuries the importance
of the Bishop of Rome is merged in the importance of his Church."
Cf. Lightfoot Clement i. p. 70 : " the later Roman theory supposes
that the Church of Rome derives all its authority from the bishop of
Rome, as the successor of St. Peter. History inverts this relation,
and shows that, as a matter of fact, the power of the bishop of
Rome was built upon the power of the Church of Rome."
96 THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.
week that might be. This arbitrary act on Victor's part
brought down upon him the ' sharp rebukes ' l of a
number of bishops, and amongst them of the great
St. Irenaeus, who contended that variety in ecclesiastical
custom had never hitherto been a bar to fellowship,
because such ' difference only serves to commend the
unity of the faith.' Victor stood reproved. His ex-
communication failed. It was a mere ' attempt ' not
in the sense that he did not actually issue the sentence,
for Eusebius tells us that he did ; but simply because
it was ignored, and the question of Easter observance
remained an open one till the Council of Nicaea closed
it. The attempt however is significant of a spirit
already in its slight beginnings present in the Roman
Church. And it is important to notice that Eusebius,
the fourth century Church historian, sees in Victor's
action nothing but a piece of undue intolerance. He
acknowledges nothing ' papal ' in the bishop of Rome.
It would not appear that any kind of authority was
attached to the Roman see during the early centuries
even in the West, except such moral authority or prestige
as must have belonged inevitably to so great an apos-
tolic see. With reference for instance to the Church's
function of bearing witness to the faith, the voice of the
see of Rome is but one element in the consentient
testimony. 2 But yet her position in this respect has
one remarkable feature, due to her relations to the
capital city of the world. Rome was the centre of the
world's movements. Everybody came thither. She
1 See Eusebius Hist. Ecclts. v. 24.
a See Tertullian dt Praescr. 36. St. Irenaeus iii. 3-
THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. 97
was the world's ' microcosm.' It followed necessarily
that she stood, as regards her Church, in a unique free-
dom of communication with the Churches of the rest
of the world. Christians from all parts necessarily
gravitated thither. The faith in Rome was not only
preserved by the local Christians, but tested by constant
comparison with the faith of those who like Hegesippus
or Polycarp came from widely different quarters to the
world's centre and tested to finding there the same faith
as they had believed at home. Thus it was that the
testimony of the Roman Church had a ' microcosmic '
character; and when Irenaeus wants to select a typical
Western l Church in order to enumerate the succession
of her bishops and * confound ' the Gnostics with her
creed, he chooses as a specimen, because " it would be
tedious to enumerate the successions of all the churches,"
the Church of Rome : "for to this Church on account
1 He balances Rome in the West with Smyrna in the East.
This passage from Irenaeus (iii. 3) has been the subject of much
dispute. I believe that Dr. Langen, following Grabe and Neander,
has finally fixed its meaning (Gesch. der rom. Kirche i. 172 note).
He quotes new and apposite illustrations, from twelfth-century
Western writers, showing how the words of Irenaeus ' convenire
ad Romanam ecclesiam' were then understood. Thus "Roma
tune erat caput mundi et de toto orbe illuc conveniebant "
(Herveus of Bourgdieu) " ad quam homines undique terrarum con-
veniunt " (Hugo Eterianus). We may compare the language of the
Synodicon of Constantinople, which attributes the primacy of the
older Rome to the fact that formerly " affairs converged there and
therefore all men came together there " (Milinan Lat. Chr. ii. 127).
No interpretation is tenable which does not give force to the
remarkable words I have italicized. The popular Ultramontane
interpretation is excluded by its violating the whole context: cf.
Salmon Infall. pp. 376-7 ; Puller Primitive Saints and See of
Rome, pp. 31-43.
G
93 THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.
of her superior pre-eminence, it must needs be that every
church should come together, that is, the faithful from
all sides-y and in this Church the tradition from the
Apostles has been always preserved [not as elsewhere
by a merely local body but] by men from all parts"
At an unknown moment, before the middle of the
third century, the Church of Rome, which up to that
time had been Greek in language alike in her liturgy
and her theology a Greek colony in the Latin city,
became perhaps somewhat suddenly a Latin Church,
and in consequence of this change of language, so com-
pletely forgot her Greek past that in the fourth century
she was ignorant of an incident in her life which the
coincidences of modern discovery have laid open to our
eyes. This incident we notice here only so far as it
illustrates with remarkable vividness the position of the
Roman Church in this, till recently, unknown epoch of
the early third century. St. Hippolytus, the great
theologian and bishop 1 of the Church, "who perhaps"
says Dr. Newman "has no rival (among ante-Nicene
theologians) except his master St. Irenaeus," is in his
Refutation of all Heresies now discerned denouncing
his contemporary, Pope Callistus, with extraordinary
violence, as a destroyer of the Church discipline and
indeed (to quote Dr. Newman again) as 'a heresiarch
ex cathedra.' Now it is a luminous fact that a great
theologian can call a bishop of Rome a heresiarch
1 The theory of St. Hippolytus' position which is perhaps the
most probable, is that he was ' bishop of the nations,' i.e. bishop
of the foreigners in the diocese of Rome, taking his title from
Portus. See Light foot Clement ii. pp. 332 ft".
THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. 99
without seeing any more significance in the fact than he
would see in the case of the bishop of any other see, and
without his attitude towards him affecting the universal
reverence in which his name was held, " which a breath
of ecclesiastical censure has never even dimmed." This
incident, which we cannot but reckon a fact of history,
illustrates how little essentially ecumenical there was
in the position of the Roman see at this date, and
how utterly alien to the mind of the greatest Roman
theologian of the third century was any sort of notion
that could even remotely point to the doctrine of Papal
infallibility. 1
Leaving for the next chapter the task of tracing the
development of the papacy in Latin Christianity, we pro-
ceed now to notice that in the doctrinal and disciplinary
system of the Eastern Church the position of the Roman
see remained where it was in the conception of Irenaeus.
The pre-eminent position of the see is of course recog-
nized, as when the Churchmen of the East complain
to St. Dionysius of Rome of the suspicious teaching of
St.Dionysius of Alexandria, "because the first of bishops
was the persons to whom complaints against the second
were most naturally carried," 2 but if either the universal
1 I may refer on this subject to the Diet. Chr. Biogr. s.v.
HIPPOLYTUS ROMANUS vol. iii. pp. 88-91, 96. Dr. Newman
Tracts Theol. and Eccl. p. 222 would apparently regard the
passage in the Elenchus about Zephyrinus and Callistus as an
interpolation. But this is most arbitrary. "I grant" he says
" that that portion of the work which relates to the Holy Trinity
as closely resembles the works of Hippolytus in style and in
teaching, as the libellous matter which has got a place in it is
incompatible with his refutation." [The italics are mine.]
9 Robertson's Church History.
100 THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.
pastorate of the bishop of Rome or, a fortiori, his
infallibility is put forward as having a claim to be part
of the Church's catholic Christianity, such a claim can
be shown to be untenable in the light of facts.
Let us consider two or three of these facts.
When in the extreme crisis of the conflict for the
Nicene faith the Pope Liberius " subscribed to heretical
depravity " (so St. Jerome speaks of his signing a com-
promising creed), abandoned Athanasius and notified
that he had separated him from his communion, St.
Athanasius betrays no other feeling than that of sorrow
at the fall of a good man and anxiety to palliate his
weakness: "he speaks with a noble tenderness of
the fall of both Liberius and Hosius " (of Cordova).
Now we contend that if anything in the world can be
certain, it is certain that St. Athanasius, had he had any
idea of the bishop of Rome being in a unique sense the
guardian of the faith, much more any notion of his
infallibility, must have adopted another tone in regard
to his fall. He must have quivered at the awful shock
of finding himself deserted by the ' Holy Father ' on the
central dogma of the faith. It must have been much
more to him than his desertion by Hosius. There is no
avoiding or palliating this conclusion.
The impression made upon our minds by this
incident is deepened by the evidence of the general
Councils. The attempt to foist into the history of
the Council of Nicaea any sign of a belief in the
universal pastorate of the bishop of Rome is violent
in the extreme. 1 The fathers in their 6th Canon recog-
1 We cannot help quoting the following paragraph from the
THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. 101
nized in Rome a quasi-patriarchal power in her own
work of one of the most learned of English Roman Catholic
historical writers Allies' See of St. Peter (p. 155). " In the year
325, at the great Nicene Council ... it is stated * that the Roman
Church always had the primacy.'" [This clause (a) originally
meant the primacy in her own region (b] was a Roman interpola-
tion in the acts of the council, expressly disallowed by the East,
and rejected even by respectable Roman authorities, such as
Hefele.] " The bishop of Corduba, in Spain, apparently at once
papal legate and imperial commissioner, and Vitusand Vincentius,
legates of S. Sylvester, presided over the Council." [It seems
impossible to ascertain exactly who did preside over the Council.
Hosius may have done so, but that he was papal legate comes
only on the authority of a confessedly romancing historian of no
weight and of the later fifth century, Gelasius of Cyzicus, and that
Vitus and Vincentius did so, is not hinted by any authority at
all.] "And it was determined that all these things should be sent
to Sylvester, bishop of Rome, for his confirmation, which only
could make the Council ecumenical." [This statement comes (see
Hefele Conciliengeschichte i. 426) from Dionysius Exiguus, and
represents nothing more than the " Roman view " at the beginning
of the 6th century.] Thus to ignore all contemporary sources of
information and to compile narratives from the fictions of late or
romancing authors is the Ultramontane way of writing history.
In the same spirit Mr. Rivington makes a reference to a passage
in Sozomen p. 42. " Inasmuch as the care of all belonged to him
(i.e. Julius, bishop of Rome), on account of the rank of his see
he restored to each (of the Oriental bishops who had been driven
away with Athanasius) his Church." This is from Sozomen E. H.
iii. 8. But the word translated ' inasmuch ' means more strictly
'on the plea that.' It represents Julius* view of his authority,
and Mr. Rivington curiously enough has not gone on to quote
Sozomen's account of how the orientals dealt with his claim to
authority. "They wrote back a letter full of irony and not with-
out stern threatening . . . they did not choose to take the second
place . . . they complained of Julius having insulted their
synod . . . they repudiated what had been done as unjust and
contrary to the rule of the Church." Nor did Mr. Rivington
mention that Sozomen's account of Julius' claim, as tested by his
own letters, is exaggerated. See Athanasius* Hist. Writings
(Bright) Pref. p. xxvii.
102 THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.
region like that which they acknowledged equally in
Alexandria and Antioch. They recognized nothing
more. And we must go further. The fourth ecumenical
Council, at Chalcedon, A.D. 451, following on the lines
of the second, makes a canonical statement (Can. xxviii.)
about the authority of the see of Rome which shows
their view of the matter with unmistakable clearness :
" The fathers have properly allowed the precedency
to the throne of old Rome, because it was the imperial
city, and the 150 Bishops (at Constantinople), being
moved with the same intention, assigned the equal
precedency to the most holy throne of new Rome
(i.e. Constantinople), judging with reason that the city
which was honoured with the sovereignty and senate
and enjoyed equal precedency with the elder imperial
Rome, should also be magnified like her in ecclesiastical
matters, being the second after her."
So spake the fathers of Chalcedon in the teeth of
the protest of the legates of Rome. Nothing can be
more certain than that the bishops who enacted this
canon did not regard the privileges of Rome as part of
the divine and essential constitution of the Church or
they could not have used the expression " the fathers
gave" : nothing can be more plain than that the
primacy of Rome is in their eyes a 'primacy of
honour.' 1 Jealousy of the growing claims of Rome
may have had something to do with the tone of the
1 See the expression 'privileges of honour ' in the 3d Canon of
Constantinople to which that of Chalcedon refers back its authority.
On the whole subject Dr. Bright's admirable Notes on the Canons
should be consulted. "The Quinisext Council, 68 1, confirmed all
the Chalcedon canons without exception," Salmon I.e. p. 417.
THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. 103
canon with its silence about the spiritual dignity of the
see of St. Peter; but its language cannot do less than
disprove the idea that the claims which Rome was even
then beginning to make were regarded by the Eastern
Church as part of the catholic faith. Further, this
canon explains in what sense, and in what sense only,
the Council, in the complimentary letter in which
they endeavoured to persuade St. Leo to accept their
28th Canon, can address him as " ruling like a head
over the members" in the Council, and "commissioned
by Christ with the guardianship of the vine." 1 It is
quite true that individual oriental bishops, especially
appellants to Rome who wished to say what was
pleasant, and men like St. Cyril of Alexandria, whose
fear of the rising claims of Constantinople united his
interests with those of Rome, recognized from time to
time in a higher sense the universal pastorate of the
Roman bishop, 2 but their expressions belong to in-
dividuals only, under circumstances when interest put
strong pressure on belief. There is nothing of the sort
to be found in St. Basil's or St. Chrysostom's voluminous
works, though this belief, had it existed in their minds,
1 In fact any committee might address its president as "ruling like
a head over the members. " The 33d Apostolic Canon is very much
to the point : "The bishops of each nation (race) ought to recognize
the first amongst them and esteem him as a head, and do nothing
over and above (their proper business) without his judgment."
3 Though St. Cyril in the early years of his episcopate preferred
remaining outside the communion of Rome to restoring St.
Chrysostom's name to the diptychs of the Alexandrian Church,
and Theodoret in spite of his language in addressing Leo, which
was referred to in the last chapter, signed with a voluntariness
which he emphasized the 28th canon of Chalcedon.
104 THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH.
must have emerged: and more than this oriental
writers are much given to verbose compliments in
addressing distinguished people. The language of
rhetoric and compliment must always be interpreted
by the severer style of a formal canon.
Once again, whatever strong language may be quoted
from a few later oriental writers on behalf of the Roman
see, as from St. Theodore the Studite in the 8th cen-
tury, nothing can override the evidence of the formal
action of the 6th General Council in 680, when it con-
demned Honorius the Pope among the Monothelite
heretics. " With them we anathematize " says the
Council u and cast out of the Holy Catholic Church,
Honorius, who was pope of the elder Rome, because we
found that he followed Sergius' opinion in all respects
and confirmed his impious dogmas." Roman Catholic
writers may endeavour to justify the actual language of
Honorius, they may protest that the contemporary pope
never intended to assent to his condemnation except
for negligence in opposing heresy, we are not concerned at
presentwith these contentions 1 but noonecan possibly,
with any show of reason, contend that the insertion of
the name of the pope in a list of formal heretics by an
ecumenical Council, does not prove that the bishops
who composed the Council had no, even rudimentary,
idea of the papal infallibility.
Here then we leave the matter. The only claim here
made is to have demonstrated one fact that the belief
1 See Willis' Pope Honorius and the New Roman Dogma. Papal
Infallibility inconsistent with the condtmnaiion of a Pope for
heresy, etc. (Rivington, London, 1879).
THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. 105
in the universal pastorate and the doctrinal infallibility
of the pope can in no sense be described as part of the
catholic faith; it cannot by any stretch of terms be
described as part of the creed of Christendom held
ubique, semper, ab omnibus. Therefore, on the prin-
ciples laid down already, it cannot be part of the obliga-
tory creed of Christendom at all. Short of this there is
very little we should not be prepared either to grant, or at
least to leave an open question. We are not disposed
at all to question the unique position held in Western
Christendom by the see of Rome. We are not disposed
to minimize the magnificence of the vocation assigned
to her, especially in view of the Church's need of cen-
tralization in the days when the Western Empire was
decaying or gone. We would fain not fall short of what
is fitting in our veneration of the greatest of Christian
patriarchates. But no such veneration can justify us in
assenting to any claims she likes to make, or in shutting
our eyes to the fact that the acceptance of these claims
is only possible on the basis either of a ' Manichean '
disbelief in the capacity of the human reason to estimate
the plainest facts of history, or of a doctrine of develop-
ment which would cut at the root of the patristic prin-
ciple that, in the rule of faith obligatory upon Christians,
"whatever is truly new "or really partial, "is certainly
false."
CHAPTER VII.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY IN LATIN
CHRISTIANITY,
No one can fairly contemplate the greatness of the
papacy or consider how vast a position it occupies in
the whole of history, without being satisfied that it is
something greater than could ever have been created by
the ambition or power of individual popes or by the evil
forces of injustice and fraud. It is one of those great
historic growths which indicate a divine purpose latent
in the tendencies of things and the circumstances of
the world. A Leo, a Gregory, a Hildebrand could no
more have devised or invented the papacy, than a
Caesar, a Constantine, or a Justinian could have elabor-
ated the Roman Empire. It is a natural development
of circumstances, and it is in the fashioning of circum-
stances that we look for the hand of Providence. In
the fourth and fifth centuries the fact that the Western
mind was comparatively undisturbed by the oriental
heresies in regard to the Person of Christ which occu-
pied the great ecumenical councils, caused the Western
Church, and the great see which was the acknowledged
centre of the Western Church, to seem to the eyes of
the distracted orientals as a perpetual harbour of quiet
IOC
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY. 107
refuge. Rome in her dignified repose was the recipient
of appeal after appeal from the East Further, though
the Roman Church was not a great theological centre,
like Antioch or Alexandria, or like the African Church
among Latin-speaking peoples, and later the Church of
South Gaul, yet in proportion as she was lacking in
theological power, she was endowed with a splendid
capacity for "holding the tradition" with unswerving
orthodoxy. Individual Popes did indeed fail, and at
important crises, like Liberius and Honorius, but on
the whole the orthodoxy of the see of Rome was con-
spicuous through all the controversies on the Trinity
and the Incarnation. The consequent enhancement of
her general ecclesiastical reputation coincided with the
deeper sense of the need of a recognized centre to
Western Christendom which finds expression in the
canon of Sardica. And while the Roman see was thus
having greatness thrust upon her from the circumstances
of the Church's position, the tendency of events in the
secular world was running steadily in the direction of
her exaltation. The decay of the Western Empire and
the removal of the seat of government from Rome, left
the magnificent traditions of authority and the splendid
prestige of the eternal city to add lustre to the chair
of St. Peter, whose occupants became constantly more
important as paganism died away and each Western
emperor was more contemptible than the last Once
again, the age which saw the crumbling of the old
civilization of the Empire and the surging in of the
great sea of fresh and vigorous barbarian life, in wave
after wave of invasion, cried out, in the interests of
loS THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY
society as much as of religion, for some centre of moral
and social authority; and men's eyes had long grown
accustomed to look upon Rome as the centre of the
social system,
" Now " says Dean Milman, speaking of the age of
Gregory the Great " Now was the crisis in which the
Papacy must re-awaken its obscured and suspended
life. It was the only power which lay not entirely and
absolutely prostrate before the disasters of the times
a power which had an inherent strength, and might
resume its majesty. It was this power which was most
imperatively required to preserve all which was to
survive out of the crumbling wreck of Roman civiliza-
tion. To Western Christianity was absolutely necessary
a centre, standing alone, strong in traditionary reverence,
and in acknowledged claims to supremacy. Even the
perfect organization of the Christian hierarchy might in
all human probability have fallen to pieces in perpetual
conflict : it might have degenerated into a half secular
feudal caste with hereditary benefices, more and more
entirely subservient to the civil authority, a priesthood
of each nation or each tribe, gradually sinking to the
intellectual or religious level of the nation or tribe.
On the rise of a power, both controlling and conserva-
tive, hung, humanly speaking, the life and death of
Christianity of Christianity as a permanent, aggressive,
expansive, and to a certain extent uniform system.
There must be a counterbalance to barbaric force, to
the unavoidable anarchy of Teutonism, with its tribal,
or at the utmost national independence, forming a
host of small, conflicting, antagonistic kingdoms, , . ,
IN LA TIN CHRISTIANITY. 109
It is impossible to conceive what had been the con-
fusion, the lawlessness, the chaotic state of the middle
ages, without the mediaeval Papacy ; and of the medi-
aeval Papacy the real father is Gregory the Great." 1
There is, then, in the deepest sense of the words a
providential purpose in the papacy, and it is impossible
to estimate all that the Church as a whole owes to the
great see of Rome. But of course we recognize a provi-
dential purpose of a not dissimilar kind, and in relation
to the spread of Christianity, in the growth of the
Roman Empire and the diffusion of the Greek language.
We recognize a divine vocation given to the Eastern
Church as the great mother of theology,, as least as
conspicuous as that which was intrusted to the West in
the sphere of discipline and government. But this
recognition does not carry with it either of two im-
portant consequences. It does not carry with it any
recognition of a dogmatic authority given either to East
or West in isolation, nor does it carry with it any impli-
cation that the vocation we recognize is part of the
Church's unalterable system. Any vocation which is
rooted in the circumstances of a particular epoch may
vanish with the circumstances which conditioned it.
It does not follow because governmental authority or
centralization was the one thing needed in the seventh
century that it is the one thing needed now : what is
the very symbol or instrument of unity in one age may
be the source of schism in another, and the Divine Pro-
vidence which gave its vocation first to Greek and then
1 Hist, of Latin CAr. b. iii. c. -ai. vol. ii. pp. 100-102 ed,
1883.
no THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY
to Latin Christianity may have as great a vocation in
store (who can tell that it may not be so ?) for the
English-speaking and Oriental Churches. At any rate
we go no way towards recognizing whatever claims
Rome may choose to make upon us, when we allow
ourselves in unstinting admiration of the greatness of
the work which God has allowed her to do ; for it is true
of everything in Christianity, as in the world at large,
of everything which is not part and parcel of her
catholic system doctrinal, moral, and sacramental
that
' ' The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. "
And when we come to look a little closer at the his-
tory of the Roman Church it seems to us to have all the
appearance, taking it in general, of a system, backed
indeed by a divine intention, but perverted by some-
thing which is much more satanic than divine. We
know that St. Peter Damian called the great Hildebrand
his " sanctus Sa tanas," and the expression, in whatever
sense originally used, has a very striking application to
the papacy as a whole. The certainly very undivine
qualities of ambition, injustice, and dishonesty have
been to a strange extent identified with the whole history
of the papacy. These qualities are all the more con-
spicuous when we see them in so real a saint as the man
who has a claim to be called the father of the papacy,
Leo the Great. Saint as he was, he was wonderfully
unscrupulous in asserting the claims of his see, and
strangely blinded in conscience to the authority of truth
IN LA TIN CHRISTIANITY. 1 1 1
when he quoted, as a canon of Nicaea, what had been
shown to demonstration to be a canon of Sardica and
not of Nicsea. 1 Again, we may not be able to fix on
any individuals the responsibility for such forgeries as
the Donation of Constantine and the Isidorian Decretals,
but it goes against our surest instincts to believe that a
system, which was corresponding in its actual method oi
working to a divine purpose, could have been allowed
to depend so largely upon forgeries for its substructure
at critical epochs, as the Roman system has in fact
depended.
