i'O
/^ '/I. /[en
t AV
THE SEE OF S. PETER
ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.
THE
SEE OF S. PETER
THE ROCK OF THE CHURCH
THE SOURCE OF JURISDICTION
AND
THE CENTRE OF UNITY
BY
THOMAS WILLIAM ALLIES, K.C.S.G.
FOURTH EDITION
Numerate Sacerdotes vel ab ipsa Petri Sede,
Et in ordine illo patrum quis cui successit videte ;
Ipsa est PETRA, quam non vincunt superbae inferorum portas.
S. August. Psalm, cont. part Donati.
LONDON
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY
21 WESTMINSTER BRIDGE ROAD, S.E.
1896
MAY - 6 1Q53
TO
POPE LEO XIII.
THIS LITTLE WORK, ONCE HONOURED
BY THE APPROVAL OF HIS PREDECESSOR PIUS IX.
AT ITS FIRST APPEARANCE IN 185O,
NOW REPUBLISHED AT HIS DESIRE,
IS MOST HUMBLY OFFERED
IN REVERENCE BY
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
Some years ago the writer, already in great distress
of mind at the historical and actual position of the
Anglican Church, at the statements of her for-
mularies, at the want of shape and principle in her
practice, and, above all, at her general character and
temperament as a communion which seemed to
him thoroughly alien from the spirit of the ancient
Fathers, betook himself to the special considera-
tion of one point, — the Primacy of the Roman
See, — which he thought more calculated than any
other to lead him to a sure conclusion. He was
then, as he is now, " convinced that the whole
question between the Roman Church and ourselves,
as well as the Eastern Church, turns upon the
Papal Supremacy, as at present claimed, being of
divine right, or not. If it be, then have we nothing
else to do but submit ourselves to the authority of
Rome ; and better it were to do so before we meet
the attack, which is close at hand, of an enemy
who bears equal hatred to ourselves and Rome ; —
the predicted Lawless One, the Logos, reason, or
private judgment of apostate humanity rising up
against the Divine Logos, incarnate in His Church."
Vlll PREFACE.
The writer, moreover, then professed, that "he
took up this inquiry for the purpose of satisfying
his own mind ; " that " had he found the Councils
and Fathers of the Church, before the division of
the East and West, bearing witness to the Roman
Supremacy, as at present claimed, instead of
against it, he should have felt bound to obey them ; "
and that " as a Priest of the Church Catholic in
England he desires to hold, and to the best of his
ability will teach, all doctrine which the undivided
Church always held." ^
He made these professions in the simplicity, it
is true, but likewise in the sincerity of his heart ;
and he made them publicly before God and man.
Now, the conclusion to which he was at that time
led by the study of antiquity was, that a Primacy "^
of divine institution had indeed been given to the
See of Peter, but that the degree to which it had
been pressed in later times formed an excuse for
those communions which, while they maintained
1 The Church of England cleared from the Charge of Schism^
Advertisement.
2 This is admitted in p. 313, p. 315, and pp. 490, 491 of the
second edition of the above-mentioned work. The author ought
to have seen what it involved ; for no abuse, even could such be
proved to exist, would warrant men in rejecting what is of divine
institution. This was once put to him in a very forcible way
by a much-valued friend : '* If God has instituted Baptism, men
would not be justified in rejecting it, even if the Church were to
administer it with spittle."
I^REFACE. IX
the Catholic faith zvhole and entire^ were de facto
severed from it.
Thus he made these professions when he thought
that they led him to one conclusion ; but he is
equally bound to redeem them now that in the
course of years they have led him to another.
For though his study of the question terminated
for the moment at this point, yet the Supremacy
■claimed by S. Peter's See over the whole Church
was a subject never out of his thoughts. And in
the meantime what he saw of the actual state of
the Roman Communion in other lands, of the
principles on which it was based, and of the fruits
which it produced, deeply moved and affected him.
That Communion seemed in full possession of the
great sacerdotal and sacramental system for which
earnest Anglicans were vainly struggling, as well
as of that religious unity the name of which in an-
Anglican mouth sounded like a mockery, amid the
deep contradictions, both as to principles and as to
practice, which are equally tolerated and supported
by the Establishment ; when just at this moment
that one only doctrine of all those mooted at the
Reformation, which had appeared to him to be as
unquestionably taught, at least by the formularies of
the Anglican Church, as by the ancient Church — the
-doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration — was brought
before the tribunal of the Court of Arches, and thence
■carried, by appeal, to the Queen in Council.
X PREFACE.
This fact first brought home to the writer the
real nature of the Royal Supremacy. Up to that
time, without having accurately looked into that
power, he had supposed it to h^ practically indeed
a great tyranny over the Church subject to it, but
in principle only " a supreme civil power over all
persons and causes in temporal things, and over
the temporal accidents of spiritual things. " ^ But
the more he considered it in its origin, and with
reference to the power which it supplanted and
succeeded, and in its exercise during three hundred
years, and in its whole tone and demeanour to the
communion over which it was " supreme governor,'^
the more painfully he became convinced that such
a limitation, desirable as it might be to quiet the
consciences of churchmen, was as a fact quite un-
tenable. He felt that at his Anglican ordination
as Deacon and as Priest, and subsequently, he had
taken an oath of obedience to a power the nature
and bearing of which he did not then at all com-
prehend— a power which, the moment he came to
comprehend it, seemed to be utterly opposed ta
every principle which he held dear as a Church-
man, and to contradict as much the relation of the
Church to the State which is set forth in the
Holy Scriptures as the teaching of the Fathers and
the acts of General Councils, — a power which had
1 So stated in the circular put forth by Archdeacons Manning
and Wilber force, and Dr. Mill.
PREFACE. XI
no parallel in all historical Christianity up to the
very time of its enactment, and which not merely
enthralled, but destroyed, the continuous life of
the Church. For he found that Supremacy of the
civil power to consist in a supreme jurisdiction
over the Establishment in matters both of faith and
of discipline, and in the derivation of Episcopal
mission and jurisdiction — not as to their origin
indeed, but as to their exercise — from the Crown or
the nation. The writer at once felt that he must
repudiate either that Supremacy or every notion of
the Church ; that is, the one divinely-constituted
Society to which the possession of the truth is
guaranteed, and which has a continuous mission
from our Lord for the spiritual government of souls
and the building up that humanity which He re-
deemed '' to the measure of the stature of the per-
fect man." The Royal Supremacy and the Church
of God are two ideas absolutely incompatible and
contradictory.
But my heart, my soul, my conscience, and no
less my reason, every power and principle within
me, were longing, sighing, thirsting for the Church
of God, " the pillar and the ground of the truth."
Any decision to which the Queen in Council
might come was unimportant in my sight, in com-
parison to the fact that the Queen in Council had
the power of deciding in matters of doctrine.
Thus I felt before the decision came out ; but
Xll PREFACE.
when it came out there was added a sense of shame,
of degradation, and of infamy, which had never
before oppressed me, in that I belonged to a com-
munion of which the supreme tribunal, when called
upon to declare whether, by its existing rule of
doctrine, infants were or were not regenerated by
God in holy Baptism, decided neither that they
were nor that they were not, but that the Clergy
might believe and teach either one or the other, or
both indifferently.
And I felt thus because any error and any heresy
are innocent and innocuous compared to the tenet
that error and heresy are indifferent ; and any legal
decision, however erroneous, is honourable compared
to that which pronounces it equally lawful to
believe and teach that God the Holy Ghost is
given, and that He is not given, to a child by a
certain act.
Nor can I regard the institution of Mr. Gorham
by the Court, and at the fiat of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, under the decree of Her Majesty as
Supreme Governor of the Anglican Church, to be
anything else but a public profession that the
Anglican Church is founded on the most dishonest
compromise — one which involves the denial of the
whole Christian faith and the practical establish-
ment of unlimited Latitudinarianism.^
1 Because, " to admit the lawfulness of holding an exposition
of an Article of the Creed, contradictory of the essential meaning
PREFACE. Xlll
And yet 1 could not but acknowledge that the
power which makes this decision is one fully com-
petent to make it. It is that power to which the
Anglican Church first submitted itself in 1534, and
finally in 1559. It is the power under which it
has lived three hundred years, and by whose grant
it holds all its property. It is the power to which,
during all that time, its Clergy have sworn obedi-
ence, as "Supreme Governor;'' and the nature of
of that Article, is in truth and in fact to abandon that Article ; "
and " inasmuch as the Faith is one, and rests upon one principle
of authority, the conscious, deliberate, and wilful abandonment of
the essential meaning of an Article of the Creed destroys the
divine foundation upon which alone the entire Faith is pro-
pounded by the Church;" and "any portion of the Church,
which does so abandon the essential meaning of an Article of the
Creed, forfeits not only the Catholic doctrine in that Article, but
also the office and authority to witness and teach as a member
of the Universal Church."
Propositions signed by thirteen most distinguished names :
H. E. Manning, M.A., Archdeacon of Chichester.
Robert J. Wilberforce, M.A., Archdeacon of the East
Riding.
Thomas Thorp, B.D., Archdeacon of Bristol.
W. H. Mill, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew, Cambridge
E. B. PusEY, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew, Oxford.
John Keble, M.A., Vicar of Htirsley.
W. Dodsworth, M.A., Perpetual Curate of Christ Church,
St. Pancras.
W. J. E. Bennett, M.A., Perpetual Curate of St. PauVs,.
Knigh tsbridgc.
H. W. Wilberforce, M.A., Vicar of East Farleigh.
John C. Talbot, M.A., Barrister-at-la^v.
Richard Cavendish, M.A.
Edward Badeley, M.A., Barrister-at-law.
James R. Hope, D.C.L., Barrister-at-law.
XIV PREFACE.
Supremacy is, that what is subject to it cannot call
it in question. It is the power which not only
nominates, but institutes, Bishops ; erects, divides,
alters, and extinguishes bishoprics ; causes Con-
vocation to be summoned, or not to be summoned;
to transact, or not to transact business ; confirms,
or does not confirm its acts ; and, in short, the
power which constitutes the distinctive character
of the Anglican Communion, as to its government,
making it to differ both from the Catholic Church
and all Protestant sects. Lastly, it is the power
which alone makes it a whole, the Cathedra Petri
of Anglicanism.
For all these reasons, it is a power which binds
the Anglican Church, its Clergy, and its Laity, as
a whole and as individuals ; and accordingly a
power by the rightness or wrongness of whose de-
cision in matters of faith the conscience of every
one in that communion, and his state before God,
is touched.
Now, to submit to this particular decision, I
must resign every principle of faith as a Christian,
as well as every feeling of honour as a freeman ; —
I would as soon sacrifice to Jupiter, or worship
Buddha, or again, take my faith from the civil
power ; — and to remain in the Anglican Com-
munion is to submit to it.
But in the meantime the nearer consideration
of the Royal Supremacy had opened my mind to
PREFACE. XV
comprehend the nature of its great antagonist, the
Primacy of S. Peter's See. For, as has been said,
the former consists in supremacy of jurisdiction,
whether viewed as deciding in the last resort upon
doctrine, and this as well legislatively, by giving
license to summon convocation, and by confirming
its acts, as judicially, in matters of appeal ; or as
giving mission and authority to exercise their
powers to all Bishops. Now, it was plain that
such a supremacy must exist somewhere in every
system. And immediately there followed the
question, What is that soineiuhere in the Church
Catholic ? I could not even imagine any answer,
save that it was S. Peter's Chair. And then I saw
that the contest in Church history really lay not
between Ultramontane and Gallican opinions, but
between the liberty, independence, and spirituality
of Christ's Church on the one hand, or on its being
made a servile instrument of State government on
the other : between a divine and a human Church.