Nay, even conscious fraud is a familiar element in
official acts of the Roman see. 2 " At the last moment,"
1 Leo the Great (Fathers for English Readers) pp. 113-115.
3 See e.g. Willis' Pope Honorius p. 26: "The condemnation
of Pope Honorius for heresy is recorded in the Roman Breviaries
until the sixteenth century ; at which period the name of Honorius
suddenly disappears. The theory of Papal Infallibility was at
that time being rapidly developed. A fact opposed it. The
evidence for the fact is suppressed. ' I have before me ' writes
Pere Gratry 'a Roman Breviary of 1520, printed at Turin, in
which, on the feast of S. Leo, June 28th, I find the condemnation
of Honorius : In which synod were condemned Sergius, Cyrus,
Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter .... who asserted and pro-
claimed one will and operation in our LORD JESUS CHRIST.
" 'I open the Roman Breviary of to-day,' he continues, 'and there
I find in the instruction of S. Leo (June 28th) : In this Council
were condemned Cyrus, Sergius and Pyrrhus, who preached only
one will and operation in CHRIST. The trifling incident of a Pope
condemned for heresy by an Ecumenical Council is simply
omitted by the revisers of the Breviary in the sixteenth century.
Father Gamier, in his edition of the Liber Diurnus, says, with a
gentle irony, that they omitted it for the sake of brevity. ' "
See also his quotation of Father Gratry's letter, p. 28. " Has
GOD, then, need of your falsehoods, that you speak deceitfully for
Him ? ' Numquid indiget Deus mendacio vestro, ut pro eo
Joquamini dolos ? ' This mode of apologetics without openness is
112 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY
writes Lord Acton, 1 of the Vatican Council which
defined infallibility, "a tract appeared which has been
universally attributed to Dollinger, which examined the
evidence relied on by the infallibiHsts, and stated briefly
the case against them. It pointed to the inference that
their theory is not merely founded on an illogical and
uncritical habit, but on unremitting dishonesty in the
use of texts. This was coming near the secret of the
whole controversy. . . ." There is indeed nothing
which gives to the minds of truth-loving men so invin-
cible a prejudice against the Ultramontane system and
temper nothing which so radically convinces them
that it is not divine as the certainty that Ultramontane
one of the causes of our religious decay for centuries past. As
soon as human nature perceives in the apostle the smallest trace
of craft or duplicity, it turns aside and takes to flight ; the best
always flee farther than the rest. Their souls do not listen to the
voice of liars : ' Oves non audiunt vocem p,lienorum.' What then,
are we we catholic priests, ministers of Tesus Christ and of His
Gospel, and servants of His Church ? Are we the preachers of
falsehood or the apostles of truth ? Is not every truth, every true
gift, every historical and real fact for us, just as every falsehood is
against us? Has not the time arrived in this age of publicity, in
which everything is seen and brought to light, in which everything
that before was spoken in the ear, is now preached upon the
housetops has not the time arrived, I repeat, to reject with dis-
gust the frauds, the interpolations, and mutilations which liars
and forgers, our most cruel enemies, have been able to introduce
amongst us ? ... I myself was long before I could believe in this
apologetic of ignorance, blindness, and half-honesty, or rather dis-
honesty, which desires the end, which believes in the goodness of
its aim and its truths ; but which, to attain this end, has recourse
to deceit, to mystery, to force, to falsehood, to a fraudulent inven-
tion of forged passages. Once more, Has GOD need of these
frauds? . . . O ye men of little faith, of low minds, of miserable
hearts, have not your cunning devices become the scandal of
souls?"
1 Essays on Liberty (Macmillan, 1907), p. 512.
AV LA TIN CHRISTIANITY 1 1 3
writers will always be found manipulating facts and
making out a case, will never behave as men who are
loyally endeavouring to seek the light and present facts
as they are.
If the actual history of the papacy prevents us from
regarding it as a growth in accordance with the will of
God, at least as forcibly does it prevent us from con-
sidering the claim it has recently made, to be part of
the Christian Revelation, or what the Vatican Council
declared it to be a 'dogma divinitus revelatum.' It is
indeed to * triumph over history ' for the Pope to assert
that in decreeing his infallibility he is "faithfully
adhering to the tradition received from the first begin-
nings of the Christian faith." The doctrine of the
Papacy is so manifestly a gradual growth by accretion
that no one can possibly, with his eyes upon the facts
of history, regard it as part of the faith * once for alJ
delivered.' That the evidence of the Eastern Church
will not permit of our accepting as catholic any of the
later papal claims has been already shown. It remains
to show that in the West also the papal doctrine is of
the nature of an occasional growth.
In the fourth century, the Western Church at the
Council of Sardica formally allowed an appeal on the part
of condemned bishops to Julius of Rome. 1 Their third
1 In the third century there is an interesting instance of an
appeal first to Rome, and then away from Rome to Cyprian. The
circumstances were briefly as follows. Two Spanish Bishops,
Basileides and Martial, had denied the faith in the Decian per-
secution, and either resigned their sees or been deposed. Succes-
sors had been duly appointed when they visited Rome and, under
false pretences, induced the Pope Stephen to take up their cause.
Accordingly he look some steps to promote their restoration.
Under these circumstances the Spanish Churches appealed to
II
114 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY
canon runs as follows : " The bishop Hosius said ....
If any bishop in any matter seems to have been con-
demned [unjustly] and supposes himself to be not
unsound, but that his case is good for a renewal of the
trial : if it please your charity, let us honour the memory
of the apostle Peter, and [direct] a letter to be written
by the bishops who have tried the case to Julius bishop
of Rome, so that the case should be heard again if it be
necessary, by the bishops near the province in question,
and that he may himself appoint the judges." Here
and in the two following canons which form the basis of
the appellate jurisdiction of Rome, the bishops of the
West appear not as recognizing an existing or essential
right, but as conferring a privilege, in view of certain
experienced needs just as the bishops in a Pan- Anglican
Conference might find it necessary to institute a right
of appeal to Canterbury in honour of the memory of
Augustin. When in the case of the African presbyter
Apiarius, the Roman bishops quoted these canons of
Cyprian and sought his aid, and Cyprian, in company with other
African bishops assembled in the synod of Carthage in A.D. 254,
addresses a letter to them strongly affirming the validity of the
new consecrations, and apologizing for Stephen's mistaken action
on the ground of his distance from the scene and ignorance of the
true circumstances. See Cyprian Ep. 67. Baronius Annales
A.D. 258 v. expresses a 'vehemens suspicio' that Rome must have
had a last word in the matter, and this ' suspicion ' has become a
fact in Grone Papstgeschichtc L p. 58 (Regensburg, 1875). He
describes out of his own imagination how the Spanish deputation,
after receiving Cyprian's sentence, went to Rome and obtained a
reversal of the previous judgment. He then describes the whole
incident as "a speaking proof of the primacy of the Roman
bishop." The facts, as history records them, are in truth sugges-
tive of the natural, non-theological, manner in which the system
of appeals grew up.
IN LA TIN CHRISTIANITY. 115
Sardica, as canons of Nicsea, and used them to justify
interference with the ordinary jurisdiction of an African
bishop over his presbyter, the Church of Africa first
ascertained by consulting the oriental authorities that
these canons were not Nicene, and proceeded in council 1
to guard jealously the rights of their own Church and
to repudiate the papal interference : " We find it enacted
in no council of the fathers that any persons may be
sent as legates of your holiness Do not there-
fore, at the request of any, send your clergy as agents
for you, lest we seem to introduce into the Church of
Christ the ambitious pride of the world."
The Papal authority is thus, at its root, a growth of
circumstances, not a part of a revelation. So again
if we examine the language of the theologian of the
fourth century who is sometimes quoted as an extreme
partisan of the just-developing papal claim St. Jerome,
it will be very evident that what he recognized in
Rome is recognized rather in the way of personal
predilection than of ecclesiastical doctrine. When he
is bewildered amid the confusion of theological dis-
putes in the East, he throws himself upon the authority
of the Roman bishop, as he sits aloof in the calm
security of the West " Following no one as chief but
Christ " he writes to Pope Damasus " I am associated
in communion with your Blessedness, that is with the
chair of Peter. On this rock I know the Church was
built." " Define, I beseech you, if it pleases you, and
I will not fear to speak of three hypostases. If you bid,
let a new creed be established after the Nicene, and let
U.D. 425.
..__.tw rr MAOV'C fOl 1
ii6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY
us who are orthodox confess our faith side by side
with the Arians in similar words." " I meanwhile keep
crying out : Whosoever is joined to the see of Peter
is mine." 1 This language seems clear enough, but
apparently later in life, after he had abandoned Rome
in disgust, he can adopt exactly the opposite tone.
1 The custom of the Roman Church ' he says in effect
1 has no more authority than the custom of any other
church. The episcopate at Rome has no more authority
essentially than any other episcopate.' " If it is a ques-
tion of authority, the world is greater than the city.
Wherever there is a bishop, at Rome, or at Eugubium,
or at Constantinople, or at Rhegium, or at Alexandria,
or at Tanis, he has the same worth (meritum), the same
priesthood. The power of wealth or the humility of
poverty do not make a bishop higher or lower. They
are all successors of the Apostles." 2 This passage is
1 Epp. 15, 16. One cannot fail to catch the tone of exaggera-
tion almost of irony in the second of these passages. It is perhaps
worth noticing that the phrase against which Jerome was protest-
ing so strongly (' tres hypostases') and in his protest against
which he had the Pope and the Western Church on his side, after
all came to be the accepted phrase.
8 Ep. cxlvi. I have given reasons for dating this letter in
the later part of Jerome's life in Church attd Ministry p. 157 n. s
The context of the words quoted may be explained thus. St
Jerome after a certain period in his life is zealous in maintain-
ing the dignity of the priesthood of the presbyter, as against
the arrogance of bishops and, on the other hand, the self-asser-
tion of deacons. Thus in this epistle he is maintaining in effect
that bishops are substantially of the same order as presbyters,
only differing in the power of ordination. But the ' custom of the
Roman Church ' is pleaded against Jerome. At Rome the bishop
on the one hand occupied a unique position, and the deacons, on
the other, who were only seven in number, occupied a more dis-
IN LATIN CHRISTIANITY. 117
not a favourite with Roman controversialists, for a very
plain reason : because it indicates that the authority of
the Roman see rested for Jerome on what is variable in
a theologian on sentiment, on expedience, on feeling
not on what is invariable, the basis of doctrinal
authority.
Once again, the theory of the see of Peter held by the
African theologians of the third and fourth centuries,
while it makes the Roman see amongst other Churches
the symbol and normal centre of unity, as Peter was
amongst the Apostles, does not involve any distinctive
authority in the Roman bishop. The see of Peter is the
symbol of that episcopacy in which all bishops equally
share, which inheres in its entirety in each episcopate,
and renders each bishop fundamentally independent and
responsible for his actions to none but God. 1 This
tinguished position than the presbyters of whom there was a
' crowd.' Jerome treats this plea with great contempt. " If it is a
question of authority the world is greater than the city." A bishop
is everywhere substantially the same. As for the deacons " Why
do you produce against me the custom of one city ? . . . Every-
thing is more desired where it is rare. Among the Indians flea-
wort is more precious than pepper."
1 " There is" cries Cyprian " one God, and one Christ, and one
Church, and one see founded on Peter by the voice of the Lord "
(Ep. xliii.), but he is asserting not the claims of the see of Rome, but
of his own see of Carthage. The see of Peter is equivalent to the
episcopate. Fuller references on St. Cyprian's theory of the epi-
scopate will be found in The Church and the Ministry^. 152 ff.
But I may refer here to the expression in De Unitate 5 : "the
episcopate (in the Church) is one, and is shared by each bishop in
such a way that he is responsible for the whole" (or "that the
whole is held by each " a singulis in solidum pars tenetur). On
this basis the independence of each bishop is frequently stated.
" Each bishop exercises in the administration of his Church the
free choice of his own will, having to give account of his action to
n8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY
is the theory as St. Cyprian states it. He regarded the
see of Rome (as being in a special sense the see of
Peter) as the normal centre of unity, but not as the
centre of unity in any such sense as would enable it to
impose conditions of communion which interfered with
the catholic liberty of other Churches. This however
was exactly what Stephen of Rome endeavoured to do.
He went so far as to excommunicate St. Cyprian and
the African and Oriental Churches which agreed with
him, for refusing to recognize the validity of heretical
baptism a matter on which there had been no ecu-
the Lord " (Ep. Ixii. 3). The see of Rome is described (Ep. lix.
14) as " the see of Peter, the principal Church, whence sacerdotal
unity had its origin," but these last words can only mean that
Peter's episcopate was the first given, or (as Puller Prim, Saints
p. 56 interprets) that the African succession was derived from
Rome. In the very context of this expression he goes on to re-
assert the independence of each episcopate.
I think it is in place to notice here the evidence of a tract "on
dice-players " (de Aleatoribus} commonly printed with Cyprian's
works. It is plainly written by a bishop, and as he speaks of the
divine goodness having bestowed upon him the " leadership of the
apostolate," "the vicariate of the Lord," "the original authori-
tative apostolate on which Christ founded his Church" (c. I, apo-
stolatus ducatus, vicaria Domini sedes, origo authentici apostolatus)
he has been supposed, by Bellarmin and some modern scholars, to
have been bishop of Rome. The evidence however still seems to me
to be against this hypothesis. And in any case it must be noticed
that the titles mentioned above are titles not of the papacy but of
the episcopate. The ' we' of c. I is explained in c. 2 as "we,
that is we bishops, shepherds of the sheep," cf. c. 4, "since we
bishops have by the laying on of hands received the same Holy
Ghost (as came upon the Apostles) within the shelter of our
breast." Thus " the leadership which belongs to the apostolate"
" the vicariate of the Lord" "the original authoritative aposto-
late " are titles of the episcopate as such. In c. 10 St. Paul is
called the " procurator, vicarius Christi, ecclesiasticam cur am
agens." This is the function of every apostle and every bishop.
IN LA TIN CHRISTIANITY. 119
menical decision, and no language can be more
forcible than that in which both Cyprian and Firmilian
assert their own episcopal independence against what
they regarded as the arrogant claim of St. Stephen.
Thus St. Cyprian's own attitude towards St. Stephen
interprets his language about the Roman see with a vivid
clearness. Nor did St. Augustin in later days see in
Cyprian's conduct in this matter anything but what
deserved the highest commendation. 1 If Optatus, who
was earlier than Augustin, seems to attribute to the see
of Peter at Rome more actual authority as the centre of
unity, it must be remembered that he too uses ' the see
of Peter ' in an ideal sense as identical with the episco-
pate, and if he is emphatic on the necessity of union
with the see of Peter he is as emphatic on the necessity
of union with the Asiatic Churches, to whom St. John
wrote. 2 Both the see of Rome and the Churches of
Asia are in different senses the symbols of catholic unity.
Thus if we examine the history of the Western Church,
we do indeed find a high position assigned from very
early days to the see of Rome, considered as in a special
sense the see of St. Peter. But we do not find anything
which justifies its later claims, still less anything which
justifies these claims being regarded as part of the
1 He modifies indeed St. Cyprian's language about the indepen-
dence of the individual bishop. But the authority which he
recognizes as limiting the freedom of the individual bishop is that
of the General Council.
'"Outside the seven Churches," he says, speaking of the
Asiatic Churches with whom he and the Catholics are in com-
munion, "whatever is without, is alien" (De Schism. Donat. ii.
6, again vi. 3). No one can read the Epistles to the Galatians
or Corinthians who is not in communion with those Churches.
120 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY
catholic heritage of the Church. No doubt after the
fifth century the history of the Western Church is mainly
the history of the exaltation of the papacy. Isidore of
Seville 1 no longer interprets the injunction to St. Peter
" feed my lambs," as the typical pastoral charge to feed
the little ones of Christ's flock. The ' lambs ' are now
the bishops of the churches of the world whose govern-
ment is by a special charge committed to Peter and his
representatives. Nevertheless the growth of the claim of
Rome and of its acceptance was slow, gradual, and inter-
mittent. St. Gregory the Great can repudiate 2 as pregnant
with satanic arrogance the title of " universal bishop "
which afterwards appears in the forged decretals as
a papal title and which so clearly describes the papal
claim. The popes of the seventh century acquiesce 8
in pope Honorius' letter being subjected to the judg-
ment of a general Council, and submit to, and accept,
his condemnation, and for many centuries each pope on
his accession condemned among formal heretics one of
his predecessors.
1 Ep. viii. c. A. D. 620.
2 It is remarkable how the words which Gregory uses (Epp.
1. viii. 30) when he is repudiating this title " meus honor est
honor universalis ecclesiae " have their meaning reversed when
they are quoted in the Vatican decree. Gregory meant by them :
1 1 wish for no honour which detracts from that of other bishops.
Their honour is mine.' He goes on "if you (the Bp. of Alex-
andria) call me universal pope, you deny that you yourself are
what you confess me to be, universal. But away with such an
idea. Let an expression be heard no more which inflates pride
and wounds love." In the Vatican decree (cap. 3) the words are
quoted in the sense that the Papal honour communicates itself to
the subordinate bishops snd does not interfere with their juris-
diction. * See Willis' Pope Honorius etc.
IN LA TIN CHRISTIANITY. 121
The Forged Decretals represent a step of immense
importance in the aggrandizement of the papal claim.
It is not that they contain a wholly new claim, but
they converted what was a claim, a pretension, an
aspiration, into an accepted principle firmly rooted in
the precedents of the whole Christian past, reaching
back to the Apostles. For what were these Decretals ?
They were a forgery of the middle of the ninth century,
and the first part consisted of a number of decretal
letters supposed to be by the early Popes from A.D. 90
to 314. These forged letters represented these bishops
of Rome as claiming and exercising the rights of the
mediaeval Papacy. "The fraud consisted in assign-
ing the language of a later period to the writers of an
earlier one." Thus their recognition gave to the grow-
ing claims of the Papacy an altogether fallacious
appearance of antiquity. No sober historian can deny
that this successfully inaugurated a wholly new epoch
of canon law. It is impossible to exaggerate the extent
to which they elaborated and strengthened the system
of appeals to Rome and developed the existing tendency
to centralize the governmental authority of the Churches
in the hands of the Pope. "The reforms," says the Jesuit
Pere Regnon, " brought about by the Pseudo-Isidore
consisted in reserving to the Roman pontiff the trial
and judgment of all bishops." 1
But the Papacy of these Pseudo-Isidorian decretals
only represents a stage in an upward progress. The papal
1 Quoted by E. G. Wood Regal Power of the Church, whose
pages on this subject should be consulted: cf. also "Janus'"
treatment of the subject no. oa 8F.
122 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY
pretension, which grew always with the growth of actual
power, reached its extreme point as far as the claim of
authority is concerned in the Bull Unam Sanctam of
Boniface VIIL, A.D. I302. 1 The authority here claimed
is absolute and universal in the secular and spiritual
spheres alike. But the day of decline, at least for a
time, was at hand. The reforming Councils of Con-
stance and Basle (A.D, 1415 and 1432) assert in the
strongest language the subordination of the Pope to
General Councils. " First of all " so ran the decree of
Constance " this Council declares that inasmuch as it
is legitimately assembled in the Holy Ghost, constitut-
ing a general Council, and representing the Catholic
Church militant, it has its power immediately from
Christ, and that all men of every rank and dignity, even
the Pope, are bound to obey it in matters pertaining to
the faith, and the extirpation of the above-mentioned
schism, and the general reformation of the Church of
God in the head and the members." And the decree
goes on to denounce condign penance and punishment
on even a pope who should venture to disobey the
decrees of the Council. These decrees were passed
without a single dissentient voice. Their language
"leaves no doubt that they were understood to be
1 Quoted in Gieseler (Eccl. Hist. Hi. 146) who throughout sum-
marizes clearly the stages in the growth of the papal claim. I
suppose that the attitude of practical devotion towards the vicar
of Christ encouraged among Roman Catholics exceeds the bounds
even of the theory. Cardinal Patrizi in a document " addressed "
(as is remarked in the Dublin Review April 1865 p. 440) " to the
Catholics of Pius rx.'s own diocese, by his express sanction and
under his very eye, " claims for the Encyclical of that Pontiff and,
consequently, for every like expression of the Pope's mind, to be
the very word of God, to be received on pain of forfeiting heaven.
IN LA TIN CHRISTIANITY. 1 23
articles of the faith, dogmatic definitions of the doctrine
of Church authority. And they deny the fundamental
position of the Papal system." l
The Pope however on the whole triumphed over the
Councils. A Papal reaction set in. And if no general
claim since made can exceed that of the Una m Sanctam^
at least the claim of doctrinal infallibility emerged
into greater distinctness, as the logic of events demon-
strated the untenability of the theocratic claim over
the world. But the doctrine of papal infallibility was
the opinion of a school only, not a dogma. It was
repudiated with the most genuine earnestness up to
a quite recent date, as for example by the Anglo-
Roman body in 1789 and by the Irish Bishops in i8io, 2
or in a document as common as Keenan's Controver-
sial Catechism where it was declared to be " no article
of Catholic belief." 3 Thus nothing can be more
certain than that the fully developed Papal claim is the
result of a very gradual and intermittent growth. It is
1 " Janus " The Pope and the Council p. 302. See for the
decree Creighton Hist, of the Papacy i. p. 291 and app. 16.
2 See Gladstone Vaticanism pp. 44-49. He mentions also that
the eminent Roman Bishop Baines declared in 1822 that 'he did
not believe any Catholics in England or Ireland maintained the
Infallibility of the Tope.'
8 Keenan's Controversial Catechism or Protestantism Refuted and
Catholicism Established Ed. 1846, with the imprimatur of the
Vicars-apostolic for Scotland. P. 117 of the Powers of a General
Council, etc.: " Must not Catholics believe the Pope in himself to
be infallible ?" "This is a Protestant invention; it is no article
of the Catholic faith ; no decision of his can oblige under pain of
heresy, unless it be received and enforced by the teaching body
that is, by the bishops of the Church." [In later editions this sec-
tion is omitted.] The Constitution Pastor aeternus declares on
the other hand that "it is a dogma divinely revealed that the
124 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAPACY.
in fact not a development of the original idea of the
Episcopate, so much as a subversal of it. The
original ideal of the Episcopate would have secured for
the Church a duly representative government, and
would have provided, by the confederation of relatively
independent Churches, a system of checks upon one-
sided local tendencies. The Papacy represents the
triumph of imperial absolutism over representative,
constitutional authority, and of centralization over
consentient witness and co-operation. It was indeed
a lamentable ' triumph over history ' when Pius ix.
declared that in decreeing the Papal Infallibility a
" dogma divinely revealed " he was " faithfully adhering
to the tradition received from the first beginnings
of the Christian faith." 1
Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra ... is possessed of
that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that His
Church should be provided for defining doctrine regarding faith or
morals : and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff
are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the
Church."
1 Some of the * difficulties ' in the way of believing in the in-
fallibility of the bishop of Rome, apart from the question whether
it is an article of the catholic faith, have been noticed above in e.g.
the failure of Liberius, and the condemnation of Honorius as a
heretic. There are others however of overwhelming magnitude,
especially the apparently and intentionally dogmatic utterances of
Popes on the different sacraments, which have turned out erroneous.
Thus Nicolas I. assured the Bulgarians that Baptism in the name
of Christ only was valid. Resp. ad consult. Bulgar. 104. Labbe
Collect. Concil. ix. 1566. Nicolas II. compelled Berengarius to
acknowledge the Capernaite heresy that Christ's body is sensibly
(sensualiter) touched by the hands and broken by the teeth in the
Eucharist. Eugenius iv. in his instructions to the Armenians
makes the ' porrection of the instruments' the essential matter of
the Sacrament of Order. These are in fact only examples,
CHAPTER VIIL
THE NATURE OF SCHISM.
IF it be granted that enough account has already
been given of what constitutes the Church's unity of
Life, and of what is necessary for her unity in the
Truth, yet there still remains to be dealt with, that
third sort of unity which was referred to at starting as
characterizing the Church. This is the unity of Love,
or outward fellowship, ' the bond of peace,' which it is
so fully our duty to preserve that wilful schism would
annul all the moral fruits which follow from being con-
stitutionally within the ecclesiastical unity. That is to
say schism does not merely mean breaking away from
the episcopal form of government The schisms of the
early Church were episcopal in form, but none the less
they were understood to put their responsible members
outside the Church's saving unity. 1
What then constitutes the guilt of schism? Not
merely being separated, for the separated party may not
be the guilty party, as, for example, in the case when
Diotrephes ' excommunicated ' the brethren who came
from St. John, 2 or Pope Victor the Asiatic Churches, or
1 St. Cyprian On Unity ' was written against episcopal
t(kijm*tics. > 2 St. John 9, 10.
IM
126 THE NATURE OF SCHISM.
Pope Stephen St. Cyprian and the African Churches.
None of these excommunicated parties were under-
stood to be schismatics. Schism, considered apart from
heresy, as a sin excluding from the benefits of church
life, means wilful self-withdrawal from the legitimate
succession of the catholic Church on the part of an
individual or party, or, in a secondary sense, the wilful
causing of a breach inside the Church.
Schism is a state of things which results generally
from one of two tempers of mind. It may be the result
of the pride which will not brook ecclesiastical sub-
ordination, which makes men stand upon their dignity,
and resent some supposed slight or injury because they
value their own self-esteem above the Church's fellow-
ship. It was this sort of self-assertion and the personal
animosity which springs from it, which produced the
schism of Felicissimus at Carthage against St. Cyprian,
and it has played a large part in the history of modern
divisions. It is easily understood that schism so bred,
should generally involve heresy, for the self-will which
isolates itself to avoid unpleasant subordination is not
likely to miss the temper of self-opinionatedness in
matters of faith, and we understand St. Jerome's words
" no schism fails to devise a heresy for itself to justify
its withdrawal."
But schism may have what we must call a nobler
root. It may spring from impatient, undisciplined zeal
against evil in the Church. The zealous reformer
smarts with indignation against the abuses and undisci
pline which deface the Body of Christ. He and his
followers are afraid to contaminate themselves by con-
THE NATURE OF SCHISM. \rj
nivance with that which they cannot quickly alter.
Their zeal is too much for their reverence for Christ's
plan, for their subordination, for their patience. They
take the matter of God's Church into their own hands.
They deal with it, with more or less of recklessness,
in their own way. The temper of reverent caution
which fears to dispense with, or lay hands upon, out-
ward forms, whether of divine appointment or reverend
antiquity, because for the moment their practical value
is obscured this is forgotten or discarded by the men
of intemperate, impatient zeal ; and thus they form a
Church of their own with a righteousness of their own,
and a constitution of their own choosing. This is the
second source of schism in the Church. If we con-
sider the causes of the great presbyterian schisms of
the Reformation, how undisciplined, how unguarded
do we find to have been the zeal of their main authors !
Or to go further back, what else was the root of the
disciplinary schisms in the early Church of Mon-
tanism, of the schism which Novatian created at
Rome, of the schism of the Donatists, of the schism
of Lucifer, of the schism at Antioch against St.
Meletius? Can we not directly trace Tertullian's de-
velopment among the Montanists into a schismatical
attitude towards the Church to that tone of intellectual
and moral impatience which characterized his whole
mind, and which he himself deplores when he writes
On Patience, "as an invalid who, since he is without
health, knows not how to be silent about its blessings,"
" as one ever sick with the heats of impatience must of
necessity sigh after and invoke and persistently plead
128 THE NA TURE OF SCHISM.
for that health of patience which he possesses not."
This impatience which Tertullian deplores in himself
was the animating spirit in the whole body of disciplin-
ary schismatics.
But from whatever cause it may spring, schism
episcopal or not is unequivocally condemned by the
fathers. " It were better to endure anything," said St.
Dionysius of Alexandria to Novatian, " than to break up
the Church of Christ ; martyrdom to avoid division were
no less glorious than martyrdom to avoid idolatry ; nay,
in my judgment were more glorious." "The sin of
schism," says St. Cyprian, "seems to be worse than
failing to confess Christ in persecutions." "There is
nothing more serious than the sacrilege of schism," says
St. Augustin. "No such reformation," says Irenaeus,
" can be effected by them, as will compensate for the
mischief arising from their schism." " It is no less an
evil than heresy," says St. Chrysostom.
On one or two of the ancient schisms it is necessary
to say something more in detail. First, on Donatism :
because (since the days of Dr. Newman's ' Apologia ' at
any rate) it has been the fashion to compare the con-
dition of the Church of England with that of the Dona-
tists. Let us make an imaginary story of events in
England which would bring the facts of the English
Church in the sixteenth century into exact analogy to
those of Africa in the fourth, and the imaginary case
will show us both what sort of conduct would have
really constituted an English protestant episcopal schism,
and also how far in fact the English Church is from being
implicated in anything of the sort. Suppose that a body
THE NATURE OF SCHISM. 129
of zealous reformers in the reign of Mary, despairing of
the Church of England, had, on the election of an arch-
bishop of Canterbury, raised frivolous objections against
him, consecrated a rival prelate first to that see, and
then in a number of other places ; established a separate
Church in England, and gathered large numbers of
adherents ; declared itself not only the only Church of
England, but the only Church of the world, the catholic
Church having ceased to exist through the contamina-
tion of evil ; suppose, we say, such a course of action
had been pursued, and that the schismatical Church had
succeeded in gaining the majority in England for a while
and subsisting side by side with the catholic succession,
baptizing, as persons not yet Christian, those who came
over to them from the catholic Church; then you would
have had a parallel to the Donatist schism. Be it ever
remembered that the Donatist body in Africa was not
constituted by a reform of a national Church, but was
as distinct a schism from the Church of their own dis-
trict, as ever took place : and that the Donatist body
held itself the only true Church of the world, in both
points differing toto caelo from the position of the Angli-
can communion.
We have avoided entering into the details of the
Donatist history to save space, but of the details of
the schism at Antioch something must be said, as it
illustrates an important principle that there can be
schism in the Church as well as a schism from the
Church a schism in the Church, leaving both separated
parties within the communion of the Church catholic.
The schism at Antioch, then, dates from the with
130 THE NATURE OF SCHISM.
drawal of an orthodox party in the fourth century from
the ministrations of an Arian prelate. This withdrawal
met with the approval of St. Athanasius and his friends ;
but the public profession of orthodoxy by the bishop,
Meletius, who had been elected under Arian auspices,
gave the separated body an opportunity to return into
communion with him. All seemed in train for a re-
storation of unity when the intemperate and hasty
action of Lucifer a firebrand among prelates, who
afterwards organized a schism of his own perpetuated
the breach, by giving the orthodox party a separate
bishop, Paulinus. There was a great deal of the
schismatical spirit of impatient zeal in that action
which left the Antiochene Church with rival prelates
and rival bodies of adherents, but the most strenuously
orthodox party in the Church at large could not bring
themselves to disown Paulinus. He was accepted by
Rome, by Alexandria, by the West, while the East gene-
rally held to St. Meletius. Remaining thus unrecognized
by Rome as Bishop of Antioch, St. Meletius notwith-
standing presided till his death at the second Council
accepted as ecumenical in the Church, and has been
acknowledged since his death as a saint both in East
and West. We may then quote as appropriate to the
case of St. Meletius a remark of the Roman Catholic
historian Tillemont with reference to some later Eastern
saints of the period of the Monophysite schism (who
lived and died out of the communion of Rome because
they remained in communion with Acacius, the patri-
arch of Constantinople, who was excommunicated by
the Pope). " As Elias and Flavian had always remained
in communion with Acacius by the fact of their con-
THE NATURE OF SCHISM. 131
tinuing in communion with Constantinople, the Pope
Hormisdas [at the restoration of unity] did his best to
secure their exclusion from the diptychs of their Churches.
But their people preferred to submit to the extremest
measures rather than do this injury to the memory
of those who had been their glory while they lived. So
much so that the Roman Church was obliged to do some
violence to her own maxims : she seems in fact to have
at last abandoned them by honouring, as her protectors
in heaven, those whom she would not admit to her
communion on earth." 1 The Antiochene schism is,
therefore, significant as illustrating some facts of import-
ance : that there may be a schism with faults on both
sides, even in a local Church, when neither side is finally
regarded as out of the communion of the Church at
large : that there are circumstances when even a some-
what schismatical act like that of Lucifer may be
condoned : that breaches of fellowship in the Church
do not necessarily always involve breaches of com-
munion with the Church. Nothing in fact can be called
schism in the full sense of the word except conscious
self-withdrawal from that part of Christ's visible and
orthodox Church to which one belongs, and to neither
of the Antiochene parties is this act attributable. In
this local separation then we mark the distinction
between breaches in the Church and separation from
the Church.
It is very possible to construct an imaginary parallel
1 Mem. Eccl. xvi. 708. I think it is not without importance to
notice that the language of the Roman liturgy still involves the
idea that the Church is divided and requires corporate reunion :
she prays our Lord ' to bring her into peace and unity (pacificare
et coadunare) according to His will.'
132 THE NATURE OF SCHISM.
in Reformation history to the case at Antioch. Suppos-
ing the English bishops in Elizabeth's reign had become
heretical, and an orthodox party retaining communion
with the West had withdrawn from their communion :
supposing the Anglican bishops, say in James i.'s reign,
had returned to orthodoxy, while almost simultaneously
a rival succession of bishops was established over the
separate body in such rival successions you would
have a parallel to the state of things at Antioch. It
is hardly necessary to remark that this parallel is
imaginary, because the state of things was not as we
have supposed. But such a schism might have left
both parties with a fair claim to represent the Church
catholic in England.
We have established hitherto two principles : that
there is such a sin as schism which in and by itself is
sufficient to unchurch a community ; and, secondly,
that short of this, there is such a thing as a breach of
communion in the Church, which is due to the 'old
leaven ' working in her the temper of schism militating
against the temper of love. A little consideration and
reading will show that the separation of East and
West and the separation of England and Rome l were
not due to conduct which constitutes schism in the
primary sense of the term not, that is, to self-with-
drawal from the Church catholic; but that they were
due to that temper of schism which is always at work
1 I shall return to this subject again, but it may be needful,
even now, to recall to the reader's mind the fact that the English
Church has never excommunicated the Roman Church, but the
Roman Church her.
TUB NATURE OF SCHISM. 133
and, like sin in any shape, mars the manifestation of
God in the Church at large.
In the party spirit in the Church of Corinth St. Paul
sees the schismatical temper. In Victor's conduct
when he excommunicated the Asiatic Church for not
keeping Easter after the common fashion, Irenaeus
would lead us to see the same temper, which is ready to
violate the unity of love for something which falls short
of the necessities of the faith. 1 Once again, when
Pope Stephen endeavoured to excommunicate Churches
which held the invalidity of heretical baptism (an
opinion which no general church voice had yet con-
demned), he was anticipating the due action of church
authority in the interests of his own see and in the
temper of impatience to deal with what he thought
disastrous. Pride in the cause of a man's own see,
intolerance, impatience, these are notes of the schisma-
tical temper. This is what was plain to St. Cyprian
and St. Firmilian, the most conspicuous amongst the
bishops attacked. They accuse St. Stephen of intoler-
able arrogance in interfering with the liberty of other
episcopal sees. St. Firmilian says very boldly that
the Pope ' is the true schismatic,' and has ' cut off' from
communion none other than ' him self' 2 meaning that
the temper of schism, and, therefore, the guilt of schism
lies not with those who are unjustly excluded, whether
by ' Diotrephes, who loveth to have the pre-eminence,
and casteth the brethren out of the Church/ or by any
other bishop, but with him who does the unjust act in
the interests of ambition or impatience. And we should
1 Euseb. H, . T. 24. Cypr. Epp. Ixxii. -Ixxiv.
134 THR NATURE OF SCHISM.
notice St. Augustin's verdict upon St Cyprian In this
matter, where he so strongly asserted the independent
rights of his see. He praises him (to the Donatists) as
the very type of the unschismatic temper. Why?
Because, unlike the Donatists, even in a matter of
such great importance as the validity of heretical
baptism, he did not press the opinion which the African
Church then legitimately held (for it was still an open
question) ; he did not go beyond the limits of ecumenical
authority ; he did not excommunicate those who held
the validity of heretical baptism, but bore with them in
a matter where the universal Church's voice was not
distinct. " Cyprian and those with him walking in most
persistent tolerance, remained in unity with those who
taught differently from them." " Though they held that
heretics and schismatics did not possess baptism, yet
they chose rather to have communion with them when
they had been received into the Church without
baptism . . . than to be separated from unity ; accord-
ing to the words of Cyprian 'Judging no one and
depriving no one of the right of communion if he differ
from us.' . . . Behold, I see thus in unity Cyprian and
others his colleagues, who on holding a council decided
against the validity of baptism given outside the Church,
But again, behold, I see in the same unity that certain
men think differently in this matter, and do not dare to
re-baptize. All of these catholic unity embraces in her
motherly breast, bearing each other's burdens in turn,
and endeavouring to keep the unity of the spirit in the
bond of peace until the Lord should reveal to one or
other of them if in any point they think otherwise than
THE NATURE OF SCHISM. 135
as they should." l Unity, St Augustin here says with
great distinctness, is in a sense to be preferred to truth
of opinion. That is to say, to violate the unity of fel-
lowship on behalf of an opinion which may be tenable
or true, but is not authoritative, is the schismatical
temper, from which Cyprian was then most free when
Stephen's intolerance put most pressure upon him to
make rejoinder by counter-intolerance. Yet, "being
most largely endowed with the holy bowels of Christian
charity, he thought we ought to remain in Christian
unity with those who differed from ourselves" in a matter
lacking in ecumenical authority.
It has been to the absence of a similar temper in
East and West that the Great Schism was due. We
make a grievous mistake if we suppose that it was the
result of any single fact like the claim of Rome or the
Filioque clause: it was in fact nothing less than the issue
of a long drawn-out tendency to divergence in the
Eastern and Western Churches, manifesting itself at Con-
stantinople, at Chalcedon, in the preliminary division
on the Monophysite controversy, till finally, after long
ages, it took effect in the final separation. That there
was much of the schismatical temper in the Roman
Church, who can deny? The temper which will not
tolerate differences which interfere with that uniformity
of outward government which it loves : which is impa-
tient of resistance to its designs : which sacrifices the
claims of historical truth, and mercy, and love, to the
1 See Augustin de Bapt, ii. 6-8. He is following Jerome,
who praises Cyprian on the same ground that he did not ana-
thematize those who differed from him (adv. Lucif. 25).
1 36 THE NATURE OF SCHISM.
supremacy of a single see this temper of intolerance
and self-aggrandizement who can read history and deny
to have been a governing element in the policy of
the Roman Church even when controlled by so great
a pontiff as Leo the First ? Yet it is the temper of
schism; it is responsible, in part, for the divisions it
may create by retaliation and antagonism. It is
human sin marring the divine witness to the unity of
the Church's life. It fostered the spirit of antagonism
in the Eastern Church the blank conservatism which
made * mountains of molehills ' ; and held a novelty of
custom in the rival Church as bad as an innovation
upon authoritative doctrine; it fostered the counter-
ambition which centred around the see of Constan-
tinople ; these again are marks of the temper of schism
from which no part of the Church has in fact been
free. The Great Schism took place. It destroyed
neither part of the Church, but it reduced the fulness
of corporate grace and life in both. Who shall divide
the sin ? No one but the great Judge. But we may
be sure the schism will be perpetual, unless God's
wonder-working power shall obliterate the temper of
ambition and self-assertion in East and West, and
granting to both the spirit of toleration in unessential
differences, shall lead them again to be at one on the
basis of agreement only in the common faith which
has been the Church's heritage, from the first.
Again, the temper of schism produced the separation
of the Anglican Church from the rest of the West. In
the Roman Church the temper of schism lay in the
making a claim upon us so far greater than the uni-
THE NATURE OF SCHISM. 137
versal consent of the Church could warrant. But who
can deny that the schismatic spirit was at work in the
Reformation in England? How much of impatient
intolerance was there in the reforming spirit ! How
carelessly it denounced ! How heedlessly it squandered
priceless blessings in view of temporary or not irre-
mediable evils ! How unwilling it was to admit any
fault in itself! We must admit as much as can be
claimed of provocation to the spirit of reform in the
condition of the Church, we must admit how impossible
it seems for a reformation ever to be conducted in a
moderate spirit this is only to admit that human sin
is not without palliation, without excuse; it does not
amount to acquittal or approval.
And so with something of the schismatical temper,
which is indeed nothing but the carnal temper of the
old Adam, working in all parts of the Church, the holy
bride of Christ on earth has reached her present divided
and weakened condition. There is no catholic principle
which can justify us in supposing that either the Roman,
the Eastern, or the Anglican Church has been guilty of
the sin of schism, in that sense in which schism is the
act of self- withdrawal from the Church catholic. The
English Church at the Reformation claimed to reform
herself, and there is no catholic principle which forbade
her to do it. She did not withdraw herself in so doing
from the catholic Faith or the catholic Church ; indeed
she professed her intention to remain as fully in submis-
sion to the Church as before.
On this point indeed something remains to be said.
For the present it is only intended to offer a brief
I3o THE NATURE OF SCHISM.
and summary reply to the Roman claim that we are
ipso facto schismatic in being separated from Rome.
To this claim we Anglicans may reply :
1. There is no such thing as an absolute authority in
any part of the Church. The authority of a pope is
not even on his own showing greater than that of an
apostle, yet at the last resort St. Paul conceives of
an appeal behind even his own apostolic authority.
" Though we, or an angel from heaven preach unto you
any other gospel than that which we preached unto
you, let him be anathema." Were then the authority of
the papacy in Catholic tradition never so much greater
than in fact it is, its authority could never be absolute,
without appeal beyond it, unless it was indeed strictly
infallible. But we are certain of nothing more than
that truth shall never fail in the Church as a whole.
2. The authority of the papacy was as a fact the
result of her ecclesiastical and spiritual merits, and of the
requirements of circumstance. Catholic history throws
us back at the last resort on Cyprian's principle of the
independence of each episcopate, or at least on Augus-
tin's, of the subordination of each only to the whole as
represented in a general council. All gradations among
bishops are of the benc esse of the Church, not of her
esse. " There is no evidence of any divinely appointed
order among the bishops."' And of course, further
than this, whatever claim Rome might have made as
the Head of a united Christendom is enormously
weakened in force by the existence of millions of the
Oriental Church separated from her communion, largely,
1 Roman Question p. 9.
THE NA TURK OF SCHISM. 139
perhaps we should say mainly, on account of the ex-
aggeration of her claim to empire over other churches.
3. If it be urged that at least the ancient Church
knew no permanent breaches of communion within her
body and did not contemplate such as possible, we
recognize the force of the objection. The fathers
knew at least no breaches of communion as complete
and permanent as we experience; they did not St.
Augustin for example did not even contemplate the
possibility of the Church permanently losing the fellow-
ship of intercourse and love. 1 We can only reply by
pointing out that St. Augustin was not a prophet of
the future. He seems equally unable to contem-
plate the Church of Christ perishing in any part of
the world where she had once been founded, so as to
require restoration or refounding from some other part.
The Mohammedan conquests and the permanent sepa-
rations in the Church have in both respects falsified his
anticipations. To no man is it given exactly to antici-
pate either ths sorrows or the consolations of a future
age. St. Athanasius to give another instance of this
would have been shocked beyond measure if any one
had told him that war would still be a feature in the
national life of Christendom. 2
But though all this argument be true, it is not the less
1 See de unitate Eccl. There is however a remarkable chapter
on the division of Judah and Israel ( 33). Moreover there is
nothing in the treatise about Rome as the centre of unity. On
the indestructibility of the Church in any place where it has been
planted see 45.