And now I went over again the testimonies of an-
tiquity which I had before put together, and many
others besides ; and I found that one or two con-
fusions and incoherencies of mind — especially the
not understanding accurately the distinction be-
tween the power of Order and the power of Jurisdic-
tion, and their consequences — had alone prevented
my seeing, not merely a Primacy of divine institu-
tion, but how full, complete, and overwhelming was
XVI PREFACE.
the testimony of the Church before the division of
the East and West to the Supremacy of S. Peter's
See, as at present claimed^ the very same, and no
other. I had it proved to me by the evidence of
unnumbered witnesses, that the charge of such
Supremacy being originated by the false decretals
of Isidore Mercator was a most groundless, I fear
also, a most malignant and treacherous imputation.
And, moreover, I felt convinced that those who
deny the Papal Supremacy must, if they are honest
men, cease to study history, or at least begin their
acquaintance with Christianity at the sixteenth
century. Also that tliey must be content with a
dead Church, and no Creed.
When I had come to this conclusion, it became
a matter of absolute necessity and conscience to
act upon it, to resign my office and function of
teaching in the Anglican Church, and not only so,
but to leave that communion itself, in which, so far
from being able "to hold and teach all doctrine
which the undivided Church always held," I could
no longer teach, save as an " open question " (from
which degradation may God preserve me !), that
very primary doctrine which stands at the com-
mencement of the spiritual life.
I leave therefore the Anglican Communion, not
simply because it is involved in heresy ^ by the
1 See Archdeacon Manning's last pamphlet : " If there be,
therefore, such a thing as material heresy, it is the doctrine which
PREFACE. XVll
decision of Her Majesty in Council, but because
that Royal Supremacy, in virtue of which Her
Majesty decides at all in matters of doctrine, is a
power utterly incompatible with the existence of
the Church of God, and because Anglicanism, as a
whole, has not only tampered with and corrupted
the entire body of doctrine which concerns the
Church and the Sacraments, but, as a living
system, is based upon the denial of that Primacy
of S. Peter's See to which I find Holy Scripture
and the Church of the East and West bearing
witness ; and which I believe, on their authority,
to have been established by Christ Himself as the
Rock and immovable foundation of His Church,
her safeguard from heresy and dissolution.
My last act as an Anglican, and my last duty to
Anglicanism, is to set forth, as I do in the follow-
ing pages, what has induced me to leave it.
has now received the sanction of the law " (p. 43). But the
Anglican Episcopate has met upon this doctrine, considered, and
done nothing ; and so, as a whole, accepts it ; nor has the
Church, as a whole, rejected it ; only individuals have protested,
and this in a far smaller number than those who have acquiesced
in it. What is wanting to make it, as respects the communion
itself, not only material, but formal heresy ?
CONTENTS.
SECT. PAGE
Preface . . . . . . . vii
I. The Primacy of S. Peter an existing Power 1
II. The Scriptural Proof of the Primacy . . 15
III. The End and Office of the Primacy . . 40
IV. The Power of the Primacy .... 57
V. The Church's Witness to the Primacy . . 81
1. A general Supremacy in the Roman See
over the whole Church ; a Supremacy
exactly the same in principle with that
which is now claimed , . .87
2. The grounding of this Supremacy on the
attribution of Matt. xvi. 18, Luke xxii.
31, and John xxi. 15, in a special sense
to the Pope as successor of S. Peter . 109
3. The original derivation of Episcopal
Jurisdiction from the person of Peter,
and its perpetual fountain in the See
of Rome as representing him . . 1 0.9
4. The Papal Supremacy over the East
acknowledged by its own rulers and
Councils before the separation . .133
XX CONTENTS.
SECT. PAGK
5. The Pope's attitude to Councils as indi-
cating his rank . . . . .142
6. His confirmation of Councils . . .144
7. The necessity of Communion with the
Pope 148
VI. S. Peter's Primacy and the Royal Supre-
macy . . . . . . .155
VII. The Effects of S. Peter's Primacy and of
THE Royal Supremacy . . . .172
THE SEE OF S. PETER.
SECTION I.
THE PRIMACY OF S. PETER AN EXISTING POWER.
Christianity is now more than eighteen hundred
years old ; and when we look around we find it
planted, and more or less flourishing, among all
the nations of the earth which are conspicuous for
their power, their knowledge, and their civilisation.
This common term Christianity distinguishes them
broadly, but decisively, from all other nations
outside of its pale. But a second glance makes it
necessary to analyse this term itself ; for it shows
a great variety of differences in the religious belief
and spiritual government of those whom we have
thus classed together. About two-thirds in number
of all calling themselves Christians are closely
united under one head, whom they believe to be of
divine institution — namely, the Bishop of Rome,
the successor of S. Peter — and in one belief and
one communion, of which that Bishop is the special
bond. Of the remaining third part, two-thirds,
again, profess a belief very nearly, save in one point,
identical with the former, but distinguished in that
they do not now acknowledge the Bishop of Rome
2 THE PRIMACY OF S. I'ETER
as the bond of their unity, though they freely admit
that he once stood at the head of that patriarchal
system of government which they still maintain.
These form the Oriental communion, embracing
the Greek and Russian Churches. Of other Eastern
sects it is not necessary here to speak. The rest,
forming the other third of this latter third, or one
ninth, numerically, of all Christians, may be classed
together as the Protestant, or Anglo-German phase
of Christianity. Most deeply opposed, in many of
their tenets, and in their whole tone of thinking and
feeling, to the last- mentioned communion, they yet
agree with' it in rejecting the headship of S. Peter's
successor, and indeed are wont to add every con-
tumelious epithet which language can supply to the
claim of authority which he puts forth and exercises.
Not, however, that this Anglo-German Christianity
is united itself as to its spiritual government, or even
as to its belief. For whereas in England, and
partly in America, it is governed by Bishops, in
Prussia and Scotland, and again in the United
States, it has thrown off such control. Nor, again,
that its component portions have one creed, for it
has been found impossible to draw up articles of
belief to which they could all agree. Nevertheless,
this Anglo-German Christianity may be called one
mass, for it broke 'off, or at least was severed, at the
same time, from the great communion first men-
tioned, which still acknowledges the headship of
S. Peter's successor. And with many minor
diversities and gradations it has in common cer-
tain fundamental principles ; such as the entire
AN EXISTING POWER. 3
rejection, in some portions of it, and in others the
attenuation, of the doctrine of sacramental Grace,
and in all, the maiming of that great sacramental
system to which all the rest of Christianity adheres ;
and again, which is a part of the above, a denial
that the spiritual government of the Church is
lodged by a divine succession in certain persons.
This idea, in some of its portions, as in Prussia, and
in the Protestant sects of America, is utterly
rejected ; in others, as the Anglican Church, made
an open question, it being notorious that part of
its clergy consider such a notion a corruption of
Christianity, while part as warmly maintain it to be
necessary for the Church's existence. Again, all
are united in rejecting the Roman view of the great
mystery of the Real Presence, and of that reverence
to Saints which flows forth from it, such as the as-
cription of miraculous effects to their relics, and of
such prevailing power in their intercessions that
they may lawfully and profitably be asked to pray
for us. Perhaps this peculiarity of mind may be
summed up in its most remarkable instance. For
whereas that before-mentioned great Roman Com-
munion, and no less the Eastern, is distinguished
by a very special and wholly singular love and
reverence towards the most Blessed Virgin Mary,
as the Mother of God our Saviour ; whereas all
hearts within it are so penetrated with the thought
of her divine maternity, that they cannot behold
our Lord in His infancy, without seeing Him borne
in His mother's arms ; nor gaze upon Him suffer-
ing on the cross, without the thought of His mother
4 thp: primacy of s. peter
transfixed with sorrow at His feet, so that He and
she are indivisibly bound together, on Earth in the
days of His flesh, in Heaven at the right hand of
God, and the mystery of our redemption, completely
accomplished in Him, yet enfolds her as the instru-
ment of His incarnation, has an office and a
function for her ; whereas these are daily household
thoughts, and the dearest of all sympathies, in
minds of the Roman and the Eastern Communion,
the Anglo-German phase of Christianity is quite
united in looking upon this reverence and love to
the Blessed Virgin as dangerous, and tending to
idolatry, and derogatory to our Lord.
On the whole, then, we may set down the actually
existing Christianity as divided into three great
portions : the Roman Catholic, united in govern-
ment and belief, and comprehending two-thirds of
the whole ;
The Oriental, with the Russian, and the sects,
parted from it ;
The Protestant, or Anglo-German.
At this moment, then, a variety of nations, hav-
ing the most various worldly interests, and the
most distinct national, moral, and political char-
acter, are united in acknowledging, as the head of
their religion, the successor of S. Peter, the Bishop
of Rome. And after all the divisions and conflicts
of Christianity within itself, two-thirds of all profess-
ing it are still of one mind, and more than one
hundred and sixty millions of souls, by the confes-
sion of an adversary, see, in the divine framework
of the visible Church which holds them together,,
AN EXISTING POWER. 5
one mainspring and motive power, controlling and
harmonising all the rest : in the circle which em-
braces them and the world, one centre, S. Peter's
See, the throne of the Fisherman, built by the
Carpenter's Son.
The Anglican Church professes a belief in Epis-
copacy ; it is not unworthy of its attention, that of
about eleven hundred Bishops now in the world
(admitting the claim of one hundred of Anglican
descent) eight hundred own allegiance to the Pope.
If a General Council could sit, there would be no
doubt on which side the vast majority would be.
If nations could represent the Church, as at the
Council of Constance, there would be as little un-
certainty in the result.
Such is the aspect of things in the present day ;
but Christianity numbers more than eighteen hun-
dred years. " Remember the days of old : con-
sider the years of many generations. Ask thy
father, and he will show thee : thy elders, and they
will tell thee." Of eighteen hundred years let us
go back three hundred and fifty, from 1850 to
1 500.
Where is the Anglo-German phase of Christian-
ity ? What nations did it number ? What powers
of the world did it set in motion ? // was yet to
come. Its principles, indeed, had lurked in the
restless mind of Wickliffe ; had seemed, and but
seemed, to expire in the ashes of Huss. It was
darkly and mistily agitating unquiet thoughts in
England and Germany, flying, like a bird of ill
omen, round the proud towers of the Church of
6 THE PRIMACY OF S. PETER
God, or festering in corners of corruption over high
powers misused. But in fixed shape and consis-
tency, as yet it was not. That which now claims to
be the pure and reformed Church had no existence.
The Anglo-Saxon mind had been formed and
grown up under the control of S. Peter's See : and
the country of Luther still with one voice re-
verenced that Winfrid, who, from the island won
to the cross by S. Gregory, went forth to his
successor, begged his apostolic blessing, and
planted in Mayence the crosier which he had
received from Rome. The Churches of Germany
and England owed to the Papal See their whole
organisation, and had subsisted, the one for eight
hundred, the other for nine hundred years, under
that fostering power. The claim which Germany
and England now reject was then written on every
page of the ecclesiastical legislation of those coun-
tries. Their first Metropolitans had received their
jurisdiction from the . Pope ; the diocese of every
German and English Bishop had been defined by
the Pope ; the institution of every Bishop to his
see had been received from the Pope, and at the
most awful moment of his life, every spiritual ruler
had sworn that he would uphold the See of S.
Peter, and its occupant, " principem episcopalis
coronas." ^
Go back but three centuries and a half, and this
ninth part of Christianity — this busy, prying, rest-
less mind, which criticises everything and believes
^ Edict of the Emperor Valentinian, a.d. 445.