3 Szedelncarn, 51,52: he makes it one proof of Christ's Divinity
that Greeks and barbarians, even the most savage races, when
they become Christian, cease to make war.
I 4 d THE NATUR& OF SCHISM.
the case that the emphasis which the fathers lay on the
outward fellowship of the universal Church ought to
make us lay to heart 'the great dangers we are in
through our unhappy divisions.' At least there is the
duty of acutely deploring the evil and praying for its
remedy. It should never be forgotten that the saints in
Jerusalem upon whose forehead was stamped the mark
of the divine approval, were not those who had suc-
cessfully counteracted, but those who felt and groaned
over the evils under which God's people suffered. 1
And we have the further duty of guarding in our own
Church against the schismatical temper. We must be
rid of the intolerance which makes an authoritative
claim upon the belief of others for matters which fall
short of ecumenical consent. We must cultivate the
faculty of distinguishing between authoritative doctrine
and pious opinion, so that we may not stretch the
meaning of heresy and put unnecessary obstacles in
the way of internal reunion. And in the wider sphere
it is of the greatest importance that we should grasp
the breadth of our heritage, that we should realize the
spirit of the creed in which we profess our belief, not
in the Anglican, but in 'One Holy Catholic Church';
and if it would not be lawful for us, as indeed it would
not, for the sake of external peace, to trample under foot
conscience and history, and submit to whatever claim
Rome may make upon us, it is not less our duty to
endeavour to purge our own Church from the evils and
unfaithfulnesses which have too often made the charac-
ter and nature of our true mother hard to recognize.
1 Ezck. ix. 4.
CHAPTER IX.
ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS.
EVERY Church which claims her fellowship in the
catholic fraternity must be prepared not only to show
that she is not wilfully schismatical, but also, and before
that, to meet two legitimate challenges to vindicate
her orthodoxy, and to vindicate her orders, that is, her
claim to be within the historical succession of the
Church's life. " Let them produce," says Tertullian,
" the account of the origins of their Churches ; let them
unroll the line of their bishops." l It is to meet this
latter challenge in the case of the Anglican Church
that we are now to apply ourselves.
First, however, let us clear the ground of certain
subsidiary issues.
We set aside the question whether Rome has ever
acknowledged or half acknowledged the validity of our
orders. Our appeal all through has been behind Rome
to the Church Catholic and it shall be so still. If our
episcopate is questioned, so was St Paul's apostolate,
and we need not be more ashamed to defend ourselves
than he was.
Once more let us assume now that our present
orders are derived through Matthew Parker, conse-
1 Procter. 32.
141
142 ANGLICAN ORDINA TIONS.
crated Archbishop of Canterbury in 1559, so that their
validity depends on the question whether he was a true
bishop: in other words let us dismiss the question
whether, if we had lost valid orders, we should not have
recovered them in the consecration of Laud and
Williams, in whom converged the three lines of the
Italian, the Irish, and the English succession. This
question l we dismiss simply because we really do not
need any secondary supports.
I. Was then Matthew Parker validly consecrated?
"Validly consecrated!" cried the Roman controver-
sialist of old, " why, in place of consecration there was
a sacrilegious scene in a tavern, when Scory, an apostate
monk, struck the Queen's nominees on the head with a
Bible, and bade them receive power to preach the word
of God." 2 This " Nag's Head " fable was an impudent
assertion of the Romanists at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. Its utter baselessness is now
admitted on all hands. We quote Canon Estcourt
the author of by far the ablest and most scientific modern
Roman work adverse to our orders. 8 " It is very unfor-
tunate that the Nag's Head story was ever seriously put
forward ; for it is so absurd on the face of it that it
has led to the suspicion of Catholic theologians not
being sincere in the objections they make to Anglican
orders."
1 Argued in Priest's Prayer Book " Anglican Orders " p. 204.
i Courayer Anglican Ordinations p. 92. We have not given
the legend in full. Among other absurdities it implies that Scory
was not himself a Bishop.
* The Question of Anglican Ordinations p. 154.
ANGLICAN ORD1NA TIONS. 143
II. That Parker was consecrated, as is recorded in
the Lambeth register, it is, as Canon Estcourt says,
impossible to doubt : " It is impossible to doubt that
everything did take place that is recorded in the Regis-
ter." 1 The ceremony took place "about five or six
o'clock in the morning." William Barlow, formerly, i.e.
before Mary's accession, bishop of Bath and Wells, now
elect of Chichester, John Scory, formerly bishop of
Chichester, now elect of Hereford, Miles Coverdale,
formerly bishop of Exeter, and John Hodgkins, bishop
suffragan of Bedford, vested, the first " in a silk cope
for the performance of the sacred rites," with his two
chaplains similarly vested, the second and last in " linen
surplices," the third, Coverdale, " only in a long woollen
gown," "after prayers and suffrages . . . laid their
hands on the archbishop and said in English, viz., Take
the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou stir up the
grace of God, which is in thee by imposition of hands,
etc. When this had been said, they gave the holy Bible
into his hands, etc. After they had said this, the bishop
of Chichester goes on to the remaining solemnities of
the Communion, giving the archbishop no pastoral staff,
with whom communicated the archbishop and the four
other bishops mentioned above, with others beside."
The historical truth of this account is now admitted.
" But there is insufficient evidence " so runs the second
plea " of Barlow himself having been consecrated." It
would not be a matter of the first importance if this were
doubtful, for all the consecrating bishops laid on their
1 Pp. 96, 1 14. There is moreover a convergence of contemporary
evidence. Priesfs Prayer Book p. 205.
144 ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS.
hands and all repeated the words 1 Each bishop, there-
fore, performed the complete act of consecration, and
the non-episcopal character of one of them would not
affect the matter. But in fact there is no valid ground
at all for doubting the fact of Barlow's consecration.
The record of his actual consecration is indeed absent
from the Lambeth Register, 8 but that is confessedly
incomplete: 'The absence of any record of consecra-
tion,' says our opponent Mr. Hutton, ' would carry little
weight. 3 On the other hand the supposition that he
was not consecrated involves the most absurd con-
sequences. It involves that a man, nominated bishop
under Henry vm. (A.D. 1536) who was always
emphatic in his desire to minimize the doctrinal and
ritual changes effected by the Reformation, 4 could by a
1 This was a departure from the rubric of 1552. Probably they
were only following the rubric of the Exeter Pontifical. That the
assisting bishops are co-consecrators when they do not recite the
words is certainly the more probable opinion. But when they all
recite the words as well as lay on hands, there is surely no room for
doubt. Yet that certainly occurred in this case, as Canon Estcourt
admits p. 109. On this subject, and on the whole subject of
Anglican Orders, let me refer to Mr. Brightman's admirable paper,
What Objections have been made to Anglican Orders (S.P.C.K.,
for the * Church Historical Society '). [I may add that the supposi-
tion of the Register not representing simply the original account of
the Consecration has no bearing, as Escourt admits, on any of the
matters stated above. We have the evidence of the Foxe MS. and
the MS. in C.C.C. Cambridge.]
8 His confirmation is recorded. The Diocesan Registers of
St David's and St Asaph's, whence the omission might have been
supplied, are lost.
* Hutton's Anglican Ministry p. 305. I formerly stated that
'the record of Bishop Gardiner's consecration is equally wanting.'
But it exists, as the Dean of Winchester informs me, in the Register
of that See Day's case at Chichester is, however, analogous.
4 It is ludicrous in discussing this possibility to omit fo consider
A NGLICAN ORDINA TIQNS. 14$
mere whim refuse to be consecrated, and get the arch-
bishop and bishops who ought to have consecrated him
to omit the ceremony, thereby subjecting themselves to
the pains and penalties of the statute of praemunire, and
this in the days before the pontifical was reformed,
whereas that same archbishop Cranmer, under the
extreme reformer Edward vi., forced Hooper to submit
to consecration, though he openly protested against the
ceremony. It involves that he could sit, unchallenged,
among bishops hostile to the Reformation in Convoca-
tion and the House of Lords that he could get himself
installed at St. David's and could carry through a long
dispute with his chapter in which they left no stone
unturned to dispute his rights to the privileges of the
see. It involves lastly that he could be recognized as
bishop by the bishops who repudiated the Reformation,
Lee, Stokesley, Gardiner, and be officially recognized as
bishop of Bath and Wells on Mary's accession, when he
resigned his see it involves that he could do all this
without its ever being detected that he had not been
consecrated at all. 1 Indeed the first men to doubt it
this conservative character of the king in all respects opposed to
the extreme Reformation party. Estcourt (p. 76) quite overlooks
it. See Dr. Stubbs' Lectures on Mediaeval and Modern History^
p. 259 : Henry " never forgot that he was the defender of the faith ;
nor, whatever were his eccentricities and aberrations in minor
particulars, does he stem ever to have gone in this region further
in the direction of change than the more enlightened popes and
cardinals of his own age would have gone "...*' doctrinally,
although quite able to maintain his own line, he clearly symbolized
consistently with Gardiner and not with Crnnmer."
1 For details of these undoubted facts consult Estcourt, esp.
p. 78 ; Bailey's Defence of English Orders^ especially on the dispute
with the Chapter ; and Mutton p. 3H-
146 ANGLICAN ORDINA TIONS.
were men who lived eighty years after his consecration,
and men of the class who invented and circulated the
Nag's Head story. For it must always be remembered
that when the imprisoned bishop Bonner in 1563 refused
to take the oath of supremacy at the bidding of Home,
bishop of Winchester, in whose diocese his prison was
situated, on the ground that Home was " not elected,
consecrated, and provided, according to laws of the
Catholic Church, and the statutes and ordinances of
this realm" and that partly because his consecrator
Parker was no true archbishop, his objection to Parker
consisted (as explained by Coke) in the plea that his
consecrators c being bishops in the reign of Edward vi.
were deprived in the reign of Queen Mary and were
not restored before their presence at the consecration '
it was an objection, that is, to their legal status, not
to their episcopal character. 1
It is acknowledged 2 that there is no difficulty in
assigning a date for Barlow's consecration. The fact in-
deed is one which can be challenged only in that spirit
of criticism which can dissolve the evidence for Christ's
Resurrection 8 and which has been parodied in the
memorable "Historic Doubts about Napoleon Bona-
parte" of Archbishop Whately.
1 See Coke Institutes Ed. 1648 Part iii. c. 2 p. 34, Part iv. c.
17 pp. 321 f. ; cf. Estcourt I.e. p. 108, 118, and Bramhall Works
iii. 79-
8 Estcourt p. 67. The difficulty is about tht date.
8 It is indeed a matter more for profound regret, than for sur-
prise, that Mr. Hutton, of the Oratory, who objected some years
ago to the evidence for Anglican orders, found himself shortly after-
wards unable to accept the evidence for the Christian Religion.
ANGLICAN ORDINA TIONS. U7
If it be urged that Barlow himself expressed contempt
for his own orders, we reply that Barlow's own irrever-
ence is admitted, but is at this stage of the argument
nothing to the point : but Barlow's words when he said
that "if the king's grace, being supreme head of the
Church of England did nominate, choose, elect, any
layman, being learned, to be a bishop, he so chosen,
without mention made of any orders, would be as good a
bishop as he (Barlow) was, or the best in England"
his words imply, as much as words could imply it, that
Barlow had himself been duly consecrated. Indeed it
is only pretended that he retained his position by a
deliberate fraud, which would have exposed him to the
greatest possible risks, for no assignable object in the
world! "It is a mystery" Canon Estcourt admits
"how he could have remained unconsecrated, or how
he could have carried on his assumed character un-
challenged, especially as he was involved in disputes
with his Chapter." J But why should he have gone out
of his way to remain unconsecrated, and on what pos-
sible ground of reason in the absence of all positive
evidence to the effect can we be asked to believe he did ?
We may sum up this discussion by quoting two
opinions the first that of the Roman Catholic historian
Lingard : " When we find Barlow during ten years, the
remainder of Henry's reign, constantly associated, as a
brother, with the other consecrated bishops, discharging
with them all the duties, both spiritual and secular, of a
consecrated bishop, summoned equally with them to
parliament and convocation, taking his seat among
1 P. 81.
148 ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS.
them, according to seniority, and voting on all subjects
as one of them ; it seems most unreasonable to suppose,
without direct proof, that he had never received that
sacred rite, without which, according to the laws of both
Church and State, he could not have become a member
of the episcopal body." 1 The second shall be the
opinion of Dr. Dollinger expressed so emphatically at
the Bonn Reunion Conference 2 : " The result of my
investigation is that I have no manner of doubt as to
the validity of the episcopal succession in the English
Church." 8
In fact our opponents betray a consciousness of our
secure historical position by their anxiety to do what
they describe as " elevating the controversy to a higher
ground." 4 Indeed that the real basis of their objec-
tion is not historical is evidenced by the fact that
they show no greater disposition to accept the succes-
sion of the Anglican Church in Ireland than that in
England. 5
1 History of England vi. p. 329 [note DD].
2 Bonn Conference 1874 p. 51.
* The suspicions supposed to be justified by the peculiarities in
the form of the grant of temporalities to Barlow (Estcourt p. 72)
are dissolved by the discovery of an identical form of grant in the
undisputed case of R. Ferrar (Rymer's Fadera, London, 1713,
vol. xv. 173: " durante sua vita naturali "). The "suspicious
circumstance" again of his being called "bishop" before conse-
cration, when he was only bishop-elect, is now admitted to have
many parallels and to have no " suspicions" attaching to it
(Hutton Anglican Ministry p. 313).
4 This is Dr. Newman's expression in a preface to Mr. Mutton's
Book surely very unworthy of its great author : cf. Hutton pp.
95. 304, 305-
9 Church Quarterly vol. x. April 1 880 p, 232,
ANGLICAN ORDJNA TIONS. 149
III. But perhaps the Anglican form of ordination
does not satisfy the requirements of the catholic Church.
1 Of course it does not:' said the Roman controversialist
of the seventeenth century. 'The essence of valid
ordination the necessary matter and form is the
delivery to the priest of the chalice and paten with the
words : " Receive the power to offer sacrifice " etc.
The Anglican ordinal is by this single omission ren-
dered null and void. They have no priests and
therefore no bishops.' So they spoke in great cer-
tainty, for indeed had not a pope in a solemn defini-
tion of faith announced this very doctrine about the
1 sacrament of order ' to the Armenians at the time of
the Council of Florence ? But alas for so satisfactory
and conclusive an objection ! it emerged through the
historical studies of the great Roman theologian Morinus
in the latter part of the seventeenth century, that this
ceremony this ' porrectio instrumentorum ' had been
unknown in the Church for a thousand years, and the
objectors had the double mortification of having the
ground of their objection cut from under their feet, and
of finding that the authoritative Roman theology had
been elevating a ceremony of late introduction into the
position of the ' essential matter and form ' of orders,
and degrading the true essential the laying on of
hands into a subordinate and non-essential accom-
paniment. At any rate we hear no more of this
confident objection. 1
' But if the laying on of hands is sufficient matter,
1 See Tht Church and the Minittry p. 57 note 1 ; Est court,
pp. 261, 171, and Appendix I.
ISO ANGLICAN ORDINA TIONS.
the words " Receive the Holy Ghost," without specifica-
tion l of the office of bishop or priest, are not sufficient
form.' (' Form ' it may be explained means the formula
or words essential to the validity of a sacrament)
This was the last stronghold of objection against the
regularity of the externals of Anglican ordination ; and
it is unnecessary that we should follow Anglican writers
in arguing upon it, for Canon Estcourt has himself pro-
duced what he regards as a decision of the Roman
Church authoritative and emphatic, in the case of the
Church of Abyssinia, which crushes this objection.
We simply quote Canon Estcourt's pages.
"' Resolution of the Sacred Congregation of the
Holy Office, given on Fer. iv., being the gih of April
1704. In Ethiopia, as it is necessary that the persons
to be ordained should assemble for their ordination
from distant parts at the city where the schismatic
archbishop resides, and as he will only hold an ordina-
tion when persons to receive orders are collected
together to the number of eight or ten thousand in the
said city, he has therefore at such a time to ordain
three or four thousand, or even more, in one day. In
short, when those that are to receive the priesthood are
arranged in ranks in the church, the archbishop passing
hastily in front of them, imposes his hands on the head
of each, saying Accipe Spiritum Sanctum. And for
those to be ordained deacons he simply imposes the
patriarchal cross on the head of each. And in con-
sequence of the great multitude and the confusion and
1 These specifications were introduced later into the Anglican
Ordinations in 1662.
ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS, 151
the haste with which he proceeds, it follows that the
archbishop on some does not impose his hands at all ;
and in other cases does not pronounce the words of the
form; and not a few even are passed over without
either one or the other. Hence the question is asked,
whether priests and deacons in such a mode and form
are validly ordained ; and consequently whether such a
priest on becoming a catholic ought to be admitted
to the exercise of his orders ; and by what rule in such
circumstances ought a missionary to be guided ?
* Resolution of the S.C. The ordination of a priest
with imposition of hands and pronouncement of the
form as stated in the case is valid ; but the ordination
of a deacon simply with imposition of the patriarchal
cross is altogether invalid. Hence in admitting presby-
ters and deacons to the exercise of their orders after
they have received the catholic faith, the following rules
are to be observed :
1 If a priest should say absolutely, that he was ordained
with imposition of hands and pronouncement of the
form, and if there should be no other impediment, the
missionary, after giving him a dispensation from irre-
gularity, and absolution from excommunication, may
admit him to the exercise of his orders according to
the rite, approved and expurgated, in which he was
ordained.
1 But if such a priest should ingenuously acknowledge
that he has not a clear remembrance about the matter
and form of his ordination, or if he has a doubt con-
cerning either one or the other, he cannot be admitted
to the exercise of his orders, till he has been ordained
152 ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS.
conditionally. And if he should absolutely assert that
the imposition of hands and pronouncement of the form
had been omitted, or either of them, he must be re-
ordained absolutely, before he can be admitted to the
exercise of his orders.
' But since it may happen that a person may have
been validly ordained priest, though his ordination as
deacon was invalid; in such a case, before he can
exercise his orders, he ought, if it please the Sovereign
Pontiff to grant faculties to the missionaries for that
purpose, to receive a dispensation from irregularity, not
only as having been ordained per saltum, but also as
under suspension on account of the subsequent exercise
of sacred orders, at least for the time, until he can
be validly promoted to the diaconate by a catholic
bishop/
" Such is this most important decision. And it will be
seen at once that nothing could be more favourable to
the Anglican side of the question. For it establishes
the principle that the words Accipe Spiritum Sanctum
are sufficient as a form of ordination to the priesthood ;
it renders nugatory the argument raised by Talbot and
Lewgar, that the distinctive order must be named in
the form ; it makes it clear that, even if the Anglican
form of the diaconate is invalid, this need not prevent
the priesthood being validly conferred ; it removes any
doubt whether the uncanonical mode of altering the
Anglican form would of itself have made it invalid ; and
it puts aside, as irrelevant, any questions whether the
alteration was made by the Church or by the secular
power ; for no one can trace the origin of the use of
ANGLICAN ORDINA TIONS. 153
this form among the Abyssinians [it is not to be found
in their books], or find any authority for it beyond a
mere custom that has crept in without any record of its
introduction.
"The decision, indeed, refers only to the priest-
hood. But in the face of such an indication of the
mind of the Church, it would be unbecoming to raise
the question whether those same words, Accipe Spiritum
Sanctum, are insufficient as a form for the episcopate
also."*
IV. It remains then as an admission even of our ad-
versaries that the Anglican form of ordination is in itself
valid. What then can hinder its acceptance in our case ?
Something not outward but inward ; the argument is
again taken on to 'higher ground' even into the
cloud-land of ' intention/ or else our opponents are con-
strained to make their appeal to a priori considerations
of a very dangerous character. Thus Mr. Hutton,
whose work we have alluded to above as having received
the sanction of a preface from Cardinal Newman,
appeals to the ' moral evidence against the reality of the
Anglican priesthood' or again the *prima facie evidence '
1 whose persuasiveness is greater than that of any bare
arguments.' The Anglican Church in history has not,
Mr. Hutton and Cardinal Newman think, looked as if it
had a priesthood. It is almost charitable to suppose it
has not had it. As if one were to argue from the un-
worthy lives of Christians to the conclusion that they
had not received the baptismal grace. Has the average
1 Pp. 190-192. This presumed decision of the S. C. given above
was confirmed in 1860. But see Appended Note V. p. 214.
154 ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS.
life of Christians been such as to make this method of
argument a secure one? Assuredly not; it has been
such as to make it a constant pretext for schism, The
true method of argument for a Catholic is to appeal to
outward sacramental transactions in history, and rest
assured that the outward transaction is the pledge
of the inward grace, and that what is needed is not
to doubt the adequacy of the formal transaction, but
to stir up the inward grace. The Church of Eng-
land is stirring up the inward grace of her priesthood.
We are not arguing how much cause she may have
to be ashamed of her past use of it But we would
vigorously maintain that all the security of the sacra-
mental system is gone if we may argue from a general
neglect of a gift to its non-existence. That ' the tree is
known by its fruits' is a great truth. It means that
holiness can only proceed from the Holy Spirit, and
that you can argue back from the effect to the cause.
But it does not mean that there can be no such thing
in the Christian Church whether Oriental, Roman,
or Anglican as a talent hid away in a napkin, a light
kept under a bushel.
And now what is the doctrine of defective intention
which is to invalidate Anglican orders ? That ' the un-
worthiness of the minister hinders not the grace of the
sacraments,' is a great principle to which the Roman
Church at least is thoroughly committed. Where you
have the external conditions of validity for a sacrament,
a right ' form ' and ' matter ' and ' minister ' to use the
technical terms already explained there no spiritual
disqualification, whether in understanding or morals, on
ANGLICAN OR DIN A TIONS. \ 55
the part of the administrator, is a bar to the validity of
the rite, and this because of the great principle that the
giver of the grace is not the minister, but the Holy
Spirit. This principle in regard to the validity of bap-
tism and ordinations administered by heretics or schis-
matics was fought out by St. Augustin against the
Donatists. We assume it now and ask only for what
sort of doctrine of ' requisite intention ' does this leave
room ? For no more than that which Hooker asserts.