AN EXISTING POWER. 7
nothing ; pulls down, but never builds up ; ana-
lyses the principle of life, and by the dissection kills
it — which treats the Holy Scripture as the plough-
boy treated the watch, pulls it to pieces to look at
its mechanism, and then wonders that it will not
go ; which grudges to men even the Apostles'
Creed, and will not let them hold that there is
one baptism for the remission of sins, but on
condition that they communicate with those who
deny it ; this spirit, which, in its most advanced
development, casts Christianity itself into the alem-
bic, and makes it come out a volatile essence of
pantheism — in one word. Protestantism, was not.
Thus those who most bitterly reject the Papal
Supremacy as an usurpation of late times are found
themselves to have begun to exist ages after the
supposed corruption which they denounce.
But there are older, more consistent, more dig-
nified deniers of the Pope's claim than those who
date from the Reformation.
To meet these, let us go back, instead of three
hundred and fifty, a thousand years. In the year
850, not only Italy, and Spain, and Gaul, and
Britain, and Germany, but the Roman Empire of
the East, the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alex-
andria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and their subject
Bishops and people, acknowledged S. Peter's
successor, without a doubt and without a murmur,
as " chief pastor of the Church which is under
Heaven." ^ I shall have occasion to bring forward
1 S. Theodore Studites, Abbot of Constantinople. Baronius,
A.D. 8og, n. 14.
8 TFIE PRIMACY OF S. PETER
■presently testimonies from the highest authorities
among them, and from their Bishops assembled in
Ecumenical Council ; testimonies of the complete
obedience which they yielded to the Pope's Supre-
macy, as well in matters of faith as of discipline.
But in 850 modern Europe was at least in part
constituted — the foundations of present legislation
jiad been laid — some thrones, still existing, had
been raised ; the north had cast forth its hordes
whom the Church was moulding into empires, and
out of freemen making legislators : Charlemagne
had been crowned Emperor of the Romans before
S. Peter's shrine, by the hands of S. Peter's suc-
cessor, and Alfred was just about- to receive his
first education at Rome under S. Leo the Fourth.
Let us go back another five hundred years, into
that old Roman civilisation, when the children of
Constantine sat on his throne, and Athanasius was
being tried for his faith. A General Council is
assembled at Sardica, A.D. 347, and it recognises
S. Peter's successor as in full, time-honoured pos-
session of his supreme power. It directs, not as a
new thing, nor as the recognition of a new power,
but what was " best and most fitting," as being in
accordance with all ancient usage, that all Bishops,
in case of difficulty, " should refer to the head, that
is, the See of the Apostle Peter!'
And the first Council in which the whole Church
was represented, the Nicene Council, famous to all
ages, stated, not as granting a favour, but bearing
witness to a fact, and acknowledging a power ex-
isting from the very first, without attempting to
AN EXISTING POWER. 9
define it — for indeed that power was neither derived
from its gift, nor subject to its control — " the Roman
Church always had the Primacy."^
If, then, two- thirds of all existing Christians
acknowledge still the Pope's Supremacy, and if the
countries forming the remaining third did formerly,
and that for many hundred years, acknowledge it,
certainly it can fairly claim the right of a poiver in
possession ,• it can throw the burden of proof on those
who deny it. And this is a consideration of some
importance. A power now exists in most active
and manifold operation at the very centre of the
Church of Christ — a supreme, controlling, harmonis-
ing, conservative, unitive, defining power, in that
mighty empire of thought which our Lord has set
up. Who put it there? It answers: Our Lord
Himself. And it points to a great number of proofs,
bearing witness to its existence, in the history of
1 That is, as quoted by the Papal Legates at the Council of
Chalcedon. If it be objected that the Greek copies do not begin
the 6th canon, which is the one in question, with this heading, as
was observed by the Archdeacon of Constantinople at the Council
of Chalcedon, yet at the same time neither he nor anyone else
denied the fact that the Nicene Council acknowledged this
Primacy of Rome ; nay, the 29th canon of the Council of Chal-
cedon, which the Greek party was at the time trying to pass, and
which the Popes would never ratify, recognised the Primacy of
Rome at least de facto ; nor was there any one in that Council
who even pretended that it had arisen between a.d. 325 and a.d.
451. Whatever, therefore, be the true reading of the much-
debated 6th canon of the Nicene Council, which seems not even
yet to be settled, so much, at least, is clear, that the Primacy of
Rome was admitted to be recognised by it, which is all that is
asserted in the text. {Note to Second Edition.)
10 THE PRIMACY OP^ S. PETER
eighteen hundred years. Now these proofs are of
very various cogency. No one of them perhaps
defines, or could define, the whole range of the
power ; but one exhibits it in this particular, and
another in that : for instance, one ancient saint de-
clares " that it is necessary that every Church should
agree with the Roman, on account of its superiority
of headship ; " another, that " unity begins from it ; ""
a third, that " where Peter is, there is the Church ; ""
a fourth, that " the headship of the Apostolic See
has always flourished in it." ^ Now it is plain that
these expressions want a key. And such is supplied
by the present existence of that power. The fair
and candid mind will see in them much more even
than they at first sight convey : for it was not
the purpose of the writers at the moment to define
the power to which they were alluding, any more
than those living under the supremacy of the British
monarchy, in any casual mention of it, would do
otherwise than refer to it as an existing thing.
If such attributes, then, of the Roman See, separately
mentioned by different Fathers, all fit into, and are
explained by, an existing power, and, when put
together, here one and there another, exhibit, more
or less, such a power, it is fair so to interpret them^
and to infer that the power which we now see
existed then. For attaining the truth, it is most
necessary to begin by studying it under right con-
ditions. In interpreting expressions there is often
a great difference between what they must and
1 1, S. Iren^us ; 2, S. Cyprian ; 3, S. Ambrose ; 4, S. Augustine.
{Note to Second Edition.)
AN EXISTING POWER. II
what they may mean : now an existing power has
a right, in such cases as these, that they should be
interpreted in its favour.
For consider what a phenomenon, wholly with-
out a parallel, this power, as at present existing,
exhibits.
Not merely is it older than all the monarchies of
Europe ; little is it to say that it has watched over
their first rudiments, fostered their growth, assisted
their development, maintained their maturity ; it
has been further upheld by a deep belief, shared in
common by many various nations, older in each of
them than their existence as nations, and continu-
ing on through the lapse of ages, while almost
everything else in those nations has changed ; not
only does it rule, claiming an equal and paternal
sway over all, in spite of their various jealousies,
their national antagonism, or their diverse tempera-
ment, so that German and Italian, who love not
each other, Pole and Spaniard, who are so dissimi-
lar, have yet in their faith a common Father ; but,
moreover, every circumstance of the world has
altered, and society gone round its whole cycle, from
a corrupt heathen civilisation, through a wild barbar-
ism conflicting with Christianity, into wise and vener-
able polities built upon the Church, and having its
life infused into their own, while all throughout a
line of old men has been on the banks of the
Tiber, ruling this huge and many-membered Chris-
tian Commonwealth, not by the arm of the flesh,
but by the word of the Spirit. Nations fought
and conquered, or were subdued ; populations were
12 THE TRIMACY OF S. PETER
changed, and races engrafted. German and
Italian, Frank and Gaul, Goth and Iberian, Saxon
and Briton, Slavonian and Hun, were dashed to-
gether. There were centuries of bitter wrong —
the pangs of Europe hastening to the birth. But
a presiding spirit was there too, and brooded over
all — a spirit of unity, order, and love. At last the
darkness broke, and it was found that these wild
nations one and all, recognised the keys of Peter,
and felt the sword of Paul. An omen of this
victory had appeared in early times. S. Leo set
forth the true doctrine of the Incarnation ; the
Church listened, and was saved from a heresy
already half imposed upon her by the civil power
of the Eastern empire. The Western empire
trembled at the approach of Attila, and the same
Leo went forth to meet the barbarian, who was
awed by the simple majesty of his presence, and
the power of God in the person of His chief
minister.
Fourteen hundred years have passed, and Leo's
successor still sits upon his throne ; hundreds of
bishops, and millions of faithful, still believe that
his voice sets forth and protects the true faith in
every emergent heresy ; and that wild force which
Attila wielded has been tamed to the dominion of
law, in that long course of intervening ages, by the
power which Leo represented. Yet, great as was
his influence as head of the Church, still incom-
parably greater now is the authority of his successor
amongst the nations of the earth, after all defec-
tions, amid all the unbelief of these latter times,
AN EXISTING POWER. 1 3
when " many run to and fro, and knowledge is in-
creased," and perilous powers are in motion and
combination, — powers which seek to substitute the
human intellect, with the arts and commodities of
life springing from it, for the grace of God healing
the nations, and the truth which He has committed
to the guardianship of His mystical Body.
Manners, races, empires, have changed and
passed away, but what S. Prosper sung in 431 is
as true now :
" Sedes Roma Petri, quae pastoralis honoris
Facta caput mundo, quicquid non possidet armis
Religione tenet."
S. Augustine, at the end of the fourth century,
pointed to the line of Bishops descending from the
very seat of Peter, to whom the Lord intrusted
His sheep to be fed, as holding him in the Catholic
Church. It was a cogent argument then ; but
what is it now, when fourteen centuries and a half
have added more than two hundred successors to
that chair, and more than forty generations have
encircled it with their homage ?
Is it possible for an ustirpation to subsist under
such conditions ? Will many various nations
agree that the head of their religion should be ex-
ternal to themselves? Will the members of these
various and jealous nations, who are equal in their
episcopal power, allow a brother to arrange their
precedence, control their actions, terminate their
disputes, rule them as one flock, and that for
fifteen centuries together?
14 TRIMACY OF S. PETER AN EXISTING POWER.
Or where shall we seek the foundation of such a
power? The Church bears witness to it, but did
not create it. Councils acknowledge it, but it is
before councils. The first of them said : " The
Roman Church always had the Primacy." Who
is sufificient to create such an institution, and to
maintain it ? to take a common pebble that lay at
his feet, and build on it a pyramid that should last
for ever ; on which for evermore the rain should
descend, the floods fall, and the winds blow, and
all the power of the evil one be exerted in vain ?
One alone, surely. So this authority itself de-
clares. So the Church itself witnesses. So un-
numbered saints from age to age proclaim. That
One who said, " Let there be light," and " This is
My Body," said also, " Thou art Peter, and upon
this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of
Hell shall not prevail against it. And I will gw^
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven ; and
whatsoever thou shalt bind on Earth shall be
bound in Heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose
on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven."
But of this we must speak more in detail.
.^■5^
rvty
SECTION II.
THE SCRIPTURAL PROOF OF THE PRIMACY.
"' In our life," said S. Bernard, '* we seem to do, so
far as our own purpose is concerned, many things
by chance, and many by necessity ; but Christ, the
Power of God and the Wisdom of God, could be
subject to neither of these. For what necessity
could force God's Power, or what should God's
Wisdom do by chance ? Wherefore all things
whatsoever He spake, whatsoever He did, whatso-
ever He suffered, doubt not to have proceeded
from His will, full of mysteries, full of salvation." ^
If such thoughts are becoming in respect of all
the words which God spake on earth in the days
of His flesh, they apply with peculiar force to
those few and short sentences wherein He summed
up the authority which He was conferring on His
Apostles for the institution and edification of His
Church. They are creative words, full of power,
stretching through all time, each one in Itself a
prophecy, a miracle, and a manifold mystery.
Assuredly, therefore, not without a special mean-
ing were some things said to all the Apostles in
common, and some to S. Peter alone.
1 In Festo Ascensionis, Serm. iv.
i6
THE SCRIPTURAL PROOF
Let US distinguish these.