"Furthermore" he says, "because definitions are to
express but the most immediate and nearest parts of
nature, whereas other principles farther off, although not
specified in defining, are notwithstanding in nature im-
plied and presupposed, we must note that inasmuch as
sacraments are actions religious and mystical, which
nature they have not unless they proceed from a strious
meaning; and what every man's private mind is, as we
cannot know, so neither are we bound to examine;
therefore always in these cases the known intent of the
Church generally doth suffice, and where the contrary
is not manifest, we may presume that he which out-
wardly doth the work, hath inwardly the purpose of
the Church of God."
If the requirement of intention reaches beyond this
point, it becomes as Jewel calls it " the very dungeon of
uncertainty." " The heart of man is unsearchable ; if
we stay upon the intention of a mortal man, we may
stand in doubt of our own baptism." Even within this
narrow limit we must recollect that the old story of the
baptism by the boy Athanasius shows that the church-
men of the early days could regard as valid a baptism
IB
H
'nv'ti!
in 15aplTsmrdenying in nis neart mat it is regeneration ; yet
they may in spite of their unbelief, be instruments of a power they
know not of; and 'speak not of themselves." 1 To this is
appended in the last edition (1877) the note "Certainly, if the
power has been given them." Of course the Roman Church must
grant the validity of orders conferred by unbelievers, to meet,
for example, such a case as that of Prince Talleyrand, bishop of
Autun, and no doubt many other cases in the Middle Ages and
at the time of the Italian Renaissance.
ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS. 157
sacrament would still be valid. For no amount of
heretical intention would invalidate it, provided that
he intended in a general way to do what the Church
does, and that he does not overthrow or destroy the
legitimate sense of the words."
Well now, had the English Church of the Reforma-
tion period not any individual bishop, but the English
Church, as represented in the official utterances of her
Ordination rite had she this 'general intention of
doing what the Church does/ not the Roman Church,
but the Church ' in the vague ' ? Did she intend to
continue the old orders of the Church, and did there-
fore every Anglican bishop (as officially representing
the Church, not ' in his private mind ') have the only
sort of intention which can be possibly allowed to be
requisite ? It is surely sufficient answer to quote the
language of the Preface to our services of ordination :
" It is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy
Scripture and ancient authors, that from the Apostles'
time there have been these orders of ministers in
Christ's Church Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.
Which offices were evermore had in such reverent
estimation that no man might presume to execute any
of them, except he were first called, tried, examined . . .
and also by public prayer, with imposition of hands,
were approved and admitted thereunto by lawful
authority. And therefore, to the intent that these
orders may be continued, and reverently used and
esteemed in the Church of England, etc." ' To the
intent that these orders may be continued* I there is,
then, we contend, no further ground of argument on
158 ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS.
this score. The English Church had a serious mind to
continue the old orders in the Reformed Church ; for
their continuance she provided a proper minister, and
proper rite, valid in * matter and form.' What further
ground of attack is there ? Mr. Hutton falls back on a
doctrine of the private intention of the celebrant of a
sacrament which would make all orders precarious
nay, all sacraments. 1 We say with St. Thomas Aquinas * :
"The minister of a sacrament acts as the representative
(in persona) of the whole Church of which he is the
minister ; in the words which he utters, the intention of
the Church is expressed, which suffices to the perfection
of a sacrament, unless the contrary be expressed out-
wardly on the part of the minister, or recipient of the
sacrament."
Canon Estcourt falls back rather on a doctrine
which is both wanting in catholic authority and surely
tends to militate against the true principle of sacra-
mental grace. The Church (it is maintained) only
confers by her sacraments what she intends to confer.
1 Pp. 179, 327.
* Summa, pars iii. q. Ixiv. art. 8. Of course a later school of
Roman theologians would not admit this doctrine. But we are
not concerned to maintain that no school of theologians, on any
principle they may devise, can object to Anglican orders, but only
that they cannot be objected to on grounds which can be called
catholic. How insecure an extreme requirement of inward in-
tention may make all orders is shown by Mr. Hutton's own
statement, p. 523 :
" Accepting as we do the position that the succession is con.
tinued through single lines and not by way of threefold interlacing
cords, we have to maintain that each bishop in the chain which
historically connects, say Cardinal Manning with the Apostles,
was ralidly baptized, validly ordained to the priesthood, and
ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS. 159
If the mind of the Anglican Church can be shown to be
deficient on the doctrine of the priesthood, it follows
that she did not intend by her priesthood all that the
catholic Church intends by it therefore she did not
convey to her ministers what lay outside her own con-
ceptions.
To this our reply is twofold : so far as we are here
dealing with an attack upon the orthodoxy of the Eng-
lish Church, we prefer to deal with the matter on its
own ground. Whether a Church has orders and
whether she is orthodox are two questions, not one. 1
But so far as the doctrine is asserted that the grace
given by a sacrament depends on the mind of the par-
ticular part of the Church in which it is administered,
we entirely decline to accept the doctrine. We believe 2
validly consecrated to the episcopate. ... It must be allowed
that this position is, humanly speaking, indefensible. But
Catholics are, nevertheless, absolutely certain that they have the
true ministerial succession, inasmuch as it is as indefectible as is
the Church herself. '
And in a note :
" Catholics, of course, are not called upon to hold that in no
single case has there been a bishop who for lack of valid baptism,
ordination, or consecration, was a bishop only in name. But
they may well believe that the government of the Church would
be so providentially ordered as to hinder such a person from being
called on to continue the succession. It falls to the lot of com-
paratively few bishops to act as the principal consecrator of
others."
1 Canon Estcourt argues in a manner unworthy of him in his
miserable Chapter vi. in which he tries to explain away the
language of the English office for the Ordination of Priests. Has
he read Hooker Bk. v. cap. Ixxvii. ? Hooker gives to the Anglican
office a meaning than which it cannot carry a lower.
* This is supported by a recent decree of the Roman Inquisition
(1872) cited in Puller, The Bull Apostolicat Curac, S.P.C.K. 1896,
P-57C
1 60 ANGLICAN ORDINA TIONS.
that a baptism administered in due form by Baptists, is
valid, in spite of their heretical rnind, formally expressed,
on baptism. The grace of a sacrament depends not on
the mind of any particular part of the Church, but on
the intention of the Holy Ghost which can find expres-
sion only in the catholic doctrine of the whole Church.
We are ready enough to vindicate the orthodoxy of
the Anglican Church. But had she denied in toto the
sacrificial aspect of the Eucharist, as she has assuredly
not done, her denial would have affected her position
in orthodoxy, not her orders. 1 The grace of orders
depends on the original intention and will of the Holy
Ghost, and all that we do is to hand on the gift by a
sacramental method. The method is intrusted to us ;
the gift is given by Him : and our insufficient conception
of it does in no wise impair its fulness. St. Augustin's
language on this subject is quite explicit. " Accordingly 2
if Marcion consecrated the sacrament of Baptism with
the words of the Gospel * in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,' the sacrament
was complete, though his faith was not complete, but
stained 'vith error. ... If sacraments are the same they
are everywhere complete, even when they are wrongly
understood." "If a man 3 offers an erroneous prayer
(in baptism) God is present to uphold the words of His
gospel, without which the baptism of Christ cannot be
consecrated, and He Himself consecrates His sacra-
ment, that in the recipient who turns in truth to God
either before he is baptized, when he is baptized, or
at some future time, that very sacrament may be profit-
i On the argument of the Bull Apostolicae Curae,' see Chap. dL
* tk Bapi. \i\. 15, ' vi. 25
ANGLICAN ORDINA TIONS. 161
able to salvation, which were he not to be converted,
would be powerful to his destruction. But who is there
who does not know that there is no baptism of Christ,
if the words of the gospel in which consists the outward
visible sign be not forthcoming? But you will more
easily find heretics who do not baptize at all, than any
who baptize without those words. And therefore we
say, not that every baptism (for in many of the blasphe-
mous rites of idols men are said to be baptized), but
that the baptism of Christ, that is, every baptism con-
secrated in the words of the Gospel, is everywhere the
same, and cannot be vitiated by any perversity on the
part of any men."
V. There is still one more charge to which we must
reply. It is asserted that the English bishops, if they
have valid orders, have no jurisdiction, and though
this is in effect only the charge of schism revived in
another form, it is necessary not to leave it unanswered.
Consecration we must explain conveys in one sense
a universal mission, a share in Christ's universal com-
mission to ' go and make disciples of all nations.' Each
Apostle had, and each bishop has, in an abstract sense,
this universal mission which carries with it, and indeed
is not distinguishable from, what, in the technical
language of theology, may be called * habitual ' juris-
diction. 1 But even amongst the Apostles the exercise of
this jurisdiction was limited by mutual arrangement, 2
and ha the early Church every bishop was limited to a
i See Church Quarterly vo\. xi. Jan. 1881 : Mission and Jurisdic-
tion, and Blunt's Diet, of Hist, and Doct. Theol., Art. Jurisdiction.
* Gal. ii. 9, Rom. xv. 20, 2 Cor. x. 13-16.
L
1 62 ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS.
proper diocese, in which alone he was allowed to exercise
his functions. Within this sphere alone he has actual
jurisdiction^ i.e. the ecclesiastical right to exercise his
functions. Actual jurisdiction is indeed to be regarded,
not as a gift super-added to the gift of order, but as the
right to exercise this gift within the limit determined
by ecclesiastical arrangements from time to time. In
Erastian epochs of the Church's life, as under the
Byzantine emperors, under Prankish kings, or in periods
of the English Church, the secular authority has had a
predominant, or even practically exclusive, power over
these arrangements, but however the limits of actual
jurisdiction are settled, the jurisdiction itself is regarded
(from the only point of view which can be called
catholic) as inherent in the see. It is entered upon
when any bishop is enthroned in his see in a canonical
manner, and the idea of a bishop consecrated to no see
was abhorrent to the Church's mind. That the pope is
the sole source of jurisdiction, and that the Anglican
bishops when they ceased to be recognized by the
pope became ipso facto schismatic, is no doubt a claim
of the papacy and a mediaeval doctrine, but it has been
made sufficiently plain in earlier chapters that it has no
claim to be regarded as part of the Church's catholic
heritage. It would indeed be nothing less than ludi-
crous to apply the idea at all to early church history. 1
Now I do not think that any one would really dream of
1 ' ' Readers of history hardly need to be told that the bishop of
Rome was never asked to give either mission or jurisdiction to
anybody for the first six centuries of the Christian era." Chunk
Quarterly I.e. p. 403.
ANGLICAN ORD1NA T/OJVS. 163
questioning the jurisdiction of the Anglican episcopate
except on the basis of the idea that the pope is the sole
fount of jurisdiction, and as that position has been
already dealt with as it has been made quite plain
that the whole Anglican position involves an appeal
behind the papacy to the principles of the ancient and
the universal Church I cannot think this question of
jurisdiction a very serious one. Church history presents
us with innumerable irregularities in episcopal succes-
sion, but we are not allowed to go back upon them.
I hope to show that the technical defence of Anglican
jurisdiction is adequate, but if it were much less
adequate than it is, the contention would still hold
that the Anglican succession holds the ground legiti-
mately by default. There was no rival claimant to the
see of Canterbury. It is quite true that the atmos-
phere of the Tudor kingdom is not an atmosphere
in which the free canonical action of the Church is
likely to flourish, but the * Erastian ' authoritativeness
of the Tudors is quite as prominent in Mary's
reign as in Edward's or Elizabeth's, and no more
destroys the possibility of jurisdiction in Anglican
prelates, than in Byzantine or Frankish bishops of
similar epochs. 1
With this preface, we advance our technical defence,
which must be based on a brief review of the ec-
clesiastical situation at the beginning of Elizabeth's
reign.
1 This paragraph I should wish to euphasize. On the subject
of Erastianism see the excellent essay of Dean Church On the
Relations between Church and Statt (London, Walter Smith)
1881.
I6 4 ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS.
The 'concession' of the clergy in 1531 which ac-
knowledged his Majesty Henry vm. "the sole pro-
tector of the Church and clergy of England, its
unique and supreme lord, and, as far as Christ's
law allows, even its supreme head," had been passed
without any dissent in the convocation of Canterbury,
and in the convocation of York with no more than
Tunstal's protest on the ground that " though to most
men the words seem without danger of any offence,
yet some suspected of heresy . . . taking their sense
perversely have endeavoured to escape the judgment
of their bishops." Tunstal moreover accepted the
headship subsequently, as well as an abjuration of
the papal authority, when Parliament, in accord-
ance with the resolution of convocation, required
him, with the other bishops, to swear to it. 1 The
declaration that "the Pope had not any greatef
jurisdiction conferred upon him by God than any
other foreign bishop " was passed by the convocation
of Canterbury in 1534 and a similar declaration by the
convocation of York. Nothing was done in Mary's
reign to reverse formally these synodical acts. They
were of course reversed, but only by Act of Parlia-
ment, and the same authority cancelled these reversals
in the first year of Elizabeth. This certainly left
it open to the Queen to act upon the unrepealed
declarations of the convocation, all the more that
the episcopal body which met with its composition
unchanged at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign
1 See Mr. Gladstone's Elizabethan Settlement of Religion
(Nineteenth Cent. July 1888) p. 7.
ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS. 165
under her brief, took no formal steps to repudiate
its earlier action. 1 When therefore a legal oath was
required of the bishops, an oath " which asserted on
the behalf of the Crown less than was contained in
the unrepealed and still effective declaration of the
Anglican convocations," there was nothing irregular
in the requirement, and, considering the period at
which it occurred, nothing violent in their depriva-
tion for refusal to take it. It happened curiously
enough that of the twenty- seven bishops alive at the
Queen's accession, eleven died before she took action.
Of the remaining sixteen, all but one Kitchen of
Landaff refused the oath. They had withdrawn
from the position which even Bishops of a con-
servative mind were not afraid in most cases to
take up in Henry's reign. Their consequent depriva-
tion was justified by the action of the Church and
was in accordance with the law of the land. 2 It
contrasted in this respect with the unconstitutional
manner in which Mary, following Edward's precedent,
had deprived a great number of bishops simply by
royal commission.
It should be noted further that four or five of the
bishops deprived by Queen Elizabeth had died before
any measures were taken to supply anew the episcopal
bench, and of the remaining ten or eleven, at least
four or five were disqualified altogether for appealing
to their canonical rights, inasmuch as they had
1 Gladstone I.e. p. 11.
8 They were deprived for refusal to take the oath, not for their
previous refusal to consecrate Parker, Lingard vi. 8.
166 ANGLICAN ORDINA TIONS.
been most uncanonically introduced into their sees
by Queen Mary in the lifetime of their proper occu-
pants. 1
Thus when Parker was consecrated it was by
bishops as canonically 'provincial' as was possible
under the circumstances. Coverdale, formerly bishop
of Exeter, had been quite uncanonically deposed on
Mary's accession, and only allowed to escape with
his life beyond seas ; 2 and Barlow had only resigned
under pressure. Scory and Hodgkins were bishops
within the province, who could be properly sum-
moned to assist. The former indeed had held the
see of Chichester, 8 and was now elect of Hereford,
as Barlow was of Chichester. Thus, as the see of
Canterbury was duly vacated by death : as Parker
was elected by the chapter and confirmed without
opposition in Bow Church : as he was consecrated
by bishops of whom two or three could rightly be
called provincial : as there was no official or formal
protest at the time and no rival claimant to the see :
as finally the formal withdrawal of the Romanist
body from the jurisdiction of the Anglican episcopate
1 Palmer On the Church i. p. 486. He also points out that
four or five others had been put into their sees by papal provisions
contrary again to the mind of the English Church as represented
in the declaration of convocation, twenty yearg before.
a I think, in spitt of what Mr. Rivington gays (Dependence
p. 145), that Coverdale was a legitimate bishop. See Dixon
Hist, of the Church of England, iii. p. 276, and the account of him
in the Diet, of Nat. Biography. No doubt however ' Erastianism '
colours all ecclesiastical proceedings at this period.
8 He was intruded by Edward and dispossessed by Mary.
ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS, 167
did not take place for eleven years, and even then
there was no establishment of a rival episcopate
we cannot see how any objection can be raised to the
claim of Parker and his successors to sit in the seat of
Augustin, and to inherit the jurisdiction which belongs
to that see.
CHAPTER X
ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY.
IF enough has already been said to vindicate the
Church of England against the charge of wilful schism,
and against such imputations upon the validity of her
orders as would thrust her out of the Church's con-
stitutional unity yet a reply has still to be made on
the charge of heresy.
What is heresy ? It is the self-willed repudiation by
an individual or a part of the Church of the authoritative
rule of faith, especially as embodied in some ecumenical
dogmatic decree. What the standard of faith is has
been explained already at some considerable length.
It remains to ask whether the English Church has
rebelled against it.
The Reformation in England was not primarily a
doctrinal movement at all. In its first intention it was
a movement to repudiate papal usurpation, and good
care was taken to emphasize the stability of the Anglican
position as regards doctrine. " Our said sovereign the
king and all his natural subjects, as well spiritual as
temporal, continue to be as obedient,, devout, catholic
and humble children of God and holy Church as any
people be within any realm christened." 1 Afterwards,
23 Henry vm. c. 20. Sec Hardwick Church History
Reformation p. ryg.
1C?
ANGLICAN OR THODOX Y. i60
the doctrinal movement became much more prominent,
but the intention of the Anglican Church was never
lost sight of it was to repudiate abuses and later accre-
tions and to retain the original and catholic doctrine.
The convocation of 1571, which imposed on the clergy
subscription to the Articles of Religion, issued a canon
to preachers enjoining them to " teach nothing in their
sermons which they should require to be devoutly held
or believed by the people except what is agreeable to
the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments, and what
the ancient fathers and catholic bishops have collected
out of that said doctrine." The "authority of the
Church in controversies of faith " is maintained in the
2oth Article, and the intention of the Anglican branch
not " to forsake or reject the Churches of Italy, France,
Spain and Germany " except in points where they were
fallen from " their ancient integrity and from the Apo-
stolical Churches," is asserted in the Canons. 1 So also
the formal appeal of Anglican divines as a whole has
been to the ' quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab om-
nibus ' and to Scripture.
But, however good her abstract intention, may not
the English Church in fact have been betrayed into
some authoritative and formal repudiation of an inte-
gral part of the Catholic faith, during the wild confusion
of the Reformation epoch? The question, we must
observe, is as to formal and authoritative repudiation.
There was a wild reaction against Medievalism during
the sixteenth century, and many of the extreme reformers
in England and in Europe generally held views which
1 No. 30, Th lawful use of tfat Cross in baptism explained
ST. WARY'S COLLEGE
170 ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY.
we could not acquit of heresy, but we are not in any
way committed to their views, except so far as they have
affected our formularies.
There are two further remarks which we must make
by way of preliminary. Persons whom it would be hard
to call orthodox have been teachers in the Church of
England in the sixteenth century and later, and we may
be therefore quite sure that the standard of doctrinal
discipline in the Church of England has been often un-
satisfactory : but there is a vital distinction between
heresy and a failure of doctrinal discipline. We admit
the charge of doctrinal laxity sorrowfully enough, but
undiscipline does not unchurch a Church. A man may
cry out with St. Basil : " Our tribulations are proclaimed
the whole world over. The doctrines of the fathers
are despised ; the apostolic traditions are reckoned for
nothing ; the discoveries of innovating men hold sway
in the Churches; men are no longer theologians but
logical disputants. True shepherds are banished and
grievous wolves are brought in." l Such a condition of
things cannot be deplored too deeply, nor can we strive
too earnestly after a remedy for it, but the evil is not
that the Church's teaching is heretical, but that men
are allowed to teach in her name what is not her
doctrine. 2 This undiscipline in doctrine is at least no
worse than undiscipline in morals. Tolerated teach-
1 Ep. xc, : cf. Pref. p. xii.
a It is important, I think, to notice that people are often accused
of heresy when they should only be accused of rash language. Mr.
Rivington speaks as if there were a good deal of denial of ever-
lasting punishment in the Church of England. It seems to m
that a great many who use what seems very rash language, guard
ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY. 171
ing of error 1 no more decatholicizes a Church than
tolerated laxity of clerical morals, of which the history
of the Churches of the Roman obedience affords only
too many examples, extending over great epochs of
time. No doubt the English Church largely sold
her freedom to exercise her own discipline in payment
for her position in the State, and the crippling of her
disciplinary action is the penalty, the sore and humili-
ating penalty, for her undue confidence in the permanent
Churchmanship of the national rulers. We attempt
no sort of justification for the deplorable subordination
to the State into which the English Church allowed
herself to be betrayed, but Erastianism no more
decatholicizes the doctrine of the English Church than
it did that of the Byzantine Church of old or of the
Frankish Church in the Middle Ages.
The other preliminary remark which must be made is
this. There are in every age a number of misleading
phrases justified by prescription but by nothing else,
adopted simply because they save the trouble of thought
and have a sort of authoritative sound which is the next
best substitute for truth. Among such phrases is the
' Reformation settlement.' It requires very little know-
ledge to make us see that in no department of human
action, political or social, intellectual or theological, was
themselves against denying it, e.g. notably Dr. Farrar : see Mercy
and Judgment p. I : " I have never denied and do not now deny
the possible endlessness of punishment." Cf. Pusey's letter to
him, quoted by himself: Guardian, Oct. 10, 1888, p. 1503.
1 'No/ says F. Richardson (p. 145), the toleration of heresy is
distinctly heretical.' How does this apply to Honorius? He is
defended by Romanists as having only tolerated, not professed,
the heresy of the Monothelites.
if * ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY.
the Reformation age an age which admitted of ' settle-
ment/ It was an age of awakening, an age of transition,
but that is just the opposite of an age of settlement.
As in every other department of life so it was in theology.
The Roman theology of the Council of Trent represents
ho final settlement. It is theology at the half-way house
between catholicity pure and simple, and Ultramontane
Romanism. Has the history of the Calvinist and
Lutheran Churches suggested the idea that their
theology reached a ' settlement ' in the days of their
respective founders? As for the English Church, her
theological intention was good, and she was mercifully
spared the action upon her of any of those masterful
individualities and uncatholic wills, which helped the
foreign Reformations down different roads of heretical
defection. But when we ask whether the English
Church of the Reformation arrived at a satisfactory
statement of doctrine in accordance with her funda-
mental intentions at a permanent 'settlement' we
must, we fancy, answer to a great extent in the negative.