And, further, let us distinguish the promise from
the fulfilment.
Now there was one single /r^;;^/>^, respecting the
government of His Church, made by our Lord to
S. Peter singly, and another made to all the
Apostles together, including Peter. They have a
close connection with each other, and the better to
see their force let us put them in parallel columns :
TO PETER.
" I. I say also unto
thee, that thou art Peter,
and upon this Rock I
will build My Church.
" 2. And the gates of
Hell shall not prevail
TO THE APOSTLES.
" 3. And I will give
unto thee the keys of
the kingdom of Heaven,
" 4. And whatsoever
thou shalt bind on Earth
shall be bound in Heaven,
and whatsoeverthou shalt
loose on Earth shall be
loosed in Heaven."
'' Verily I say unto
you, Whatsoever ye shall
bind on Earth shall be
bound in Heaven, and
whatsoever ye shall loose
on Earth shall be loosed
in Heaven."
Here it will be observed that four things are
first promised to Peter alone, the fourth of which
is afterwards promised to the Apostles together,
including Peter.
OF THE PRIMACY. 1/
And the fu/Jil7nent of this fourth promise is made
likewise to all the Apostles together, thus :
'' Peace be unto you : as My Father hath sent
Me, even so send I you.
" And when He had said this, He breathed on
them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy
Ghost : whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted
unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they
are retained."
The other passages which express powers given
to the Apostles in common are these :
I Cor. xi. 23-25 : " The Lord Jesus the same
night in which He was betrayed took bread ; and when
He had given thanks, He brake it, and said. Take,
eat : this is My Body, which is given for you :
this do in remembrance of Me. After the same
manner also He took the cup when He had supped,
saying : This cup is the new testament in My Blood :
this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of
Me." See also Luke xxii. 19.
Matt, xxviii. 18-20: "Jesus came and spake
unto them, saying : All power is given unto Me in
Heaven and in Earth. .Go ye therefore, and teach
all nations, baptising them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I
have commanded you : and, lo, I am with you
alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen."
Mark xvi. 15:" And He said unto them : Go ye
into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every
creature."
Luke xxiv. 49 : " And, behold, I send the pro-
2
1 8 THE SCRIPTURAL I'ROOP^
mise of My Father upon you : but tarry ye in the
city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power
from on high."
Acts i. 4, 5, 8 : " Being assembled together with
them, He commanded them that they should not
depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of
the Father, which, saith He, ye have heard of Me.
For John truly baptised with water ; but ye shall be
baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.
" Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy
Ghost is come upon you : and ye shall be witnesses
unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and
in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
We have seen that three out of four promises
made to Peter singly were not made to the other
Apostles, and two remarkable passages remain,
which belong to Peter only.
Our Lord, when all the Apostles were around
Him, at the time of His passion, singling out Peter,
said to him : '' Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath
desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat :
but I have prayed for thee ; and thou, when thou
art converted, confirm thy brethren!'
And after He had delivered His commission to
the Apostles assembled together, and sent them,
as He was sent from the Father, bestowing on them
the power to forgive sins, all which involved their
Apostolate, He took an occasion, when Peter, James,
and John, His most favoured disciples, and four
others, were together, to address S. Peter singly
in very memorable words. John xxi. 15 :
" So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon
OF THE PRIMACY. I9
Peter : Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me more
than these ? He saith unto Him : Yea, Lord, Thou
knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him : Feed
My lambs {36crKe ra apvia fiov).
" He saith to him again the second time : Simon,
son of Jonas, lovest thou Me ? He saith unto Him :
Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee. He
saith unto him : Feed My sheep (IIoLjuLatve ra
TTpopard fiov).
*' He saith unto him the third time: Simon,
son of Jonas, lovest thou Me ? Peter was grieved
because He said unto him the third time : Lovest
thou Me? And he said unto Him: Lord, Thou
knowest all things : Thou knowest that I love Thee.
Jesus saith unto him : Feed My sheep " {B6(tk6 ra
nrpo^ard jxov).
These are all the passages, respecting their own
office and functions, spoken either to the Apostles
in common, or to Peter singly ; very few out of
which to construct the government of the universal
Church, were the Constructor less than God, but
sufficient for Him whose word creates. Let us now
sum up the powers conveyed in them : first those
given to the Apostles in common ; then those
peculiar to Peter.
Of those given to the Apostles in common, the
following are ordinary, that is, requisite for the per-
petual government of the Church :
I. Offering the holy Sacrifice — "This do (roOro
iroielre, hoc facite^ the sacrificial words) in remem-
brance of Me." In other words. Power over the
natural Body of Christ.
20 THE SCRIPTURAL l>ROOF
2. Forgiving sins, in the Sacrament of Penance —
" Whosesoever sins ye remit," etc. That is, Power
over the mystical Body of Christ.
These make up the Priesthood.
3. Baptising — " Baptising them," etc.
4. Teaching and administering all other Sacra-
ments and rites, and enjoining obedience to them —
"Teaching them to observe all things," etc.
5. Inflicting and removing f " Whatsoever
censures — I ye shall bind,"
6. Binding by laws — '^ etc.
7. The presence of Christ with them in this
office to the end — " Lo, I am with you alway."
These involve the Episcopate. -
The following are extraordiftary^ making up, in
fact, the Apostolate, as distinguished from the
Episcopate :
8. Immediate institution by Christ — '•' As My
Father hath sent Me," etc.
9. Universal mission — " Go ye into all the
world."
Now all these powers S. Peter shared in common
with the other Apostles, and therefore in all these
they were equal ; but the following are peculiar to
himself:
1. He is made the Rock, or foundation of the
Church, next after Christ, and singly — "Thou art
Peter, and upon this Rock I will build My Church."
2. To the Church, thus founded on him, per-
petual continuance and victory are guaranteed —
" The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it."
3. The keys of the kingdom of Heaven, that is,.
OF THE PRIMACY. 21
the symbol of supreme power, the mastership over
the Lord's House, the guardianship of the Lord's
City, are committed to him alone — " To thee will I
give the keys of the kingdom of Heaven."
4. The power of binding and loosing sins, of
inflicting and removing censures, of enacting
spiritual laws, given to him elsewhere with the
Apostles, is here given to him singly — " And
whatsoever thou shalt bind," etc.
5. The power of confirming his brethren, be-
cause his own faith should never fail.
6. The supreme pastorship of all Christ's flock
is bestowed on him — " Feed My lambs — be
shepherd over My sheep — feed My sheep."
Thus, comparing together what was given to
the Apostles in common, and what was given to
Peter singly, we find that :
1. He received many things alone — they nothing
without him.
2. His powers can be exercised only by one —
theirs by many.
3. His powers include theirs — not theirs his.
4. The ordinary government of the Church,
promised and prefigured in the keys of the king-
dom of Heaven, conveyed and summed up in
" Feed My sheep," that is, the pastoral office —
radiates from his person ; the Episcopate is folded
up in the Primacy.
Moreover, as to the continuance and descent of
these powers, the same principle which leads all
Churchmen to believe that the ordinary powers
bestowed on the Apostles in common for the good
22 THE SCRIPTURAL PROOF
of the Church are continued on to those who
govern the Church for ever, leads also to the
belief that the power bestowed on Peter likewise
for the good of the Church continues on to his
successors in like manner. Indeed, part of the
promise is express on this head, assigning per-
petual continuance to the Church founded on
Peter.
Further, we learn in what respects the Apostles
were equal to Peter, and in what he was superior
to them.
They were equal in the powers of the Episco-
pate;
They were equal also in those of the x^postolate,
superadded to the former, that is, immediate in-
stitution by Christ, and universal mission ;
They were inferior to him in one point only,
which made up his Primacy, namely, that they
must exercise all these powers in union with him,
and in dependence on him : he had singly what
they had collectively with him. He had promised
and engaged to him, first and alone, the supreme
government, a portion of which was afterwards
promised to them with him ; and after the Apos-
tolate, granted to them all in common, he had the
supervision of all intrusted to him alone. For
even they were committed to his charge in the
words, " Feed My sheep." And so he alone was
the doorkeeper ; he alone the shepherd of the fold ;
he alone the rock on which even they, as well as
all other Christians, were built ; in one word, he
was their head, and so his Primacy is an essential
OF THE PRIMACY. 2$
part, nay, the crown and completion of the divine
government of the Church ; for the Body without
a Head is no Body.
Thus were they all doctors of the whole world,
as S. Cyril and S. Chrysostom tell us, yet under
one, the leader of the band.
They could, and did, exercise jurisdiction, erect
Bishops, and plant Churches, in all parts of the
world, but it was in union with Peter, and in
obedience to him.
His Primacy, then, consisted not in a superiority
of order, but in a superiority oi jurisdiction.
After the departure of the Apostles, this superior-
ity of jurisdiction in the Primacy would be seen
more clearly. For they communicated to none
that universal mission which they themselves re-
ceived from Christ, the Bishops whom they ordained
having only a restricted field in which they exer-
cised their powers ; and it is manifest that our Lord
in person instituted no Bishops after them. Thus
these two privileges of the Apostolate, universal
mission, and immediateinstitution by Christ, dropped.
But S. Peter's Primacy, being distinct from his
Apostolate, continued on. There was one still
necessary to bear the keys of the kingdom of
Heaven, and to feed all the sheep of the Lord's
flock. That power, first promised, and last given,
to Peter, the crown and key-stone of the arch, that
which makes the whole Church one flock, was an
universal Episcopate. Thus the Primacy is juris-
dictional, with regard to all Bishops, as it was with
regard to the Apostles ; and two powers emerge, of
24 THE SCRII'TURAL PROOF
diyine institution, for the government of the Church
to the end of time — the Primacy and the Episco-
pate.
And the power thus given to Peter singly, in
promise, that he should be the rock, the foundation
of the Church, never to be moved from its place,
the bearer of the keys, binding and loosing all in
heaven and earth, in fulfilment, that he should be
the one shepherd charged with the care of all the
sheep, — this power is, of its own nature, supreme.
It embraces the whole fjock, as well as the different
sheep ; the Church collectively, as well as its
members distributively. It reaches to every need
which can arise. Once grasp its true nature, and
you see that it cannot be limited by any power
over which it is appointed itself to rule. Yet is it
tempered by that one condition laid upon it by our
Lord at its institution, " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest
thou Me more than these ? " more than James, and
more than John. This superior love is indeed
needed by him who wields such a power in a king-
dom built upon that love which sacrificed itself for
the world ; and that power itself is given for edi-
fication and not for destruction, but for that very
reason is supreme, and answerable to Him alone
who created it, and willed it to represent His Person
upon earth.
All came from the Person of God the Word
Incarnate ; all, therefore, is upheld from above, and
not from below. All proceeded from One ; all is
concentrated in One. The Father is supreme, but
he is a Father.
OF THE PRIMACY. 25
Now, in all this I have hitherto gone on the
mere words of Scripture, which are so plain, so
coherent, so decisive, that I cannot imagine a
candid mind drawing any other conclusion from
thcm.^
It is another argument, and no less a truth, that
this view alone supplies a key to all antiquity.
Thus alone does the history of the Church be-
come intelligible. A power of divine institution,
deposited from the beginning within it, is seen to
grow with its growth, to be the root on which it
is planted, and the spring of its organisation ; to
enfold in itself, and develop from itself, all other
powers, imparting force to each, and harmony to
all.
And now I will select, out of ancient and modern
times, the testimony of two great Bishops to this
1 The writer has been censured by members of that party in the
Anghcan Church to which he formerly belonged, for saying that
*' he cannot conceive any candid mind drawing any other conclu-
sion " from these texts, as if he had in so saying condemned him-
self for not having formerly drawn such conclusion from these
very texts. But in point of fact a modern contradictory tradition,
inculcating as a first principle of belief that the Primacy of S.
Peter, as continued in the Pope, is a corruption of Christianity,
had then possession of his mind, as it has possession of so many
Protestant minds at present, and prevented his even studying
what was said in Holy Writ with regard to this particular subject.
Such a tradition makes a mind incapable of exercising candour,
however much it may desire to do so. Though Protestants profess
to go by the Bible alone, probably not one Protestant in a million
has ever attempted to judge dispassionately of what is said in
Scripture to Peter and to the other Apostles as to their power of
governing the Church. It was already a ruled point in their minds.
{Note to Second Edition.)
26 THE SCRIPTURAL PROOF
interpretation of Holy Scripture. One shall be
the representative of the Fathers, the other of
the present Church.
More than fourteen hundred years ago, the
great Pope Leo, in the midst of an assembly of
Bishops, collected from all Italy to commemorate
the anniversary of his pontificate, thus exhibited
the mind of the Church in the middle of the fifth
century respecting the See of Peter :
" Although, then, beloved, our partaking in that
gift (of unity) be a great subject for common joy,,
yet it were a better and more excellent course of
rejoicing, if ye rest not in the consideration of our
humility ; more profitable and more worthy by
far it is to raise the mind's eye unto the contem-
plation of the most blessed Apostle Peter's glory,
and to celebrate this day chiefly in the honour
of him who was watered with streams so copious
from the very fountain of all graces, that while
nothing has passed to others without his participa-
tion, yet he received many special privileges of his
own. The Word made flesh already was dwell-
ing in us, and Christ had given up Himself whole
to restore the race of man. Nothing was un-
ordered to His wisdom; nothing difficult to His
power. Elements were obeying, spirits minister-
ing, angels serving ; it was impossible that mystery
could fail of its effect, in which the Unity and the
Trinity of the Godhead itself was at once work-
ing. And yet out of the whole world Peter alone is
chosen to preside over the calling of all the Gentiles,,
and over all the Apostles and the collected Fathers
OF THE PRIMACY. 2/
of the Church ; so that, though there be among the
people of God many priests and many shepherds,
yet Peter rules all by immediate commission, whom
Christ also rides by sovereign power. Beloved, it is
a great and wonderful participation of His own
power which the Divine condescendence gave to
this man ; and if He willed that other rulers should
enjoy aught together with him, yet never did He
give, save through him, what He denied not to
others. In fine, the Lord asks all the Apostles
what men think of Him ; and they answer in
common so long as they set forth the doubtfulness
of human ignorance. But when what the disciples
think is required, he who is first in Apostolic
dignity is first also in confession of the Lord.
And when he had said : '■ Thou art Christ, the
Son of the living God,' Jesus answered him :
' Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh
and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but My
Father which is in Heaven : ' — that is. Thou art
blessed, because My Father hath taught thee ;
nor hath opinion of the earth deceived thee, but
inspiration from Heaven instructed thee ; and not
flesh and blood hath shown Me to thee, but He
whose only-begotten Son I am. ' And I,' saith
He, '■ say unto thee,' — that is, as My Father hath
manifested to thee My Godfiead, so I too make
known unto thee thine own pre-eminence, — ' For
thou art Peter," that is, whilst I am the immutable
Rock ; I the Corner-Stone who make both one ;
I the Foundation beside which no one can lay
another ; yet thou also art a Rock, because by My
28 THE SCRIPTURAL PROOF
virtue thou art firmly planted, so that ivhatever is
peculiar to Me by pozver, is to thee by participation
common with Me, — 'and upon this Rock I will
build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it ; ' — on this strength, said He, I
will build an eternal temple, and My Church,
which in its height shall reach the Heaven, shall
rise upon the firmness of this faith.
" This confession the gates of hell shall not
restrain, nor the chains of death fetter ; for that
voice is the voice of life. And as it raises those
who confess it unto heavenly places, so it plunges
those who deny it into hell. Wherefore it is said
to most blessed Peter : ' I will give to thee the
keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ;
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven.' The privilege of this power did
indeed pass on to the other Apostles, and the order of
this decree spread out to all the rulers of the Church,
but not without purpose what is intended for all is put
into the hands of one. For therefore is this intrusted
to Peter singidaidy, because all the rulers of the
Church are invested with the figure of Peter. The
privilege, therefore, of Peter remaineth, whereso-
ever judgment is passed according to his equity.
Nor can severity or indulgence be excessive, where
nothing is bound, nothing loosed, save what
blessed Peter either bindeth or looseth. Again, as
that Passion drew on which was about to shake the
firmness of His disciples, the Lord saith : ' Simon,
Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you,
OF THE PRIMACY. 29
that he may sift you as wheat ; but I have prayed
for thee, that thy faith fail not ; and when thou
art converted, confirm thy brethren, that ye enter
not into temptation.' The danger from the tempta-
tion of fear was common to all the Apostles, and
they equally needed the help of divine protection,
since the devil desired to dismay, to make a wreck
of all : and yet the Loi'd takes care of Peter in par-
ticular, and asks specially for the faith of Peter, as
if the state of the rest would be more certain, if the
mind of their chief zvere not overcome. So then in
Peter the strength of all is fortified, and the help of
Divine grace is so ordered that the stability which
ihrougJi Christ is given to Peter, tJirough Peter is
conveyed to the Apostles.
"Since then, beloved, we see such a protection
divinely granted to us, reasonably and justly do
we rejoice in the merits. and dignity of our chief,
rendering thanks to the Eternal King, our Re-
deemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, for having given so
great a power to him whom He made chief of the
zvhole Church, that if anything, even in our time,,
by us be rightly done and rightly ordered, it is to
be ascribed to his working, to his guidance, unto
whom it was said : ' And thou, when thou art
converted, confirm thy brethren ; ' and to whom
the Lord, after His resurrection, in answer to the
triple profession of eternal love, thrice said, with
mystical intent : ' Feed My sheep.' And this,
beyond a doubt, the pious shepherd does even
now, and fulfils the charge of his Lord, confirm-
ing us with his exhortations, and not ceasing to-
30 THE SCRIPTURAL PROOF
pray for us, that we may be overcome by no
temptation. But if, as we must believe, he every-
where discharges this affectionate guardianship to
all the people of God, how much more will he
condescend to grant his help unto us his children,
among whom, on the sacred couch of his blessed
repose, he resteth in the same flesh in which he
ruled ! To him, therefore, let us ascribe this anni-
versary day of us his servant, and this festival,
by whose advocacy we have been thought worthy to
share his seat itself, the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ helping us in all things, who liveth andreigneth
with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, for ever
and ever." ^
I defer to a later place the proof how exactly all
this accords with the doctrine of S. Augustine, and
the Fathers who preceded him.
Now let us pass on through twelve centuries to
another scene, where a Bishop, at the court of a
sovereign intoxicated with power, and most jealous
of his temporal rights as sovereign, set forth to
the Gallican Episcopate solemnly assembled the
doctrines to be gathered from these words of
Scripture.
" Listen : this is the mystery of Catholic unity,
and the immortal principle of the Church's beauty.
True beauty comes from health ; what makes the
Church strong, makes her fair : her unity makes
her fair, her unity makes her strong. United from
within by the Holy Spirit, she has besides a com-
•^ S. Leo, Scrm. iv., torn. i. pp. 15-19.
OF THE PRIMACY. 3I
mon bond of her outward communion, and must
remain united by a government in which the
authority of Jesus Christ is represented. Thus one
unity guards the other, and, under the seal of ec-
clesiastical government, the unity of the spirit is
preserved. What is this government? What is
its form ? Let us say nothing of ourselves ; let us
open the Gospel ; the Lamb has opened the seals
of that sacred book, and the tradition of the Church
has explained all.
" We shall find in the Gospel that Jesus Christ,
willing to commence the mystery of unity in His
Church, among all His disciples chose twelve ; but
that, willing to consummate the mystery of unity in
the same Church, among the twelve He chose one.
* He called His disciples,' said the Gospel ; here
are all ; ' and among them He chose twelve.' Here
is a first separation, and the Apostles chosen.
* And these are the names of the twelve Apostles :
the first, Simon, who is called Peter.' Here, in a
second separation, S. Peter is set at the head, and
called for that reason by the name of Peter, ' which
Jesus Christ,' says S. Mark, ' had given him,' in
order to prepare, as you will see, the work which
He was proposing, to raise all His building on that
stone.
'^ All this is yet but a commencement of the
mystery of unity. Jesus Christ, in beginning it,
still spoke to many : ' Go ye, preach ye ; I send
you ; ' but when He would put the last hand to the
mystery of unity, He speaks no longer to many :
He marks out Peter personally, and by the new
32 THE SCRIPTURAL PROOF
name which He has given him. It is One who
speaks to one : Jesus Christ the Son of God to
Simon son of Jonas ; Jesus Christ, who is the true
Stone, strong of Himself, to Simon, who is only
the stone by the strength which Jesus Christ im-
parts to him. It is to him that Christ speaks, and
in speaking acts on him, and stamps upon him
His own immovableness. * And I,' He says, ' say
unto thee, thou art Peter; and,' He adds, 'upon
this rock I will build My Church, and,' He con-
cludes, ' the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it.' To prepare him for that honour Jesus Christ,
who knows that faith in Himself is the foundation
of His Church, inspires Peter with a faith worthy
to be the foundation of that admirable building,
' Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.'
By that bold preaching of the faith he draws to
himself the inviolable promise which makes him
the foundation of the Church. The word of Jesus
Christ, who out of nothing makes what pleases
Him, gives this strength to a mortal. Say 7tot,
think not^ that this ministry of S. Peter terminates
with Jiim : that which is to serve for support to an
eterfial Church can never have an end. Peter will
live in his successors. Peter will always speak in
his chair. This is what the Fathers say. This is
what six hundred and thirty Bishops at the Council
of Chalcedon confirm.
" But consider briefly what follows — Jesus Christ
pursues His design ; and, after having said to
Peter, the eternal preacher of the faith, ' Thou art
Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church,'
OF THE PRIMACY. 33
He adds : ' And I will give to thee the keys
of the kingdom of heaven.' Thou, who hast the
prerogative of preaching the faith, thou shalt have
likewise the keys which mark the authority of
government : ' What thou shalt bind on earth shall
be bound in heaven : and what thou shalt loose
on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' All is sub-
jected to these keys : all, my brethren, kings and
' nations, pastors a7td flocks : we declare it wath joy,
for we love unity, and hold obedience to be our
glory. It is Peter who is ordered first to love
more than all the other Apostles, and then ' to
feed,' and govern all, both ' the lambs and the
sheep,' the young ones, and the mothers, and the
pastors themselves : pastors in regard to the people,
and sheep in regard to Peter; in him they honour
Jesus Christ, confessing likewise that with reason
greater love is asked of him, forasmuch as he has
a greater dignity with a greater charge ; and that
among us, under the discipline of a Master such as
ours, according to His word it must be, that the
first be as He, by charity the servant of all.
" Thus S. Peter appears the first in all things :
the first to confess the faith ; the first in the obliga-
tion to exercise love ; the first of all the Apostles
who saw Jesus Christ risen, as he was to be the
first witness of it before all the people; the first when
the number of the Apostles was to be filled up ;
the first who confirmed the faith by a miracle ; the
first to convert the Jews ; the first to receive the
Gentiles ; the first everywhere.