She was in fact suffering from reaction, and her formulas
are too often protests against what is exaggerated or
false, rather than statements of what is true. She was
more at pains to arrive at a working compromise than at
a clear statement. Indeed she had not, the Church at
large had not, a knowledge of ancient liturgies or ancient
theology, such as would have admitted of a position
being formulated which could be regarded as (from a
simply catholic point of view) a satisfactory settlement.
When we have said this it becomes apparent that we
do not think catholic-minded people can be in any
ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY. 173
idolatrous attitude towards the English Reformation, or
indeed that we can take an optimistic view of the pro-
cess. The ship of the Church went through a great
storm she lost a great deal, not only in decoration and
accoutrements, but in rigging and in bulwarks, but she
came out of that storm the ship. So far then we can
accept the statement of our case from Cardinal New-
man's lips : " There was a very trying interval for the
Church of England in the sixteenth century, when it
ran great risk of being wrecked ; but it weathered the
storm, and its good fortune may be regarded as a
providence and become a positive argument for its
being what ... its great history betokens." 1
And now to enter more into detail the Church of
England is conspicuously orthodox on the great funda-
mentals of the Trinity and the Incarnation. She accepts
as an establishment no less than as a Church the
ecumenical Councils as criteria of heresy. 2 Nor is it
merely that her Creeds and Articles are formally
orthodox. It is true further that no Church can boast
a richer, more eloquent, more learned, or more power-
ful body of theology, dogmatic and apologetic, than the
post-Reformation Church of England can exhibit on
these subjects, beginning with Richard Hooker and
coming down to the present day.
But it may be urged that even the Incarnation is not
rightly held unless it be held in its proper relation to us
and our present lives unless it be viewed in its ' exten-
sion' in the Church and through the sacraments,
1 Pref. to Hutton's Anglican Ministry p. viii.
1 Stat. I Elizabeth. See Hardwick p. 225.
174 ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY.
Here, then, also, the orthodoxy of the English Church
does not admit of a doubt She plainly asserts that the
sacraments are means of grace, are the means through
which the grace of the new life of Christ is com-
municated to us. Her definition of sacraments in
general as "effectual signs of grace" is simply the
definition of the Roman schools. It asserts that the
sacraments are symbols, and not only symbols that
they also effect or convey what they symbolize they are
4 practica ' or ' efficacia signa gratiae.' This is undoubt-
edly the catholic doctrine, which as it is implied with
reference to Baptism in the Nicene Creed, so it is
further expounded with great clearness with reference
to Baptism and the Eucharist in the later part of the
Catechism.
Then with reference to the Holy Eucharist in par-
ticular the Church of England unmistakably teaches
that the Body and Blood of Christ are therein given,
taken and eaten, after a spiritual and heavenly manner
that (in Hooker's words) " Christ in the Sacrament
imparteth Himself even in His whole entire Person unto
every soul that receiveth Him." Further that "what
merit, force, or virtue soever there is in His sacrificed
Body and Blood, we freely, fully, and wholly have it by
this Sacrament/' for " here we receive Christ and those
graces that flow from Him in that He is man," " and
the effect thereof is a real transmutation of our souls
and bodies from sin to righteousness, from death and
corruption to immortality and life." This is beyond a
doubt the positive and emphatic teaching of the Anglican
Prayer-book, and it was not for no purpose that she
ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY. 175
brought back into emphasis the indirect but most real
effect of the Holy Communion upon our bodies^ a truth
of which much had been made in the early Church.
Beyond this if the formulas of the Church do not com-
mit us to any definite view as to the nature of Christ's
presence in the sacrament we must remember that there
was no formulated dogma of Catholic authority on the
subject, that the moment was by no means opportune
for definition, and that very possibly no more exact de-
termination of the doctrine than existed in the ancient
Church is even desirable. At any rate the absence of
it is not heretical. 1
It is not however at all reasonable to dispute that
there are defects in the teaching of the English formu-
laries taken alone, and it is necessary to refer to them.
We do conceive that in her desire to restore the
communion of the people to its proper prominence in
the eucharistic office, and in her reaction from mediaeval
misconceptions, and abuses connected with the ' mass-
1 See Keble's Letters cxviii-cxxi. It would appear that while
the English Church (a) excludes a materialistic view of the Real
Presence in the ' declaration on kneeling,' and the current view of
transubstantiation, and (b) on the other side affirms a real com-
munication of the Body and Blood of Christ in the sacrament,
she may be said to leave the intermediate ground open. This is
Bossuet's view of the matter and it can hardly be described as
unfair. It must be remembered however that when the declara-
tion on kneeling was reinstated in 1662, the words which
condemned adoration in the sacrament of a 'real and essential
presence there being of Christ's natural flesh and blood ' were
struck out (they had no more than the authority of an order of
council in 1552 and had no existence in Elizabeth's Prayer-book)
and the words 'corporal presence of Christ's natural flesh and
blood ' substituted. Thus the Church deliberately refused to con-
demn an adoration of Christ really present.
176 ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY.
ing priests/ the Church of England unduly obscured
and threw into the background the doctrine of the
eucharistic sacrifice. She is not heretical. Her 3ist
Article is only intended to guard jealously the unique
completeness of the sacrifice made by Christ upon the
Cross to guard it, moreover, not as against any formu-
lated doctrine such as that of Trent, but as against a
current popular view; and who that knows what has
been 'commonly said' in mediaeval and modern Roman
theology, can doubt that it needs guarding ? l For the
1 A doctrine prevailed in the middle ages that while the sacrifice
of the Cross was the satisfaction for original sin, the sacrifice of the
Mass is the satisfaction for actual sin. This is asserted in sermons
de Sacramento Eucharistiae, falsely ascribed to Albertus Magnus
(see torn. xii. p. 250. Lyons, 1651) : " Secuuda causa institutionis
huius sacramenti est sacrificium altaris, contra quandam quotidianam
delictorum nostrorum rapinam. Ut sicut corpus Domini semel
oblatum est in cruce pro debito originali ; sic offeratur jugiter pro
nostris quotidianis delictis in altari et habeat in hoc ecclesia munus
ad placandum sibi Deum super omnia legis sacramenta vel sacrificia
pretiosum et acceptum." That this doctrine was not only once
stated, but became current and prevalent, is shown by the language
of the confession of Augsburg pt. ii. art 3 : " There was added
the opinion which augmented private masses indefinitely, viz.
that Christ satisfied by his passion for original sin and instituted
the mass as an oblation for daily sins mortal and venial." A
similar view is referred to by Latimer, Sermon iv. (ed. Parker Soc.,
vol. i. p. 36) : " While they then preached to the people the re-
demption that cometh by Christ's death to serve only them that
died before His coming, that went in the time of the Old Testa-
ment ; and that now since, redemption and forgiveness of sins,
purchased by money and devised by men, is of efficacy, and not
redemption purchased by Christ." Such is the background of our
3 1st Article. It also has in view the undue separation of the
priest from the Church, whose mouthpiece he is, in the sacrifice of
the altar ; cf. The Church and the Ministry pp. 71 ff.
A view has recently become prevalent, both popularly and in
theology, in the Roman Church, which makes each Mass a sub-
ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY. 177
Eucharist is not a renewal of Christ's passion but a
memorial of it and an act of co-operation with Christ's
heavenly intercession. Christ upon the eucharistic altar
is only 'offered' in the sense that His once-made
sacrifice is there perpetually presented and pleaded
before the Father, as in Heaven, so on earth. The
altar is, so to speak, on a line not with Calvary, but
with the heavenly Intercession.
Unfortunately however, there being no authoritative
dogma to force the compilers of our Prayer-book to
positive statement they contented themselves with an
indefinite protest against current error and gave no
positive teaching on the Eucharistic sacrifice. The force
of the Protestant reaction was further allowed to rob the
Anglican Eucharistic office of a great deal of quite
primitive language. No doubt we retained the words
from the pre-Reformation Mass about ' the Sacrifice of
stantive sacrifice, distinct from, though dependent upon, the sacri-
fice of the cross. Christ, it is contended by the recent Roman theo-
logians, gives Himself afresh to be sacrificed in each Mass at the
hands of the priest. Each Mass is a fresh ' self-emptying,' a fresh
'immolation,' a renewed ' reduction ' of Christ to a state of humi-
liation. Without this it would not be a proper sacrifice. I have
endeavoured elsewhere to give the theological statements of this
lamentable doctrine, as found in De Lugo, or Franzelin (see a ser-
mon on The Eucharistic Sacrifice, pub. by the C.B. S., 1889), and as
an instance of its popular treatment, I would refer to Canon Gilbert's
Love of Jesus Fifteenth Edition, with the imprimatur of Cardinal
Manning pp. 41, 46: ' We hold that here [at the Aliar] in a mystical
manner Thy Body and Blood are separated, and that Thou art, as
it were, again nailed to the Cross, and presented to Heaven as a
holocaust, for the propitiation of the sins of the world. . . . Why
was not one Atonement, dearest Lord, one Sacrifice, one Calvary
sufficient ? . . . Thou k newest . . . that we should contemn Thy
first Sacrifice, and so, dearest Lord, every day Thou art .sacrificed
again." M
i;8 ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY.
praise, 1 and no doubt the words retain their ancient
meaning : l further since Andrewes put out his formal
reply to Bellarmine : " do ye Romanists take your tran-
substantiation out of the Mass, and we shall have no
further dispute with you about the Sacrifice," 2 a succes-
sion of English theologians in every century have taught
the doctrine with sufficient clearness, and it has had a
more prominent position restored to it in the Euchar-
istic offices (which have sprung from the English) of the
Scotch and American Churches. All this is true, but it
does not amount to a denial that our Liturgy and for-
mulas suffered in this respect from the influence of
unguarded reaction.
We can trace the influence of a similar reaction in the
silence of our Church's formularies about the primitive
practice of prayers for the blessed departed a reaction
n this case from the excesses of the doctrine of pur-
gatory and indulgences. Once again a similar reaction
has robbed us for a time of (to say the least of it) the
1 I think it is only later associations of Protestantism which can
lead us to doubt this. The sacrifice of the Mass had been called
the ' sacrifice of praise ' in Latin, and Eucharist (thanksgiving) in
Greek. It was so called because we are not in it ' pleading for
admission within the veil,' but claiming, or praising God for, a
privilege already won in the acceptance of Christ. Also there is
no doubt that the words ' remembrance ' in the catechism and
' memory ' in the consecration prayer bear naturally their old
meaning of a commemoration before God : so Andrewes interprets
the word 'memory ' (Respons. ad Bellarm. p. 251). For the use
of the word I should like to refer the Thcvlogia Naturals of
ft later schoolman, Raymund of Sabur.de (Tit. 289), which affords
remarkable analogies to the Anglican consecration prayer as his
Tit. 287 (latter part) does to the ' prayer of humble access.'
* Andrewes' Responsic ad BeUarminum p. 250 i.
ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY. 179
immense spiritual convenience of Reservation for the
sick, an undoubtedly primitive practice, and of the
apostolic practice of Unction of the sick. 1
These are grave defects who shall deny it ? They
are due in part to the temper of compromise, in part,
as we say, to the influence of reaction unrestrained by
a satisfactory knowledge of ancient doctrine. But if
heresy be, as it undoubtedly is, nothing short of the
rejection of some part of the ancient heritage of truth,
the English church is not heretical. She has rejected
no truth. Her divines have taught it all. It is being
more and more completely taught within her pale to-
day. And when we speak of defects in the teaching of
the English Church, we must remember for our comfort
that the English Church never made a claim to be the
whole Church. She never claimed infallibility in her
isolated utterances. She always appeals back behind
herself to the Scriptures and the ancient Church. A
part of a greater whole, she is to us only an authority,
so far as, and because, she echoes the voice of what is
greater than herself, the universal Church. The de-
fectiveness of the formularies of the i6th and lyth
centuries (granting them to be not heretical) are no
more to us except in the way of temporary incon-
venience than the defectiveness of the formularies of
any other particular moment of the Church's life. The
whole Church is our mother. It is the doctrinal
1 The Anglican Confirmation Office is wanting in clear doctrine.
But here we propagate (and perhaps exaggerate) an inherited de-
fectiveness of statement which, judged by primitive standards,
apparently characterized the mediaeval theology on this subject.
See the treatise of Canon Mason (Longmans 1891), The relation
of Confirmation to Baptism.
l8o ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY.
heritage of the whole Church that now in the days
of completer knowledge, as the mists clear away, is
coming out in its indissoluble coherence before the
eyes of men, and being taught to the children of the
Church.
In this defence of the English Church, I have
frankly admitted all the faults of undiscipline, doctrinal
compromise and reaction which we think can be
fairly laid to our Church's charge. I believe that
these are to be set over-against the arrogant claims,
the exaggerations of truth, the falsifications of history,
the accretions of error, which must be laid to the
charge of Rome. Which set of faults is the greater
which Church is more guilty in the eyes of God
it is not for us to determine, it is not our business
to attempt to determine. 1 The evils of a Church
into which by God's providence we were new-born,
granted she be a Church, are not an excuse for
leaving her, but a spur to action. And I am sure
that we Anglicans feel a hearty thankfulness to
Almighty God, that He has caused our lot to be cast
in a Church, which, however deeply she has sinned,
can acknowledge her sins; which, however great her
defects even in her authoritative formulas, is not pre-
vented by any arrogation to herself of what belongs
to a greater whole, from confessing them and openly
seeking to reform them. Better anything than to be
unable to bear the light : better anything than to be
1 Of course it is not to be forgotten that in the case of undue
reaction the blame is divided between those who suffer themselves
to react unrestrainedly and those who cause the reaction.
ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY. f8r
unable to face the facts of history and frankly accept
them : better any evils than to have to speak deceit-
fully for God.
Further than this, however much there may be to
be regretted and reformed in the teaching and practice
of the Anglican Church at the present day, I must
in fairness say that there is no even unauthorized
practice of the English Church which I had not as
soon be responsible for, as for that withdrawal of
the chalice from the laity, to which the whole authority
of the Church of Rome is committed : that I have
never heard a sermon in an English Church more
to be regretted than one it was once my lot to hear
in Strasburg Cathedral, in which Christ was preached
as the revelation of Divine justice and Mary as the
revelation of Divine love : I have not read in Anglican
biography anything which I should more desire to
disown than Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan's de-
scription of the Pope saying Mass: "When I heard
him sing Mass I cannot express what I felt: it was
the God of earth prostrate in adoration before the
God of heaven"! 1 I have not been confronted in
an Anglican book of devotion with any prayer more
impossible to pray than
Soul of the Virgin, illuminate me ;
Body of the Virgin, guard me ;
Milk of the Virgin, feed me ;
Passage of the Virgin, strengthen me ;
O Mary, mother of grace, intercede for me ;
For thy servant take me ;
1 The Life of Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan (with a preface
by Bishop Ullathorne) p. 430.
ia ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY.
Make me always to trust in thee ;
From all evils protect me ;
In the hour of my death assist me ;
And prepare for me a safe way to thee ;
That with all the elect I may glorify thee ;
For ever and ever." 1
Thus, all things considered, we Anglicans thank God
that He has put us elsewhere than in the Roman Church,
though we would fain give her an ungrudging recogni-
tion of her glories, and are very far from believing that
all even of her educated members need be conscious of
that temper in her modern theology which to us is so
intolerable.
There is only one further remark which it seems
desirable to make.
It may seem to some people that the frank recog-
nition of errors and corruptions in every part of the
Church impairs our reverence for her as a whole. If
we are able to deny this, it is because we believe that
the imperfections in the Church do not prevent her
fulfilling her true function, and that our reverence for her
is not as our reverence for Christ ; it is our reverence
for the Bride of Christ, not yet purified for the organ
of the Holy Spirit, not yet perfect. The Church exists
not yet to exhibit her glory, save to the eye of faith.
As for that vision of the Church in her perfection of
unity and truth and holiness, the 'city which lieth
four-square,' the ' new Jerusalem descending from God
out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband/ it is the vision of heaven but the hope of
1 Vade Mfcum piorum sacerdotum. Nova Editio. Campidoaae,
1865. I have translated the prayer,
ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY. 183
earth we shall see it but not now, we shall behold it
but not nigh. Meanwhile we have each and all of us
all we can want to satisfy our souls with grace and
truth, to inspire us for fresh efforts in the cause of God
and His kingdom, to draw us out of the world into the
communion of the saints, to fit us for the life of
heaven. The errors of the Churches have not any
way impaired the treasure of the catholic faith. We
will borrow words of striking force to express our
meaning.
" At sight of this audacity," says the Abbe* Gratry at
the conclusion of the second of his great letters against
the Papal Infallibility" at the sight of this audacity
and this power of falsehood introducing itself into
theology, ... I can understand that all those who do
not take in the whole of the questions should be seized
with giddiness, and cry out, ' What, then, can we believe
now ? What becomes of the bases of the faith ? '
" I hasten to give a brief and peremptory reply to
this objection, which, I think, will satisfy any mind, the
most simple as well as the most learned.
" It is, that all these falsehoods and all these frauds
tend only to one point, a single one, and in no way to
any other. The treasure of the Catholic Faith is here
in no way in question. * We bear this treasure,' says
St. Paul, ' in earthen vessels.' Well ! all the falsehoods
of which I have already spoken, and all those of which
I shall speak, affect the vessel and not the treasure.
Our treasure is Jesus Christ, His Gospel, His real
Presence, the Eucharist, Penance, and the Remission
of sin ; the dogma of the Communion of the Saints, the
184 ANGLICAN ORTHODOXY.
visible existence of the Holy Church, our Mother , the
fact of eternal life, the life divine and supernatural, con-
ferred upon souls when this life is over. This treasure
is immaculate, entire, certain, incontestable beyond the
reach of frauds and doubts, Fear nothing, Christian
souls ! Feed upon the divine life, the sources of which
are known to you. In every village of every Christian
country, the priest of Jesus Christ holds the keys of
the Church, into which you may enter to recline as the
Apostle St. John did, upon the bosom of the Saviour
Jesus, and you can ask of Him His soul, His heart,
His blood, His mind, His divinity ; this is our treasure.
It will not be taken from us."
The Abbe* Gratry is right. In spite of falsehoods, in
spite of compromise, the catholic Church is still in
every place the treasure-house of all the grace and trutb
which is the legacy of Jesus Christ to His redeemed.
CHAPTER XI
THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES
THREE recent Papal utterances, all of them considerably
later in date than the first issue of this little book (1888),
have illustrated so forcibly features in the character and
method of the Roman Church to which attention was
called in these pages, that it seems to be desirable to
take notice of them in a concluding chapter.
The Encyclical (of 1893) on "*&* Study of
Sacred Scripture."
i. The motive of the Encyclical is "to give an im-
pulse to the noble science of Holy Scripture and to
impart to Scripture study a direction suitable to the
needs of the present day." Thus the bulk of the
Encyclical is an exhortation to the study of Holy
Scripture by ecclesiastical persons. This is recom-
mended, by arguments such as can easily be imagined,
from the authority of our Lord Himself, of St. Peter
and the other Apostles, of the Fathers, and of the later
Church, of which it is said :
11 She has prescribed that a considerable portion of the
sacred books shall be read and piously reflected upon by
m
1 86 THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES.
all her ministers in the daily office of the sacred psalmody.
She has ordered that in cathedral churches, in monasteries,
and in other convents in which study can conveniently be
pursued, they shall be expounded and interpreted by capable
men ; and she has strictly commanded that her children
shall be fed with the saving words of the Gospel at least OB
Sundays and solemn feasts. Moreover, it is owing to the
wisdom and exertions of the Church that there has always
been continued from century to century that cultivation of
Holy Scripture which has been so remarkable and borne
such ample fruit"
But none the less there is need of further encouragement
in this study at the present moment in view of the
perils which beset it
There follows a description of the rationalism which
by a natural evolution has taken the place of the older
assertion of the right of private judgment as the chief
antagonist of the Catholic Church.
The rationalistic critics are described in language
applicable only to those who deny altogether the
existence and action of supernatural influence, but
allusion is made also to would-be theologians and
Christians who " attempt to disguise by such honour-
able names their rashness and their pride " ; and there
has been a previous allusion to men (apparently within
the Church) who "attempt innovations in a deceitful
and imprudent spirit."
It is noticed how the attacks of rationalism are not
confined to the academic region, but that " the efforts
and arts of the enemy are chiefly directed against the
more ignorant masses of the people " by every method
of propaganda.
Later on an account is given of the principle of
THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES. 187
current criticism, with which (apart from the extra-
ordinary exaggeration of the last sentence) many of us
would sympathize in part :
u There has arisen, to the great detriment of religion, an
inept method, dignified by the name of * higher criticism,'
which pretends to judge of the origin, integrity, and
authority of each book from internal indications alone. It
is clear, on the other hand, that in historical questions, such
as the origin or the handing down of writings, the witness
of history is of primary importance, and that historical
investigation should be made with the utmost care ; and
that in this matter internal evidence is seldom of great
value, except as confirmation."
Then Orientalists are not very tenderly dealt with :
" It is a lamentable fact that there are many who, with
great labour, carry out and publish investigations on the
monuments of antiquity, the manners and institutions of
nations, and other illustrative subjects, and whose chief
purpose in all this is too often to find mistakes in the sacred
writings, and so to shake and weaken their authority."
Such are the conditions which postulate a fresh access
of ecclesiastical zeal in the " scientific " study and inter-
pretation of Holy Scripture. The Vulgate version is to
be the main standard of study and reference, but
recourse to the original languages is declared to be
" useful and advantageous " in cases where the meaning
is ambiguous or less clear. The literal sense is to be
held to where possible, but legitimate allegorical inter-
pretation is also to be employed as having an authority
even apostolic.
In all this there is nothing much to surprise us. It
is what we should expect in a Papal Encyclical It
would be practically valuable if it produced an increased
i88 THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES.
study of Holy Scripture on the part of ecclesiastics.