" You have seen this unity in the Holy See,
3
34 THE SCRirXURAL PROOF
would you see it in the whole episcopal order and
college? Still it is in S. Peter that it must appear,
and still in these words : ' Whatsoever thou shalt
bind shall be bound ; whatsoever thou shalt loose
shall be loosed.' All the Popes and all the Holy-
Fathers have taught it with a common consent.
Yes, my brethren, these great words, in which you
have seen so clearly the Primacy of S. Peter, have
set up Bishops, since the force of their ministry
consists in binding or loosing those who believe or
believe not their word. Thus this divine power of
binding and loosing is a necessary annexment, and,
as it were, the final seal of the preaching which
Jesus Christ has intrusted to them ; and you see, in
passing, the whole order of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
Therefore, the same who said to Peter : ' Whatso-
ever thou shalt bind shall be bound ; whatsoever
thou shalt loose shall be loosed,' has said the same
thing to all the Apostles, and has said to them,
moreover : ' Whosesoever sins ye remit, they shall
be remitted ; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they
shall be retained.' What is to bind, but to retain ? *
What to loose, but to remit? And the same who
gives to Peter this power, gives it also with His own
mouth to all the Apostles : ' As My Father hath
sent Me, so,' says He, ' send I you.' A power
better established, or a mission more immediate,
cannot be seen. So He breathes equally on all.
On all He diffuses the same Spirit with that breath,
in saying : ' Receive ye the Holy Ghost,' and the
rest that we have quoted.
" It ivas, then, clearly the design of Jesus Christ to
OF THE PRIMACY. 35 •
put first in one alone, ivhat aftei^zvards He meant to
put in several ; but the sequence does not reverse the
beginning, nor the first lose his place. That first
word, ' Whatsoever thou shalt bifid,' said to one alone
has already ranged under his pozver each one of those
to whom shall be said, ' Whatsoever ye shall remit ;''
for the promises of fesus Christ, as well as His
gifts, are 'without repentance; and what is once
given indefinitely and universally is irrevocable :
besides, that power given to several carries its re-
striction in its division, whilst pozver given to one
alone, and over all, and withojit exception, carries
with it plenitude, and, not having to be divided with
any other, it has no bounds save those which its
terms convey.
" Thus the mystery is understood : all receive
the same power, and all from the same source ; but
not all in the same degree, nor with the same
extent ; for Jesus Christ communicates Himself in
such measure as pleases Him, and always in the
manner most suitable to establish the unity of His
Church. This is why He begins with the first, and
in that first He forms the whole, and Himself
develops in order what He has put in one. ' And
Peter,' says S. Augustine, 'who in the honour of
his primacy represented the whole Church,' ^ re-
ceives also the first, and the only one at first, the
keys which should afterwards be communicated to
all the rest, 2 in order that we may learn, according
to the doctrine of a holy Bishop of the Gallican
^ S. Augustine. ^ S. Optatus.
36 ' THE SCRIPTURAL PROOF
Church,^ that the ecclesiastical authority, first
established in the person of one alone, has only
been diffused on the condition of being always
brought back to the principle of its unity, and that
all those who shall have to exercise it ought to
hold themselves inseparably united to the same
chair.
" This is that Roman chair so celebrated by the
Fathers, which they have vied with each other in
exalting as ' the chiefship of the Apostolic See ; ' ^
'the superior chiefship;'^ 'the source of unity;'^
* that most holy throne which has the headship
over all the Churches of the world ; ' ^ ' the
head of the Episcopate, the chiefship of the
universal Church ; ' ^ ' the head of pastoral
honour to the world ;' '^ ' the head of the mem-
bers ; ' ^ ' the single chair, in which all keep
unity.' ^ In these words you hear S. Optatus, S.
Augustine, S. Cyprian, S. Irenaeus, S. Prosper, S.
Avitus, S. Theodoret, the Council of Chalcedon^
and the rest ; Africa, Gaul, Greece, Asia, the East
and the West together." ^^
Now, when S. Leo publicly in such an undoubt-
ing manner set forth from Holy Scripture itself the
peculiar privileges of S. Peter's See, did he go.
^ Caesarius of* Aries to Pope Symmachus.
^S. August., Ep. 43. 3 g^ Irenasus, iii. 3.
4 S. Cyp., Ep. 73. 5 Theodoret, Ep. 116.
6 S. Avitus, ad Faust. " S. Prosper, De Ingrat.
^ Council of Chalcedon to S. Leo.
^ S. Optat., 2 cont. Parm.
^*^ Bossuet, Sermon stir VUnitS.
OF THE PRIMACY. 37
beyond the minds of his hearers and the behef of
his age ? So far from it, that the Eastern Church,
ever most jealous in this respect, assembled in a
■council of more than six hundred Bishops, of which
two only, the Pope's own legates, were from the
West, of its own accord, and in the solemn act of a
synodal letter, addresses this very S. Leo in terms
equivalent to his own, which are even unintelligible
save upon the principles of S. Leo's discourse. ^
They acknowledge him as sitting in the place of
Peter ; " the interpreter to all of the voice of the
blessed Peter ; " they declare that '' he presided over
them as the head over the members;" they ask for his
consent to their acts, " because every success of the
children is reckoned to the parents who own it ; "
they tell him that " he is intrusted by the Saviour
with the guardianship of the vine (a/xTreXou)," and
that, " shining himself in the full light of Apostolic
radiance, he had, with habitual regard, often ex-
tended this likewise to the Church of Constanti-
nople, inasmuch as he could afford, without grudg-
ing, to impart his own blessings to his kindred;"
they pray him, as " they had introduced agreement
with the head in good things, so let the head fulfil
to the children what is fitting ; " and finally they
say that the whole force of their acts will depend
on his confirmation.
I see not that the most vigorous defender of S.
Peter's rights has ever claimed for him greater
power than S. Leo exercised at the Council of
^ Mansi, vi. 147-155.
38 THE SCRII'TURAL PROOF
Chalcedon, or greater than here, of its own accord,
the Council attributes to him.
On the same basis of Holy Scripture the Council
of Lateran, A.D. 121 5, sets its decree : " The Roman
Church, by the disposition of the Lord, holds the
chiefship of ordinary power over all the rest, as
being the mother and mistress of all the faithful of
Christ." ^
At the Council of Lyons, A.D. 1274, the Greeks
were admitted to communion, confessing that " the
holy Roman Church holds a supreme and full
primacy and headship over the whole Catholic
Church, which she truly and humbly acknowledges
to have received from the Lord Himself, in the
person of blessed Peter, the prince or head of the
Apostles, whose successor is the Roman Pontiff,
with plenitude of power." ^
And the Council of Florence declares, that the
holy Apostolic See and the Roman Pontiff hold a
primacy over the whole world ; and that " the Roman
Pontiff himself is successor of blessed Peter, prince
of the Apostles, and true Vicar of Christ, and Head
of the whole Church, and is Father and Doctor of
all Christians ; and that to him, in the person of
blessed Peter, full power was delivered by our
Lord Jesus Christ to feed, to rule, and to govern
the universal Church, as also is contained in the
acts of Ecumenical Councils, and in the sacred
canons." ^
Surely the definition of these three later Councils,
1 Mansi, xxii. ggo. ^Ibid., xxiv. 71.
OF THE PRIMACY. 39
to which, in their day, the Church of England was
bound, and from obedience to which I have never
been able to learn in what way she has been de-
livered, asserts no more either than the words of
our Lord Himself in the Holy Scripture, or than
those of the Council of Chalcedon, in the middle
of the fifth century, to which the Church of Eng-
land still professes obedience.
Nor can I see how any honest mind can draw
from our Lord's words and acts any other meaning
than that set forth by S. Leo in the fifth century,
and by Bossuet in the seventeenth century.
This, then, is the testimony of the Holy Scripture,
and this the interpretation of the Church, respecting
the Roman Primacy. If, through eighteen hundred
years, two things alone have remained unshaken,
the Christian Faith and the Apostolic See, perhaps
it is because he who confessed, " Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God," was forthwith
made the Rock, against which every storm should
strike in vain.
40
SECTION III.
THE END AND OFFICE OF THE PRIMACY.
", Holy Father, keep through Thine own name
those whom Thou hast given Me, that they may be
one, as We are. . . . As Thou hast sent Me into
the world, even so have I also sent them into the
world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that
they also may be sanctified through the truth.
Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also
which shall believe on Me through their word ;
that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in
Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in
CJs : that the world may believe that Thou hast
sent Me. And the glory which Thou gavest Me I
have given them ; that they may be one, even as
We are one : I in them, and Thou in Me, that they
may be made perfect in one ; and that the world
may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved
them, as Thou hast loved Me."^
" The promises of Jesus Christ, as well as His
gifts, are without repentance ; " ^ and the prayers
of Jesus Christ are ever accomplished.
In this most sacred of all prayers, He tells us
the purpose of His mission into the world : " I have
finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do:"
■■ John xvii. '^ BosS^eg ^^rmon sur r Unite.
THE END AND OFEICE OF THE PRIMACY. 41
and that work, to set up in the world, and out of
the world, but not of the world, an unity, of which
the model and prototype is, the unity of the Most
Holy Trinity : " that they all may be one, as Thou,
Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also
may be one in Us ; " and a visible unity, for its
effect should be, " that the world may believe that
Thou hast sent Me."
Our Lord is praying for His Church, and in so
doing He sets it before us in its double unity, —
the unity of the Body, and the unity of the Spirit ;
its unity as one visible society, and its unity as one
spiritual system : unities which may be in thought
distinguished and considered separately, but which
in fact involve each other, and are inseparable.
"" There is one Body, and one Spirit," even as there
is "one Lord," who is in two natures, of which the
human has a body, and the divine is pure spirit ;
and '' one faith," in that same Christ, the Son of
the living God.
And now let us refer back the nature of each of
these unities to its great model and exemplar, the
Most Holy Trinity.
I. First, as to the unity of the Body.
What is that unity wherein the Father and the
Son are one? It is an unity of essence and of
origin. The Father is God, and the Son is God,
and yet there are not two Gods, because the God-
head of the Son is derived from the Father; nor
are there three, though the Holy Spirit is equally
God, because His Godhead proceeds from the same
fountain of Deity in the Father, through the Son.
42 THE END AND OFFICE
What is the unity of the Church as a visible
society — that one holy Catholic Church in which
we all so often profess our belief? It is an unity
of essence and of origin in its government, the one
indivisible Episcopate. " Episcopatus unus, cujus
a singulis in solidum pars tenetur."
Our Lord, in His prayer, deduces all from His
own mission ; " as Thou hast sent Me into the
world, even so have I also sent them into the
world." The fountain of this visible unity, the
root of this divine society, the source of all power
to govern it, was in that divine Person to whom
Peter said : " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God." Who by His answer communicated
— rfor His promises, like His gifts, are without re-
pentance— to the speaker that fountain, that root,
and that power : " Thou art Peter, and upon this
rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it ; and I will give unto
thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." Here
our Lord marked out one man as the head, after
Himself, of that visible unity, which He had come
into the world to set up. And when the work of
redemption was complete. He conferred on that
same man the power which He had here promised ;
"Simon, son of Jonas, feed My sheep." So S.
Augustine, inheriting the doctrine of S. Cyprian,
tells us : " He saith to Peter, /;/ whose single person
He casts the mould of His Church : Peter, lovest
thou Me?"i
^ Serm. cxlvii., c. 2.
OF THE PRIMACY. 43
Our Lord, throughout His Gospel, calls that one
visible society a kingdom, — this is he to whom He
gave its keys ; and one fold, — this is its shepherd ;
and a family, — this is the elder brother to whom
He said : " Confirm thy brethren ; " and a house-
hold,— this is ''the faithful and wise steward,"
whom the Lord hath made ruler over it ; Solomon
calls it an army, — this is its general ; and S. Paul
a body, — this is, after Christ, its head.
For it was to remain, from the Lord's first coming
to His second, a kingdom, a fold, a family, a house-
hold, an army, and a body; all which are visible
unities. How, then, should it not have a visible
head to all these ? How should not he, to whom
the Lord departing said, " Feed My sheep,"
continue in the person of his successors to feed
them for ever, till the great Shepherd should appear
at His manifestation ?
This is what General Councils have exclaimed :
" Peter hath spoken by Leo," ^ " Peter hath spoken
by Agatho." This is what the whole line of Saints
has believed, and in this faith has lived and died :
" Blessed Peter, who in his own see lives and rules,
grants to those who seek it the truth of the faith." ^
What is that which makes a kingdom one ? —
the derivation of all jurisdiction from its sovereign ;
or an army one? — the concentration of all authority
in its general ; or a household one, but the rule of
its master ? or a body one, but the perpetual
influence of its head ? or what unites the countless
^The Council of Chalcedon, and the Sixth Council, in 680.
2 S. Peter Chrysologus to the heretic Eutyches.
44 THE END AND OFFICE
sheep of the visible Church in one fold here on
earth, but the one shepherd, who represents the
Lord ?
Two sovereigns, two generals with supreme
power, two masters, two heads, two shepherds,
destroy altogether the idea of these respective
unities.
But our Lord takes us higher than these. He
prays that " they may be one, as We are." Now
two or more sources of deity would make two or
more gods. So two or more sources of power in
His Church, viewed as a visible society, would make
two or more Churches. But He willed that Church
to be one for ever, and He made it one by the unity
of source in its perpetual government. He set
up one indivisible Episcopate, which had not its
like in things of earth, and found its exemplar
only in the divine essence; in that unity of three
Persons which consists in having one source of
deity.
The ancient Saint, who speaks of " one Episco-
pate, a part of which is held by each without division
of the whole," is in that same place setting forth
precisely this unity of the Church, as springing
from one source. He asks why men are deceived ;
and he answers, because " they do not return to
the origin of truth, nor seek the head!' In that case
there "would not be need of arguments." What
is this origin ? who this head ? he goes on. The
Lord says to Peter : " Thou art Peter," etc. On his
single person He builds His Church. This person
of Peter he points out as the source of many rays,
OF THE PRIMACV. 45
the root of a tree spreading into many branches,
the fountain-head of countless streams fertilising-
the earth. Yet in all these, " unity is preserved
in the origin." It is evident that so long as the
unity abides, the origin must abide too ; he is con-
templating an ever-springing source of an ever-living
power. And he then refers to the Holy Trinity
as the type of this : " The Lord says : I and the
Father are one. And, again, of the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it is written : And
these three are one. And does anybody believe
that this unity, coming from the divine solidity,
cohering by means of heavenly sacraments, can
possibly be divided in the Church, and divorced
by the collision of wills ? " So Pope Symmachus
(a.d. 500) says : " After the manner of the Trinity
whose power is one and indivisible, there is one
Episcopate in diverse prelates." ^ God the Father
is the source of this power in the Godhead, and S.
Peter's chair of this unity in the Episcopate. S.
Cyprian and S. Symmachus are equally setting
forth this prayer of our Lord.
Let the Church be extended to any degree in the
number of her Bishops, yet she is one, and they
are one, in "the unity of origin;" not merely in
that Peter was one " from whom the very Episco-
pate and all the authority of this title sprung ;"2
but in that Peter is still one, and that now, in the
nineteenth century, just as when S. Leo said it in
the fifth : " If anything, even in our time, by us
1 Mansi, torn. viii. 208 b.
- S. Innocent to the Council of Milevi.
46 THE END AND OFFICE
be rightly done and rightly ordered, it is to be
ascribed to his working, to his guidance, unto whom
it was said : ' And thou, when thou art converted,
confirm thy brethren ; ' and to whom the Lord,
after His resurrection, in answer to the triple pro-
fession of eternal love, thrice said with mystical
intent: 'Feed My sheep.'' And this, beyond a
doubt, the pious shepherd does even now, and
fulfils the charge of his Lord."
In truth, we are living men, with living souls,
and we need a living Church, and not a dead one.
Those who can bear that the Body of Christ should
be corrupt, may also endure that it once was alive,
but is now dead ; or that it once was one, but is
now three. All these three notions can indeed
only be expressed by an honest word which arose
in a dishonest time ; — they are a sham, and they
who put them forward do not at the bottom believe
either in the one Body or in the one Spirit ; for it
is evident that the one Body perishes when the one
Spirit ceases to animate it. What will it help the
wandering soul to tell it, there was once a teacher
sent from God, but he had ceased to bear God's
commission ? Or the wrecked mariner, there was
once a ship, which rode the waves bravely, but it
is not now within your reach ? And what will it
help one who is longing, aching, perishing, for the
truth, to answer, there once was a Church, **the
pillar and ground of the truth," and so it remained,
as long as it was undivided, that is, for many
hundred years ; but it is divided now, and there-
fore is now no longer the pillar and ground of the
OF THE PRIMACY. 47
truth ; but stay where you are, and hold all which
that Church held, and you will be safe ?
This is Anglicanism.
Was it for this that our Lord prayed, " that they
all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I
in Thee, that they also may be one in Us : that
the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me ? "
Or does S. Peter still sit in his one chair? Is he
still the living source of a living Episcopate? Does
he still proclaim, with the voice of the one uni-
versal Church : " Thou art the Christ, the Son of
the living God?" Does he still hear in answer:
*' Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build
My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it? "
This is Catholicism.
" Peter," says S. Augustine, '' represented the
very universality and unity of the Church." ^ And
this Episcopate, which has its living source in the
person of Peter's successor, and its centre in his
chair, which is thus derived from him, and per-
petually carried back to him, can and does em-
brace the whole earth, extends unto all nations, for
no difference of race or speech is "foreign" to the
household of saints, makes all languages one, for it
has the Pentecostal gift, and this is surely uni-
versality ; and yet is gathered up, directed, in-
fluenced, held together, by one, a Bishop himself,
and having a particular flock, a Bishop of Bishops,
and having an universal one, and this is surely
1 Serm. ccxcv.
48 THE END AND OFFICE
unity. The whole Episcopate is mortised into
that rock of Peter, by which it is one and im-
movable. Separate a portion of it from that rock,
and it is no longer "one Episcopate, a part of
which is held by each without division of the whole"
That division mars all. With unity strength, and
with strength courage, departs, and the spring of
its power is gone ; it no longer stands in one place ;
its footing is lost ; the powers of the world set their
feet on its neck ; and for that one voice, " Thou
art Christ, the Son of the living God," which is the
voice of the Rock, it is much if it do not cry when
the world accuses it, "I know not the man." To
" One Body and one Spirit, one Lord and one
Faith," what is added?— "One Baptism." And
by those who do not stand on Peter's Rock this
one Baptism for the remission of sins will be de-
clared a difficult and mysterious doctrine, under-
stood by pious minds in different ways, and there-
fore not to be imposed on any. To make God's
truth an open question is to deny the Lord when
you are accused of being His disciple.
But impart that one and true Episcopate to as
many as you will, its voice will be one and its
power one, its rule equal, its courage unswerving,
because the " unity of its origin " is one, and '' the
Catholic Church throughout all the world will be
one bridal chamber of Christ." ^
The end and office of the Primacy, therefore, in
respect to the Church as a visible society, is the
^ Decree of Pope Gelasius and seventy Bishops, a.d. 494, de-
termining the Canon of Scripture. Mansi, viii. 147.
OF THE PRIMACY. 49
maintenance of unity, which is upheld now and
through all time, and in all countries, as it was in
the upper chamber of Jerusalem, because the source
of its organisation is one.
II. But this unity is itself subservient to a higher
one : that most sacred Body of the Lord, beside
His reasonable Soul, is inhabited by the eternal
Spirit of His Godhead ; and this. His mystical
Body, has too its Spirit, — the Spirit of truth, lead-
ing it into all truth. This outward framework has
a system of divine teaching committed to it, a per-
petual deposit. Of this too the Lord said : " The
glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them ;
that they may be one, even as We are one : I in
them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made
perfect in one, and that the world may know that
Thou hast sent Me." How are the Father and the
Son one ? — By the Holy Spirit, which is their love.
How is the Church one? — By that Holy Spirit
dwelling in her. How is the voice of that Spirit
made known ? — By that same organ of visible
unity ; by that Rock which cries, " Thou art Christ,
the Son of the living God : " by him who per-
petually confirms his brethren ; by him who is
charged that he love more than all, because he
has the charge of the whole flock. Peter calls his
brethren together, Peter asks their counsel, Peter
collects their suffrages, Peter confirms their voice.
In so doing, he represents their universality ; or,
again, as the one chief shepherd, as the one keeper
of the door and holder of the keys, as having
in himself the power to bind and to loose all, even
4
50 THE END AND OFFICE
the whole number of his brethren, whether col-
lected, or distributed in their several pastures, he
pronounces himself, and in so doing he represents
their unity. United with a general council, he
shows to the world that the Church is universal ;
from his own watch-tower, the loftiest of all, he
proclaims to that same world that she is one.^
Where Peter speaks, you have one faith, one
homogeneous and harmonious system of teaching
— sacraments which embrace the whole spiritual
life from the cradle to the grave. He teaches that
infants are received into God's kingdom by the
laver of regeneration in Baptism, nor are his
disciples shocked at his voice ; because he likewise
teaches them, that if those who have received this
divine gift sin, they can only recover it by penance :
they must enter afresh into that kingdom out of
which they have wantonly cast themselves, by the
second baptism of tears, and the plank which re-
mains for the shipwrecked : where Peter's voice is
not heard, the doctrine of Baptism is either taught
without the doctrine of penance, and then it be-
comes at once a stumbling-block, or it is not
taught at all, and the whole sacramental system is
overthrown. He teaches, moreover, that our Lord
has established a real ministry for the forgiveness
of sins, and bestowed on men a real power to con-
secrate His Body, the source of unspeakable bless-
ings to men, the inexhaustible fountain of
sanctity, the spring of superhuman love. This it
^ This thought is from De Maistre ; I forget the reference.
OF THE PRIMACY. 5 1
is which enables him to ask of those who Hsten to
his teaching the surrender of their dearest affec-
tions, and the Hfe of angels upon earth. And he
teaches this, not in an ambiguous, hesitating
manner, as one rather ashamed of his message,
who would rather insinuate than state what he had
to say ; but he is plain-spoken in his premises, bold
and consistent in his deductions.
From the Divinity of our Lord's Person he
infers that the Lord's Mother has an office and a
function in His kingdom of love : from the reality
of His Eucharistic Presence He proclaims that
Saints live and reign with Him, hear prayers, and
work miracles. The world listens, and sneers, and
cavils, and disbelieves, is affronted, abuses, perse-
cutes ; but the elect are converted and saved.
Go to those who once acknowledged Peter as
their Doctor and Teacher, who left him in posses-
sion of his full inheritance, and you will find this
consistent and harmonious system mainly held
indeed, but somehow afflicted with sterility, a
" Church in petrifaction," as some one has called it.
Go to those who left Peter denouncing him as a
corrupter of God's truth, as Antichrist sitting in
Christ's seat, and you find this divine system
broken into fragments : some holding one part,
and some another, all exaggerating what they
have, and depreciating what they have not, and
misunderstanding the whole. There is no longer
any agreement, no longer the shadow of one faith.