What is remarkable is the doctrine consistently enun-
ciated as to the character of Biblical inspiration. The
Vatican Council, following Trent, expressly defined that
the books of the Old and New Testaments " have God
for their auctor" But Newman 1 and others had inter-
preted "auctor" as meaning no more than "primary
cause." Now, however, the Pope declares God their
author in such simple and positive sense that any error
in the sacred text would involve "that God Himself
was deceived " :
"It is true, no doubt, that copyists have made mistakes
in the text of the Bible ; this question, when it arises,
should be carefully considered on its merits, and the fact
not too easily admitted, but only in those passages where
the proof is clear. It may also happen that the sense of a
passage remains ambiguous, and in this case good herme-
neutical methods will greatly assist in clearing up the
obscurity. But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden,
either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy
Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred.
For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of
these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine
inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and
nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think), in a
question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should
consider not so much what God has said as the reason and
purpose which He had in mind in saying it this system
cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church
receives as sacred and canonical are written wholly and
entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy
Ghost ; and so far is it from being possible that any error
can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is
essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and
i Nineteenth Century -, February 1884, p. i&
THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES. 189
rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible
that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which
is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of
the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence
and Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly
formulated by the Council of the Vatican. These are
the words of the last ;
" The Books of the Old and New Testament, whole and entire, with
all their parts, as enumerated in the decree of the same Council (Trent)
and in the ancient Latin Vulgate, are to be received as sacred and
canonical. And the Church holds them as sacred and canonical, not
because, having been composed by human industry, they were after-
wards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain
revelation without error ; but because, having been written under the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author.
Hence, because the Holy Ghost employed men as His
instruments, we cannot, therefore, say that it was these
inspired instruments who, perchance, have fallen into error,
and not the primary Author. For, by supernatural power,
He so moved and impelled them to write He was so
present to them that the things which he ordered, and
those only, they first rightly understood, then willed faith-
fully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and
with infallible truth. Otherwise, it could not be said that
He was the Author of the entire Scripture. Such has
always been the persuasion of the Fathers. 'Therefore,
says St. Augustine, ' since they wrote the things which He
showed and uttered to them, it cannot be pretended that
He is not the writer ; for His members executed what
their Head dictated.' And St Gregory the Great thus
pronounces :-
" Most superfluous it is to inquire who wrote these things we loyally
believe the Holy Ghost to be the Author of the book. He wrote it
Who dictated it for writing ; He wrote it Who inspired its execution.
"It follows that those who maintain that an error is
possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings
either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration, or make
God the author of such error. And so emphatically were
all the Fathers and Doctors agreed that the Divine writings,
190 THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES.
as left by the hagiographers, are free from all error, that
they laboured earnestly, with no less skill than reverence,
to reconcile with each other those numerous passages which
seem at variance the very passages which in great measure
have been taken up by the * higher Criticism ' ; for they were
unanimous in laying it down, that those writings, in their
entirety and in all their parts, were equally from the afflatus
of Almighty God, and that God, speaking by the sacred
writers, could not set down anything but what was true.
The words of St Augustine to St. Jerome may sum up
what they taught :
"On my own part I confess to your charity that it is only to those
books of Scripture which are now called canonical that I have learned
to pay such honour and reverence as to believe most firmly that none
of their writers has fallen into any error. And if in these books I meet
anything which seems contrary to truth, I shall not hesitate to conclude
either that the text is faulty, or that the translator has not expressed
the meaning of the passage, or that I myself do not understand it."
This passage is most remarkable. It is nothing
whatever but an assertion by the Pope of "verbal
inspiration " as the indubitable doctrine of the Church.
Naturally, therefore, he condemns unhesitatingly any
limitation of inspiration, in the sense in which it involves
infallibility, to the things of faith and morals, and (by
implication) the accompanying recognition of grades of
inspiration. Yet this is, I believe, a new departure and
of great importance. Newman had remarked that 1 :
" While the Councils (of Trent and the Vatican) lay down
so emphatically the inspiration of Scripture in respect to
* faith and morals,' it is remarkable that they do not say a
word directly as to its inspiration in matters of fact." " Four
times does the Tridentine Council insist upon 'faith and
morality' as the scope of inspired teaching." "In like
manner the Vatican Council pronounces that supernatural
revelation consists ' in rebus Divinis? "
THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES, 191
Newman emphasizes this, though he rejects the large
conclusion that "the record of facts does not come
under the guarantee of inspiration." When we pass
from Councils to Popes, here again it would appear
that the see of Rome 1 had maintained silence on the
questions raised within the Roman communion as to
the limits of inspiration a silence which might be
described as studious. Thus in Canon di Bartolo's
useful work, Cri&res Theologiques? it is laid down as
the positive proposition that
" Inspiration is a supernatural succour which flows in upon
the intelligence and will of the sacred writer, and causes
him to write the true doctrine in matter of faith and morality,
the true facts which are inseparably connected with them,
and everything else with a right intention and a Divine
mission of a quite special character for the salvation of the
human race."
Thus the doctrine of grades of inspiration, the idea of
an inspiration which does not guarantee infallibility,
and the limitation of the highest sort of infallibility
to things of faith and morals and what is inseparably
allied with them all this is expressly declared by the
moderate theologian we are quoting an open and allowed
doctrine. An apparently increasing body of Roman
writers have been acting on the assumption that it was
open doctrine. But now it is utterly condemned by
the authority of the Pope. The Encyclical asserts as
beyond all question that, when once the right text is
ascertained and the sense plain, all possibility of error
of any kind is excluded, because the omniscient and
1 See Manning's Temporal Mi stion of the Holy Ghost, p. 158,
* French translation from the Italian, pp. 244-2 <;8.
192 THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES.
infallible God is the real author of the text; with the
result that it is "nothing to the point that the Holy
Spirit should have employed human instruments, as if
anything erroneous could have escaped not from the
primary author, but from the inspired writers," for the
Holy Spirit actually dictated all the words.
In the Encyclical then, we witness, as it appears,
an entire victory of the school of extreme theologians
(such as would be represented by Comely, the leading
author of the recent Jesuit Scripturae sacrae cursus]
who have been trying of recent years to tie the Roman
Church to the scholastic rigorism as to the meaning
of inspiration.
2. What is the authority which from a Roman Catholic
point of view this Encyclical Letter possesses? Is it
an utterance of the Pope ex cathedr^ and, therefore,
infallible? The Pope is infallible when, "speaking as
head of the Church, and in the plenitude of his supreme
authority, he defines a doctrine of faith and morals
which must be accepted by all Bishops and all the
faithful." 1 Provided that the intention of defining
authoritatively is clear, a bull, an encyclical, an apos-
tolic letter, a brief, a local council, may be the vehicle
of the infallible utterance. Is the Pope in this encycli-
cal expressing a clear intention to define the meaning of
the doctrine of inspiration for all Bishops and for all
the faithful ? One would suppose so from the tone of
the letter. But perhaps it would be said that the
definition is only assumed by the way as a basis for
practical exhortation. No doubt some reason may be
1 Di Bartolo, p. 93.
fHREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES. 193
found has, in fact, been found to declare the En-
cyclical not infallible, in the same way that the Decretum
of Eugenius to the Armenians about holy order or the
Bull Unam Sanctam^ so far as it affects the temporal
power of sovereigns, has been declared not infallible,
having been found in fact erroneous or impracticable.
The definition of what are the conditions of ex cathedra
utterances is most conveniently vague in any statement
of them, whether Franzelin's or Di Bartolo's. I con-
fine myself, then, to the recognition of the fact that
the Pope, being believed to be what he is believed to
be in the Roman Church, has proclaimed with absolute
decision and complete authoritativeness of tone, as the
doctrine of the Church, the doctrine of the exact verbal
inspiration of Holy Scripture.
3. This Papal utterance appears to be, from the
point of view of one who desires to see a reconciliation
of Christian theology with scientific criticism, most
disastrous. Let any one read the wise, guarded words
of the French theologian M. Loisy, on la Question
Biblique in what was (alas !) the last number of his
periodical 7J Enseigncment Biblique^ and estimate what
a calamity it is that this utterance of authority should
have put an end to the periodical with the ending of
the year I893- 1 The fact is symbolical. It is designed
to suppress the school of free and real criticism which
seemed to be forming itself in the Roman Church, and
1 The following Avis is prefixed to the last issue : 1? Enseigm-
nunt Biblique ne parattra pas en 1894. Ficlelement soumis aiix
dernieres instructions du souverain Pontif Lon xni., le directeur
de la revue eprouve le besoin de se recueiller quelque temps dan*
un travail silencicux.'
194 THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES.
taking such firm root Nothing is to be allowed as far
as the Pope can secure it but such apologetics as can
be based on the assumption that there are no dis-
crepancies, even minute, between Kings and Chronicles,
or one part of the Bible and another (when once the
true text is ascertained) that alike the narrative of
Genesis i.-xi., and that of Daniel, nay, those of Tobit
and Judith, are in the strict sense historical, and that
the Pentateuchal Legislation, as put into the mouth
of Moses, is all strictly Mosaic. Nothing else is to be
allowed till truth revenges itself as it revenged itself
on the same Church when she dealt in similar fashion
with the science of Galileo. 1
4. This is all sad and disheartening enough from the
wider point of view. The decision, however, may help
to make it apparent that the Anglican Church has, as
was suggested above, 2 apart from its ordinary mission
to the English-speaking races, a mission of a more
special sort, as that part of the Church where faith and
free science must win their reconciliation. We should
suppose that this Encyclical would have a dissuasive
power on persons disposed to put their trust in Rome,
if they have any interest in the relation of faith to
contemporary knowledge. No document could present
more emphatically the spectacle of a great ruler failing
to deal with a situation failing indeed, marvellously,
1 It should be noticed that the tone of the Encyclical is much
more guarded when it proceeds to speak of the relation of Holy
Scripture to physical science : see the authorized translation
(Burns and CXiles), p. 21 ff.
a Pp. 14-15.
THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES. 195
utterly than this Encyclical of the Pope to the Bishops
of the Roman Catholic communion. It is written as
by a being inhabiting a planet different from that which
is the scene of modern knowledge. What must be
said of a Church which, while making the highest
profession of guidance through a chief pastor, has
nothing better than this to offer on one of the most
difficult subjects that strain the religious thought of
the present? There is not a word said, such as one
would expect from any Catholic source, of the way in
which the Catholic creed focuses the rays of Holy
Scripture on a single Person, and exhibits it all, not
as a flat surface of uniform level but as a district of
very varying levels and gradients converging upon a
city and a sanctuary. The way of regarding the Bible
which some describe as purely Protestant appears here
to be (what, in fact, students have always known it to
be) a product of mediaeval scholasticism. All that
Renan meant when he said that a student of Holy Scrip-
ture would find that " the little finger of the [Roman]
Catholic Church is thicker than the loins of Pro-
testantism" is here shown true enough. It cannot,
in fact, be conceived how a document more out of
date, more crude, more unsympathetic, more unpastoral
than the present Encyclical could have been issued.
And if the Romans succeed in minimizing its import-
ance, tnd reassert their liberty to pursue the critical
study .if Holy Scripture, they only minimize the im-
portance of their chief pastor. All he could do to
give authoritative guidance he has done. And the
guidance is what here appears.
196 THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES.
It remains, then, for us to try and do better. And
we can depend upon it that it is in proportion as we
can positively exhibit a catholic life which is open
to modern knowledge, which can assimilate its fruits
with faith and devotion unimpaired, that we can best
minister in the final result to the reunion of Christen-
dom. We must become all that we have it in us to
be ; and moral needs, both personal and social, as well
as the intellectual gains and difficulties of the present,
alike give us our opportunity.
II.
The Encyclical on Unity, "Satis Cognitum" (1896).
This Encyclical, though intrinsically less important
than the one just discussed, has excited much more
attention, owing to the attention which Leo xm. had
been bestowing upon the "recovery of England."
The principle of ecclesiastical unity in the visible
Church is stated in the opening portions of this
Encyclical in a manner thoroughly consonant to the
ancient idea of the apostolic succession, in accordance
with which all the bishops are equally successors of the
Apostles. From the earlier portion the Cyprianic or
Anglican doctrine of the authority of the Episcopal
College would naturally follow. The familiar papal
conclusion is, however, drawn from the consideration
that every society must have a supreme authority which
must reside in one person. Nothing is more remark-
able than the assumption which henceforth pervades
the Encyclical that " only a despotic monarch can secure
THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES. 197
to any society unity and strength." This premiss once
granted, it follows easily enough that Christ should have
appointed Peter Head of the Church, and given him
succession in the bishops of Rome.
The rest of the Encyclical expresses the papal claim
in its most familiar form. The arguments have been
already dealt with in earlier chapters. 1 It is only
necessary here to notice some characteristic features of
the document.
i. Its arbitrary assumptions :
"The nature of this supreme authority, which all
Christians are bound to obey, can be ascertained only by
finding out what was the evident and positive Will of Christ
Certainly Christ is a King for ever, and, though invisible,
He continues unto the end of time to govern and guard
His Church from heaven. But since He willed that His
Kingdom should be visible, He was obliged, when He
ascended into heaven, to designate a Vicegerent on earth."
How can it be known that Christ must have acted in
this particular way ? Is not this just the point where
careful examination of the earliest Christian documents
is needed, to see what was the evident will of Christ ?
Is not the suggestion of the Pope as to how Christ
must have acted, constituting the Church on earth a
body complete in itself, with a visible head, in remark-
able contrast to the view of St. Augustine, given at
length above 2 a view simply representative of the
ancient idea of local Churches, associated in fellowship
on earth, but finding their necessary centre of unity, in
1 See further The Encyclical Satis Cognitum, published for the
Ch. Hist. Soc. by S.P C.K.
a Page 34.
195 THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES.
common with the Church in paradise, at no lower point
than in the glorified Christ ?
a. Its wholly unhistorical assertions .
"The consent of antiquity ever acknowledged without the
slightest doubt or hesitation the bishops of Rome, and
revered them as the legitimate successors of St. Peter."
What a marvellous assertion, in view of the fact that
(as shown at length above) the papal claim of the
succession to Petrine privileges is a purely Western
growth* It does not appear J that a single Greek Father
of the first six centuries recognizes the connection,
which is the corner-stone of the Roman claim, between
Christ's promise to St. Peter and the position of the Pope.
"In the writings of the Greek doctors," says "Janus,"
"Eusebius, St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, the
two Gregories, and St Epiphanius, there is no one
word of any [unique] prerogative of the Roman bishop.
The most copious of the Greek Fathers, St. Chrysostom,
is wholly silent on the subject." What, then, is the
meaning of talking of the "consent of antiquity," or
of describing the decrees of the Vatican Council as
" the venerable and constant belief of every age " ? (We
may notice in passing that the Encyclical gives no
recognition at all to the principle of "development of
doctrine.") What, again, is the meaning of saying that
"it has ever been unquestionably the office of the
Roman pontiffs to ratify or to reject the decrees of
Councils," when, as late as the fifteenth century Council
of Constance, the subordination of Popes to Councils 2
was unmistakably asserted as the doctrine of the Church ?
1 See p. 91. * See p. 122.
THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES. 199
3. Its unjustifiable quotations: Of these I will
content myself with giving three instances (a) The
Pope quotes St. Pacian as saying, " To Peter the Lord
spake ; to one therefore, that He might establish unity
upon one." But he omits to mention that he continues,
"And soon he was to give the same injunction to the
general body." (b) He cites, in confirmation of the papal
view of Peter as the rock, some quite ambiguous words of
Origen, to the effect that no more against the rock, than
against the Church, can the gates of hell prevail, although
the passage cited above 1 immediately precedes, which
proves conclusively that Origen had no idea that Peter had
any privilege which all the other Apostles did not share.
(c) He cites St. Cyprian as saying "of the Roman
Church that ' It is the root and mother of the Catholic
Church, the Chair of Peter, and the principal Church
whence sacerdotal unity had its origin.'" This is a
combination of two different passages, of which the first,
" the root and mother of the Catholic Church," has no
reference to the Roman Church, and the second, from
a letter strongly rebuking the Pope, refers to Rome as
the source of the apostolical succession in Africa. 2
Now I may fairly ask whether the accusations of in-
veracity and disingenuousness which have been made
in the course of this book against the Roman method
of argument, are not again justified ?
in.
TJu Bull "Apostolicae Curae."
Within the last few months the Pope has issued the
i Seep. 86. Seep. 118.
200 TIJREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES.
above bull, condemning our orders as " absolutely null
and utterly void."
The bulk of this document is occupied with deciding
that the question was not an open one for Roman
Catholics, the Roman Church having already determined
it. Disputable as this position may be, we are not con
cerned with it, 1 but, fortunately for us, the Pope is not
contented with reasserting a negative attitude, but gives
his reasons. As regards these reasons given, then, we
notice that there is a marked abandonment of old
grounds not the "Nag's Head" fable only, but the
denial also that Barlow was a bishop, and the position of
Eugenius as to the form and matter of holy order. 2
All these objections are the first two tacitly, the last
explicitly abandoned. But
(i) Anglican orders are repudiated, 3 because there
was not in the Edwardine service for ordaining priests *
explicit mention, in the words of ordination, of the office
of priesthood to which ordination was being conferred,
and more precisely, of " the power of consecrating and
offering the true body and blood of the Lord," i.e. in
the Eucharistic sacrifice.
But it is manifest, from the existing services of
ordination, that the specification of this function of
the priesthood is equally absent, not only from the
1 See above, p. 141. * See above, pp. 142-9.
3 This matter is here very briefly dealt with, because The Bull
Apostolicae Curae and the Edwardine Ordinal (Puller) and A
Treatise on the Bull Apostolicae Curae (Ch. Hist. Soc., S.P.C.K.)
have said everything which needs to be said upon the subject,
in as brief compass and as well as possible.
4 See above, p. 150 and note I.
THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES. 201
Coptic rite, but also from the ancient Roman rite for
ordination to the priesthood in the third century, and
later down to the ninth century. If the absence of this
specification invalidates ordinations, they were indeed
invalidated long before the English Church came into
existence. Here, in fact, we touch upon a matter of
importance. Confessedly the English Church desired
to return to the richer and fuller conception of the
function of the priest which had prevailed in primitive
times, before the function of offering sacrifice had
assumed the undue prominence given to it in the
Middle Ages. "Be thou a faithful dispenser of the
Word of God and of His holy Sacraments " includes,
no doubt, the commission to celebrate the Eucharistic
ERRATUM
Page 200, paragraph (i), line 5, for 'and more precisely
read *" or more precisely. 5
01 a oisnop, wnicn laiis on ine same grounds, we nna
the Pope asserting that the intention of the Anglican
Church was inadequate, owing to the defective ideas
of the priesthood which her offices express. But here
nothing new is alleged. The only requisite intention
is the intention to continue the orders which had been
1 See the Treatise on the Bull, pp. 20-28.
200 THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES.
above bull, condemning our orders as "absolutely null
and utterly void."
The bulk of this document is occupied with deciding
that the question was not an open one for Roman
Catholics, the Roman Church having already determined
it. Disputable as this position may be, we are not con
cerned with it, 1 but, fortunately for us, the Pope is not
contented with reasserting a negative attitude, but gives
his reasons. As regards these reasons given, then, we
notice that there is a marked abandonment of old
grounds not the "Nag's Head" fable only, but the
denial also that Barlow was a bishop, and the position of
Eugenius as to the form and matter of holy order. 2
All these objections are the first two tacitly, the last
explicitly abandoned. T**
1 See above, p. 141. * See above, pp. 142-9.
3 This matter is here very briefly dealt with, because The Bull
Apostolicae Curae and the Edioardine Ordinal (Puller) and A
7"reatise on the Bull Apostolicae Curae (Ch. Hist. Soc., S.P.C.K.)
have said everything which needs to be said upon the subject,
in as brief compass and as well as possible.
4 See above, p. 150 and note i.
THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCE'S. aoi
Coptic rite, but also from the ancient Roman rite for
ordination to the priesthood in the third century, and
later down to the ninth century. If the absence of this
specification invalidates ordinations, they were indeed
invalidated long before the English Church came into
existence. Here, in fact, we touch upon a matter of
importance. Confessedly the English Church desired
to return to the richer and fuller conception of the
function of the priest which had prevailed in primitive
times, before the function of offering sacrifice had
assumed the undue prominence given to it in the
Middle Ages. "Be thou a faithful dispenser of the
Word of God and of His holy Sacraments" includes,
no doubt, the commission to celebrate the Eucharistic
sacrifice, but it puts it in context with the whole work
of the ministry, according to primitive models and
scriptural ideas. Of such a return to antiquity we have
no reason to be ashamed, and the Edwardine ordinal
makes it abundantly manifest, that the office which is
being conferred is nothing else than the office of the
priesthood. The Pope must indeed have been dream-
ing when he said that "in the whole ordinal there is
no clear mention of ... the priesthood " 1
(2) Passing by a similar objection to the ordination
of a bishop, which falls on the same grounds, we find
the Pope asserting that the intention of the Anglican
Church was inadequate, owing to the defective ideas
of the priesthood which her offices express. But here
nothing new is alleged. The only requisite intention
is the intention to continue the orders which had been
1 See the Treatise en the Bull, pp. 20-28.
202 THREE RECENT PAPAL UTTERANCES.
all along in the Church, the general intention of con-
tinuing to do what the Church in general had done ; l
and so understood the Church of England made her
intention perfectly clear. The views of particular men
cannot be brought into question, and no requirement
can be legitimately made that the Church of England
should have been in express agreement with the
doctrine current in the Church of Rome at one par-
ticular epoch- All this has been argued above.
The real significance of this Bull lies in the fact
that a school of liberal Roman Catholic theologians
had been within the last few years candidly examining
the question of Anglican orders and one after another
expressing their belief more or less decisively in their
validity; and the Bull is only one more example of
the refusal of Rome to sanction free and impartial
inquiry into historical facts. The tenor of the En-
cyclical about Holy Scripture and, of the Bull just
considered, is in fact identical. They go together to
confirm that view of the Roman spirit which our whole
inquiry has forced us to take. But this conclusion
that Rome is inadequate to represent the original
purpose and meaning of the Christian Church in
tolerable completeness, should be to us Anglicans a
motive to nothing else than a humble, prayerful, and
continual effort to realize better in our own branch of
the Church the high vocation to which we are called.
1 See above, p. 156.
APPENDED NOTE I.
1HE BEARING OF THE THEORY OP DEVELOPMENT ON
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 1
No doubt the idea of evolution is a dominant idea in our
time. In order to render anything intelligible to ourselves
we need to regard it as part of a connected process, either
as a result, or as a stage which " looks before and after," and
which is to be viewed in the light of that out of which it has
grown, and that into which it is passing. In other words,
we expect with reference to all subjects an answer, not to
the simple question, " What is it ?" but rather to the threefold
question," Whence comes it," and " whither goes it," and "by
what law ? " The effect of this idea of evolution on theology
is necessarily important. I may illustrate it by three
examples.
(1) It changes our natural way of thinking about God's
revelation of Himself. It makes it harder for us to think
of revealed truth as a detached and definite body of pro-
positions of equal value given within a certain area of time
and space, and it inclines us to think of God as revealing
Himself by a gradual process which embraces in a certain
sense the whole world, and the whole of human history,
which has its initial and imperfect stages, but which has
also among the chosen people its region of special intensity,
and in Jesus Christ and Pentecost its point of culmination.
But in this respect it is perhaps truer to say that modern
modes of thought tend to make us, not adopt a new way of
thinking about revelation, but recur to an older one.
(2) It modifies our way of thinking about eschatology or
1 An Address delivered at the Church Congress, Shrewsbury,
October 1896.
204 THS BEARING OF THE THEORY OF
"the doctrine of the last things." There are two ways of
thinking about the results of human lives. You may think
of men as receiving beyond the grave rewards or punish-
ments, given from outside by the Divine Judge; or you
may think of each human life as perpetually occupied in
fashioning its own character, and thus also, according to
inevitable law, its own ultimate destiny. These two ways
of thinking are not inconsistent. The inevitable outcome
may be also the divinely allotted reward or penalty, but in
any case the idea of evolution forces us first of all to the
latter of the two modes of thinking about the issues of
human lives. Whatever is to be our state hereafter, we are
quite sure it will only be the natural outgrowth of what we
are or are making ourselves here and now.
(3) The idea of evolution has resulted in that way of
studying Christian doctrine which is specially exemplified
in German Histories of Dogma. Dr. Hatch used to com-
plain that theologians would quote all ancient fathers as if
they were isolated atoms on a uniform level, whether it were
Justin Martyr, or Leo the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, or
Gregory of Rome. But this way of quoting the fathers must
vanish even from regions where it still flourishes. To each
writer must be assigned his " value," by having always in
mind the place he occupies in the development of theology
in some particular part of the world.
Evolution, then, has taken hold of theology. It has
modified our way of thinking about it. It will not be dis-
lodged. But before it became thus broadly an established
principle of theological knowledge, it had received a certain
controversial application ; for in the book which first
familiarized the English public with the application of
development to theology, a book which we must remember
preceded by fifteen years the publication of Darwin's
Origin of Species I mean, of course, Newman's Essay on the
Development of Christian Doctrine the idea of evolution
(or development) in theology was used to justify the position
of the Church of Rome. Quiet thought on the subject seems
to me continually to deepen our perception of the varied
application of the idea of evolution to theology sometimes
DEVELOPMENT ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 205
fa ways which Newman would have refused to recognize
while at the same time it weakens the force of the
particular application of it which Newman suggested. We
may find an analogy for this conclusion in the history of
the idea of evolution as applied to nature as a whole.
There, too, we may distinguish between the general idea
and one particular controversial application of it. The
general idea has deepened and strengthened its hold on our
minds in every region of inquiry ; but the particular con-
troversial application of it, viz. as a sufficient and final
answer to the theist's time - honoured " argument from
design," has from various causes been weakened rather than
strengthened in lapse of time. So it has been in theology ;
and it is to this particular application of the subject that
I proceed to devote myself.
Newman's argument may be in general terms summarized
thus : Christianity came into the world as an idea or a
germ, ft was planted there to grow. It has grown, and in
lapse of time has become the Roman Catholic Church,
which is a result of a continuous organic growth over a
wide area and on a great scale. And it is the only great
growth. The Eastern Church represents a backwater as
compared to a current, or a formula as compared to a
living principle ; Protestantism represents an individualist
reaction rather than a growth ; and Anglicanism a some-
what hopeless appeal to antiquity in place of a living grasp
on the present. I have stated this argument in extreme
form, only because for my present purposes I am going
to grant all it claims, as if it were a fair statement of the
case. Granted, then, for the purposes of argument that
the facts are so, may we conclude that because the Roman
Catholic Church is the main actual development of Chris-
tianity, therefore it is justified in claiming to be the
authenticated representative of primitive Christianity ? Is
what an idea historically becomes necessarily the true
interpretation of it ? The answer to this question, which
may be derived from the history of religions, is a most
emphatic No. Nothing is more conspicuous there than the
tendency to deterioration, or the tendency on the part of a
3o6 THE BEARING OF THE THEORY OF
religion to change character by gradual self-accommodation
to circumstances instead of moulding circumstances in
accordance with its original idea. This fact is apparent
in the history of Buddhism. No mistake could be so vital
as to take the main existing developments of Buddhism
as really interpreting the spirit of Sakya Muni. But it may
be said the divine presence in Christianity guarantees us
against perversion or distortion of the original type. We
must look to facts : and first to the history of the Old
Covenant. Devotion to the Mosaic law, as divinely given,
reached its climax at the return from the Captivity. It was
kindled into a splendid enthusiasm through the heroism of
the Maccabean period. Then it developed into the Judaism
of our Lord's time. That was beyond question its main
and substantial growth. Thus when John the Baptist
appeared, he appeared as a protestant against the actual
development which the inspired religion had received ; as
one "throwing back" to an earlier prophetic type. Nay,
more, when the Christ, the divinely intended result of the
Old Covenant, appeared, the representatives of the actual
development repudiated and crucified Him ; and Christ
had already interpreted this fact in His own attitude
towards tradition. Tradition, He said, had misled the
scribes and Pharisees, because they had not continually
tested it by the " Word of God." " Thus have ye made the
commandment of God of none effect by your tradition." I
draw from this a certain conclusion, namely, that a religion,
because divinely inspired, is not therefore preserved from
widespread deterioration ; is not therefore prevented from
receiving a development which, while it must appear as the
chief historical development of the original, is in fact its
parody. I apply this conclusion to Christianity. Christ
indeed did promise that His presence and His Spirit, the
Spirit both of truth and grace, should never fail in the
Church, and that promise has been verified. The truth
essential to make Christian saints has always been shining
.n the world through the witness of the Christian Church,
and the power to correspond with the divine requirements
has always been communicated through the means of gract
DEVELOPMENT ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, aoff
to the sons of faith. There has, therefore, been no failure
of Christ's promise. On the other hand, it is only by a
misapplication of Christ's promises, precisely similar to
that on which the scribes and Pharisees of Judaism based
their false and disastrous claim (" We have Abraham to our
father"), that the leaders of the Christian Church have
lulled themselves into a perilous security against the
possibility that the Church, short of substantial failure, may
go far astray. There is no guarantee that the Church may
not, if she neglects the means provided to keep her right,
get upon a false line of development, and that almost
universally. Thus, without stopping to dispute all that
Newman says about the Roman Church in its relation to
primitive Christianity, we may still affirm that the protest
of the Reformation may have been as necessary to recall
Christianity to its ideal as the protest of John the Baptist
was to recall the Judaism of Israel to its right allegiance,
and to interpret our Lord's strong depreciation of a mere,
or unchecked, ecclesiastical tradition.
And what are the facts about the Roman Church ? When
you come to look at them it appears self-evident that the
Roman development is a development with two character-
istics. First, it is partial or one-sided, a development
which has left out elements in the original type the very
splendour of its success in dealing with a particular situa-
tion or set of situations tended to make it this. Secondly,
it is a development which is the result of an over-reckless
self-accommodation to the unregenerate natural instincts in
religion. I confine myself to one significant illustration
of the latter proposition I mean the development of the
cultus of the saints in its mediaeval and modern form. It
is written on the face of Church history that this has
resulted from Christianity accepting, not without pre-
liminary protest, but finally even with enthusiasm, what
is simply an almost universal phenomenon of untaught
natural religion all over the world. If you travel in many
a Buddhist, or Mohammedan, or Christian country, you
see the same facts ; the same devotion gathering round
the tombs of departed saints, who are regarded as inter-
2o THE BEARING OF THE THEORY OF
cessors or mediators, and as patrons of particular places
or trades or classes, and are approached with divine or
semi-divine homage. The tendency, the exhibited devotion,
the results of the devotion, are startlingly identical as one
observes them in all parts of the world. Now this saint
worship was quite alien to the original spirit of Moham-
medanism. It was much more alien to the original spirit
of Buddhism ; but in both cases the dominant, popular
instinct has overmastered the original idea, and the alien
or repugnant element has taken its place, perhaps its
place of supremacy, in the religion which still retains the
ancient name of Mohammed or Buddha. Facts irresistibly
point to the conclusion that exactly the same thing has
occurred in Christianity. The half-converted masses
passed into the Church with this dominant instinct of
hero worship still in them with the dominant demand for
mediators and objects of worship less high and holy than
God. The demand had met with a strong opposition in
the maxims and principles of the Christian theology which
belongs to the period when struggle and persecution kept
Christianity at a high level ; but when Christianity became
popular, the incoming flood was too large and too rapid
to be resisted or properly educated. It had its way, and
a saint worship, which belongs essentially to natural and
not to revealed religion, and which exhibits all its old
phenomena, has taken its place in Christianity. To say
that it belongs to natural religion is to say something for
it. Moreover, there is in revealed religion a principle of
the communion of saints which is akin to it. Therefore I
am not now saying that there is no legitimate human and
Christian cultus of the saints. God forbid. And I am
very far from denying that we in the Church of England
have far too little of it. All that I am saying is that the
actual development of that cultus as it appeared in the
mediaeval Church is a development of primitive Christianity,
but a development in exactly the same sense in which
exactly the same product is a development of Moham-
medanism or Buddhism.
My first contention, then, is this : there exists in all
DEVELOPMENT ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 209
religions a tendency to develop by way of deterioration, by
way of a one-sided distortion, and by way of a too easy assimi
lation of elements in the natural instinct of religion which are
really uncongenial at least without deep transformation
to their original idea. My second contention is that these
tendencies are indisputably manifest in the actual develop-
ment of Romanism out of primitive Christianity. My
third contention is that the fact that Christianity is in a
special sense a revealed or inspired religion, does not
secure it against liability to fall into these tendencies, if it
is guilty of neglect in using the means which would prevent
such a disaster. My proof of this contention lies in point-
ing to the actual development of the religion of the Old
Covenant, and to the significant warning of our Lord that
ecclesiastical developments need checking by the Word of
God. We are left, then, in this position. We might grant,
as fully as Newman, even in his most extreme moments,
seems to require it, that existing Romanism is the only
real living development of Primitive Christianity on a
large scale. And still we should have to reiterate that it
does not therefore follow that a position of protest against
it is not the position which makes us inheritors of John
the Baptist and of our Lord Himself. Of course, in merely
animal or vegetable nature, we may say that the existing
development is the only, and therefore the divinely-in-
tended, development ; but where, as in human history,
the fact of sin comes in, we can say nothing of the kind.
The existing development of no human society, not even
of the Church, necessarily represents the divine intention.
What the divine intention for human society in general
may be we are left to ascertain, as best we can, by consult-
ing our judgments and our moral ideals. But in regard
to the Church we are provided with more definite guidance.
The Church is a continuous society with its necessary
" tradition," but it has, or ought to have, ever before its eyes
a definite and fixed because written ideal to which it is
to be continually recurring, the evangelical and apostolic
type which is, or ought to be, the test of every doctrine,
of every institution, of every moral ideal, claiming the
210 THE BEARING OF THE THEORY OP
allegiance of Christians ; and to abandon which, for any
reason whatever, is nothing else than faithlessness to the
divine word.
Briefly I would conclude by indicating the true idea of
Christian development In the Word made Flesh, in the
Church in which God and man are at one, is the climax
of all possible religious development No disclosure of
God to man, no union of man with God, can be closer than
is here attained. Thus the revelation of Godhead, the
revelation of manhood, the deposit of truth and the deposit
of grace which are original in Christianity, and find their
witness enshrined in the original institutions and tradition
of the Church and in the writings of the Apostles this is
final and Catholic. But it takes a special development
according to the genius of each race and of each age for
example, in Alexandrian, in Russian, in Celtic, early Irish
and Scotch, Christianity, and, greatest of all, in Roman
Catholicism. The vital point is that no one of these
developments, each necessarily partial, should be allowed
so to stereotype itself as to limit the power of recurrence to
the original truths and institutions in order to a fresh
development for a new race or the needs of a new age.
This is the meaning of the " appeal to Scripture."
The doctrines of the Nicene creed, the institutions of
the apostolic ministry and the sacraments these can
manifestly make good their appeal to the New Testament
Christianity is a life based both on revealed truths and
divinely inaugurated and inspired institutions. The dogmas
and institutions that can really be called Catholic are the
real interpreters of Scripture. They are no obstacle to
the freest appeal to any really original feature in Chris-
tianity. These are the elements out of which development
is continually to take place afresh in view of changing
needs and requirements. And in the fact that, with all our
weaknesses and all our failures, we in the Church of
England have retained the essential Catholic elements,
and, hampered though we are in hand and foot, by the
results of our past sins and our miserable subservience to
statecraft and to wealth, are yet unfettered by any un-
DEVELOPMENT ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 211
catholic dogma, and are pledged by our whole tradition to
the appeal to Scripture in this fact, I say, there lies the
rational ground of a profound belief in the vocation of
Anglicanism. The Catholic starting-point is under our
feet; the rich experience of the past is stored up to
enlighten, but not to enslave us ; its old examples of faith
and zeal and love have lost none of their inspirations ; the
needs of the age are clamorous. Can we then "discern
the time " we live in, and rise to our vocation ?
II
THE CONCEPTION OF CHURCH UNITY IN ST. HILARY.
Cf. P . 3 2.
THE conception of Church unity explained above in Chap-
ter II. is admirably illustrated by St. Hilary of Poitiers in
his argument with the Arians, de Trin. viii. 5-8. The Arians
interpreted Christ's declaration " I and My Father are one"
as referring only to a unity of will or consent, not to a unity
of nature, and they justified their interpretation by an appeal
to expressions used about the Church such as " of one heart
and of one soul " ; for the unity of the Church, they said, is
also a unity which consists in agreement of wills. But this
argument Hilary repudiates, and turns their appeal against
themselves. The unity of the Church, he insists, is a unity
of nature which exists because all its members are common
sharers in the new life of Christ. " They are one through
regeneration into the same nature." " The Apostle teaches
that the unity of the faithful comes from the nature of the
sacraments, when he writes to the Galatians, 'As many
of you as were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ
There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free,
neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.'
This unity, in spite of all differences of race, condition, sex,
does it arise from assent of will? Is it not rather sacra-
mental, because they have all received one baptism and
been clothed with one Christ? What function then ha*
21* ST. BASIL AND ST. HILARY ON
harmony of mind to fulfil in a case where unity among men
is already secured by the fact that they are clothed with
the one Christ, through the nature of the one baptism ? "
III
ST. BASIL AND ST. HILARY ON DOCTRINAL CONFUSION
IN THE CHURCH. Cf. p. $2.
ROMAN Catholic controversialists assure us that there can
never be a time of confusion in the Church in matters of
doctrine. To assert that there has been " would be, in the
mouth of a Catholic, the grossest impiety." 1 How then is
it that St Basil can speak thus in his work on the Holy
Spirit (xxx. 77) ?
" Is not the tempest of the Church fiercer than a storm at
sea? For in it every landmark of the Fathers has been
moved, and everything upon which our opinions rested, or
by which they might be defended, has been convulsed. . . .
The harsh clamour of disputatious combatants, inarticulate
cries, and the confused sounds of perpetual tumults, which
end in the destruction of godly orthodoxy, have now filled
nearly the whole Church. . . . Every one is a theologian,
even the man whose soul is branded with countless pollu-
tions. Hence revolutionists easily augment their numbers,
while self-appointed individuals, with a keen appetite for
place, reject the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and then
divide among themselves the high offices of the Church. . . .
The lust of power is followed by a widespread and prevalent
disregard of all authority, and the exhortations of superiors
become absolutely null and void, for every one, in his ignor-
ant pride, thinks he is more bound to command than to obey."
Moreover, it was the authorities of the church themselves
who were in confusion." "We define creeds," writes St
Hilary, " by the year or by the month, and then we repent
of our definitions, and repenting afresh we defend them,
i Father Richardjon's What arc tlu Catholic Claim*? Kegan
Paul, 1889, p. 60.
DOCTRINAL CONFUSION IN THE CHURCH. 213
and then again we anathematize those we have defended"
In a word, through all this period, "the faith of the Church
was subjected to assault from the Bishops," and was only
saved by the faithful laity. 1
IV
THE COMMON DIFFUSION OF THE SCRIPTURES AMONG
CHRISTIANS OF THE EMPIRE, Cf. p. 69.
FATHER Richardson (I.e. p. 71) assures his readers that "to
an educated man who knows what a Bible must have been
in Patristic days its enormous size and exceeding costliness
to take au pied dc lettre the exhortations of a St. Gregory
or a St. Chrysostom to his hearers to search diligently the
Scriptures, cannot but provoke a smile." On the contrary
" an educated man " knows that books in the Roman Empire
were exceedingly cheap. The exceeding low price of books
at Rome, says Dean Merivale, " shows that the labour (of
transcription) must have been much less and much cheaper
than we usually imagine." (One book of Martial, he men-
tions, could be got for 4d.) Thus "they were within the
reach of quite poor people, . . . and the poor fellow whom
Juvenal describes as * living in a garret' had a small
collection of books." a A similar state of things prevailed
among the educated classes of the Roman Empire gener-
ally
Thus we should have supposed on general grounds that
the "Sacred Scriptures" would be quite common among the
Christians, and we actually have the following luminous
passages on the subject in St. Chrysostom's homilies :
"There is another excuse (for not reading the Bible) em-
ployed by persons of an indolent frame of mind, which is
utterly devoid of reason, namely, that they do not possess
books. Now, as far as the wealthy are concerned, it would
Hilary ad Constant, ii. 5, 1-8. See Newman, Arians of the
Fourth Century. App. note V.
a Merivale Romans under the Empire vi. p. 408 (ed. 1876). Gow
Companion to School Classics (Macmillan) p. 33.
214 COMMON DIFFUSION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
be ridiculous to spend words on such a pretext. But as, I
believe, many of our poorer brethren are in the habit of
using it, I should be glad to ask them the question, Have
they not every one got complete and perfect the tools of
their respective trades, be the hindrance of poverty never so
great ? Is it not a shame then if you make no excuse of
poverty in such a case, but take care that no impediment
shall interfere with you, and in this matter, where such
immense benefit is to be reaped, you whine about your want
of leisure and your poverty ! " " Though hunger pinch men,
though poverty afflict them, they will prefer to endure all
hardships rather than part with any of the implements of
their trade, and live by the sale of them. Many have
chosen rather to borrow for the support of their families
than give up the smallest of the tools of their trade. And
very naturally ; for they know that if these be gone, their
whole means of livelihood are lost Now, just as the imple-
ments of their trade are the anvil and hammer and pincers,
so the implements of our profession are the books of the
apostles and prophets and all the scriptures composed by
Divine inspiration, very full of profit As with the imple-
ment they fashion whatever vessels they take on hand, so
we with ours labour at our own souls, and correct what is
injured and repair what is worn out." l
DOUBTS EXPRESSED AS TO THE NATURE OF THE DOCU-
MENT ON ABYSSINIAN ORDERS, CITED ABOVE, pp. 150^
THIS document has been recently called by The Tablet a
"bogus document." It was cited by me from the best of
recent Roman Catholic divines writing against our orders.
But an (otherwise singularly evasive) letter of Cardinal
Patrizi, secretary to the Holy Office, written to Cardinal
Manning in 1875,* asserts that "it was not a decree of the
i Ckrysost, Opp. (ed. Bened.) vol. viii. p. 63; vol. i. p. 736. Quoted
by Salmon Infallibility pp. 118-19.
* Dt kit rank, p, 248,
THE DOCUMENT ON ABYSSINIAN ORDERS. 215
Sacred College as appears from its records." What it was,
he does not say, but recently it has been sugges.ed that it was
a (rejected) " votum " of one or more " consultors." Surely,
however, if it had been only this, Patrizi would have said
so. As it is, in simply saying that it was not a decree, he
suggests to one's mind the idea that it may have been
something one stage removed from it. (Estcourt, whom
I quoted, had not called it a decree, but a resolution.)
Supposing, however, that it was only a "votum "in 1704,
what ivas the resolution issued at that time ? And further,
what is to be said against the fact that in 1860 it was cited
as authoritative in the reply sent by the Holy Office
to a fresh enquiry of the Vicar Apostolic for the Copts in
the case of two monophysite priests who desired to be
received into the Roman Church, and was described in
this reply as (not a decree, but) "a resolution of the S. O.,
given feria iv. 9. April 1704"? It must have had the
authority of the S. O. at least on this later occasion, and
was certainly acted upon by the Vicar Apostolic as
authoritative. 1 Meanwhile, as the matter is still under
discussion, and we clearly have not got to the bottom
of it, it is important to remark that the argument for
the validity of our "form" of ordination, does not in
any way depend upon the character of this document.
This is apparent in the convincing argument of Fr.
Puller's tract on The Bull Apostolicae Curae, or of The
Treatise on the Bull (Ch. Hist. Soc.) referred to above
cap. xi. The very various rites of ordination accepted in
the Catholic Church at different times do not allow us to
suppose anything more to be essential to the "form "or
" matter " of ordination than the laying on of a bishop's
hands accompanied by some imperative or precatory formula
which implies the intention to ordain to the particular
office. This intention is in the Anglican ordinal abundantly
clear, and we have both a precatory and an imperative
formula both in the ordination of bishops and of priests.
1 This appears in his letter to Estcourt ; see Denny and Lacey De
hitrarch. p. 346 ; see also Mr. Lacey's letter in Tablet, December 19,
1896, p. 983, and cf. Revue Anglo- Romnine, T. i. p. 369 ff.
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
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