The dissentients broke into numberless bodies, and
liave been breaking off more and more ever since :
52 THE END AND OFFICE
they set out with acknowledging an authority,
which they put in themselves, but they finish with
denying that there is any, and proclaiming as
their indefeasible right the liberty to judge Scrip-
ture for themselves, and to deduce from it what
seems good to such private judgment : a corollary
to which in a tolerant and luxurious age like our
own, is this, that every one has indeed a right to
his own opinion, but that no one should impose
such opinion on his neighbour ; and thus all truth
is got rid of
Or if there be one part of those dissentients in
whom from the beginning there was more worldly
policy than sincerity of belief, however erroneous ;
if there was one province of Christ's mystical
kingdom, on which Caesar had cast longing eyes,
and said in his heart : " Give me but the sceptre of
Christ, and I shall be omnipotent : " think you that
worldly law and Caesar's policy have had power to
arrest the downward descent, to maintain the one
inheritance of faith, to set it forth in its simplicity
and purity ? Alas ! what do you find ? — ambiguous
formularies, studiously so drawn up to be signed in
different senses by those who minister at the same
altar : a system so ill compacted that those who
believe in sacraments are tormented by one half
which they engage to maintain, and those who dis-
believe them have to drug their consciences as to
the other half ; and these two parties, opposed in
every principle of their belief, this bundle of Luthero-
Calvinist heresies stifling Catholic truths, held
together by a civil law, and by the anxiety of a
OF THE PRIMACY. 53
State, — which has no conscience of its own, and
looks on all dogma with sheer indifference, — to
wield a weapon of great influence, a system based
on worldly comfort and outward respectability,
instead of the pure unearthly aims, the keen faith,
and self-denying life of the one Bride of Christ.
Can this be that of which our Lord spake? —
*' that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in
Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in
Us : that the world may believe that Thou hast
sent Me."
What, on the other hand, is the belief which has
been from the first at the very heart of the Church,
which has inspirited her members from age to age
to stand against the world, to disregard its frowns,
to think a life well spent in maintaining a point of
doctrine, and death endured in behalf of any part
of her teaching, a martyrdom? What else but that
there is one faith lodged within her, which it is her
very function to guard, set forth, and apply, to
unfold from the germ to the full and perfect fruit,
to draw from the pregnant sentences and short
intimations of Holy Writ, to harmonise and
arrange, distribute and portion out, so that man,
woman, and child, may find in it their stay, that
Saints may grow up under its nurture, and its fruit
be for the healing of the nations ? And, what is
part and parcel of this belief, that as our Lord's
presence was with Peter and his brethren, in those
first days, and throughout their ministry, so it
would be evermore. The Comforter, whom He
had promised, was not to be given for one genera-
54 THE END AND OFFICE
tion, or one century, or two or four, and then to be
withdrawn, but for ever. He could not fail the
body in which He dwelt, while Peter presided over
it in person ; as little could He fail, in the fifth
century, when one of Peter's successors presided in
his place ; as little in the ninth, or the twelfth, or
the fifteenth ; as little in the nineteenth, or in any
to come. For to suppose His failing is to ignore the
whole idea on which the Church is built: it is to
turn the mystical body of Christ into a school of
philosophy, a branch of learning. Had it been so,
the Lower Empire would have corrupted it, the
Barbarians have swept it away with sword and
flame, the Reformation have torn, it to pieces, and
Voltaire laughed it out of the world.
Not a Council which ever sat, not a Father who
ever wrote, not a martyr who ever suffered, but
believed in a perpetual illuminating grace of the
Holy Spirit dwelling in the Church of God to the
end of time. Without it Councils and Fathers
would not have existed, and still less martyrs.
Men do not suffer for opinions, but for faith. And
now, as age after age went on, as the Church burst
the limits of the Roman Empire, and added nation
after nation to her sway, as she passed the Atlantic
and the Indian Ocean, what power within her was
to hold together that wide system of teaching
worked out into such manifold detail ? What
power to eject from her bosom heresy after heresy,
which by the will of God was to arise and try her,
winnow the wheat, and scatter the chaff? That
same power which guarded and maintained the
OF THE PRIMACY. 55
unity and universality of her outward framework
became the voice of the Holy Spirit within her,
defining and ordering her faith. Her Episcopate
did not break into fragments within each separate
nation, and constitute systems of government coex-
tensive with their several sovereignties, because the
perpetual fountain of the one Episcopate had its
spring and plenitude in S. Peter's See, and every
individual who held a part of it held it without
division of the whole : and her faith remained one,
homogeneous, and complete, because it was the
faith of Peter, which could not fail, because the one
Shepherd led the whole flock into the same pastures,
because as Peter had spoken by Leo and spoken by
Agatho, so likewise he spoke by Innocent and by
Pius ; so he gathers the voices of his brethren now
lifted from eight hundred provinces to one throne,
weighs them in his wisdom, and gives them a single
expression and an universal potency. He who
breaks from the Body of the Universal Pastor
commits schism ; he who disregards the voice of
the Universal Pastor falls into heresy. S. Celestine
judged Nestorius, and S. Leo judged Eutyches ;
and their heresies were cast out of the Church, and
carried with them the whole sacramental system of
the Church, and an indisputable Episcopal Succes-
sion ; they laid hold of nations, and lasted for
centuries ; their heresies might seem to men of the
world subtle metaphysical misconceptions. I doubt
not that six of the most learned lawyers, of the
most unimpeachable integrity, which England could
produce, would pronounce that both were "open
56 THE END AND OFFICE OF THE PRIMACY.
questions," and might be innocently held ; and that
men's " consciences must be set on hair-triggers," to
fight about such things. But nevertheless two
Popes judged those heresies, and God has judged
them too ; their prestige is past away ; no civil
power finds it worth while any longer to live upon
them. But the Church of God goes on still upon
her course ; the voice of Peter still lives within her.
She is still one in her outward framework, one in
her inward belief; she still claims to be obeyed
and trusted, because the See of Peter is within
her, and the presence which cannot fail, the power
which enunciates truths, and makes saints, has its
organ in that voice, and abides by. that rock.
57
SECTION IV.
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
We have seen that the end for which our Lord
instituted the Primacy was the maintenance of
unity in His mystical Body, its twofold unity of
a great visible society, and a great spiritual system
of belief; in other words, of communion, and of
faith. From His own divine Person as the God-
Man, the visible society, and the faith which ani-
mates it, sprang ; and He established unity both in
the one and in the other for ever, by appointing one
from age to age to represent that Person, and in
that capacity to be the ever-springing source of all
power to govern the society, the ever-living voice
which gives expression to its belief.
The man so selected was S. Peter ; and what S.
Peter was in the Apostolic Body, every successor
of his has been, is, and shall be to the end of time
in the " One Episcopate, in which a part is held by
each without division of the wholes
The end for which the Primacy was instituted
guides us, then, to the nature of \\.s pozver, which is,
a jurisdiction universal, immediate, and supreme.
How was this conveyed ? In a manner quite in
58 THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
accordance with other acts of our Lord and with
His teaching.
Is He not wont to gather up all His dispensations
in a few words of profound depth and meaning,
which perhaps it will require ages to develop?
What are His parables but so many pictures^
which convey to us, each without crowding, and in
space incredibly small, the nature of His kingdom,
the working of His grace, the fortunes of His
Church ?
It would seem as if He delighted to repeat in
language, the poor vehicle of human thought, the
miracles which He works in nature, when He paints
on the retina of the eye a boundless and varied
landscape, every object in its due proportion, every
colour and form preserved, on a point of space so
minute.
In the most ancient of all prophecies He summed
up the whole of His revelation to man, all that He
Himself was to do, and much that yet remains to
be unfolded, at " the restitution of all things," when
He declared that the Seed of the woman should
bruise the serpent's head. All subsequent prophecy
was but the unfolding of this.
So in the creation of His mystical Body He set
forth in a word the person of its ruler, and .the
nature of its perpetual government.
He spoke to Peter once in promise : " Thou art
Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it ;
and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom
of heaven."
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY. 59
And once in performance : " Feed My lambs : be
shepherd over My sheep : feed My sheep."
It was the voice of the Creator, summing up His
work in a word, for hence the whole organisation
of His Church has sprung. Age after age was to
bring to light more and more the force of these
words. Time has not yet exhausted the first pro-
phecy, nor has it told us all which is contained in
His words to Peter.
But thus from the first the Primacy contained the
Episcopate ; and the privileges of Metropolitans,
Primates, and Patriarchs, are but emanations from
the fountain-head, which sends forth larger or lesser
streams as the case may require, but remains itself
full.
The Priest is the centre of unity, both as to com-
munion and faith, in his parish ; the Bishop in his
diocese ; but he who heard " Feed My sheep," in
the whole Episcopate ; which he represents and
carries in his person, which sprung forth origin-
ally from that person, and is now maintained in it.
Is this a new belief? Nay, it is the doctrine of
all antiquity, the only view which ancient saints
give us of the government of Christ's Church ; the
only view which will give connection and harmony
to the facts of ecclesiastical history.
This is what S. Cyprian meant when he called
S. Peter's chair " the root and womb of the Catholic
Church." 1
Or let us take the public letters of the most
^ Ep. 45 to Pope Coriuelius.
60 THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
ancient Popes which have come down to us, — docu-
ments incomparably more authoritative than the
words of any particular Father, because, though
signed by the Pope alone, they were the acts of his
Council likewise, transmitted to Primates of pro-
vinces, by them to be communicated to Bishops,
and received as having the force of laws.
Pope Boniface I., A.D. 422, to whom S. Augus-
tine dedicated one of his works, thus writes to the
Bishops of Thessaly :
" The formation of the Universal Church at its
birtJi took its beginning from the honour of blessed
. Peter, in whose person its regimen and sum consists.
For from his fotintain the stream of ecclesiastical
discipline flowed forth into all Churches, as the
culture of religion progressively advanced. The
precepts of the Nicene Council bear witness to no-
thing else : so that it ventured not to appoint any-
thing over him, seeing that nothing could possibly
be conferred above his deserts : moreover, it knew
that everything had been granted to him by the word
of the Lord. Certain^ therefore, is it that this Church
is to the Churches diffused throughout the whole
world, as it were, the head of its own members ; fro7n
which whosoever cuts himself off, becomes expelled
from the Christian religion, as he has begun not to
be in the one compact structure (compages).^
** For this purpose the Apostolic See holds the
headship, that it may receive the lawful complaints
of all."
1 Coustant,, Ep. Rom. Pontific, p. 1037.
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY. 6l
At the beginning of the fifth century, the Pope
speaks of what was ancient, recognised and indis-
putable, based on the words of Holy Writ, and
acknowledged by the first great General Council.
Let us take another passage, which points out
the difference between Order and Jurisdiction in
the members of the Apostolic College itself, and so
in the Episcopal Body since ; for, on the right
understanding of this distinction, and of the con-
sequences which fiow from it, depends the under-
standing of the whole constitution of the Church as
a visible society ; and a misconception, an incoher-
ence here, will confuse the whole vision, and make
a man, with the best intentions, unable to locate^
or estimate, the strongest proofs brought before
him.
S. Leo was deriving a part of his own universal
Primacy to the Bishop of Thessalonica ; that is, he
was giving him, over and above his proper powers
as Bishop of the individual see of Thessalonica, a
power to represent the Pope, constituting him, in
fact, a Patriarch over the ten Metropolitans of
eastern Illyricum, including Greece ; just as the
Bishop of Alexandria was over Egypt, and the
Bishop of Antioch over the East, that is, the pro-
vince called Oriens. These are S. Leo's own words :
" As my predecessors to your predecessors, so have
I, following the example of those gone before, com-
mitted to your affection my charge of govern-
ment; that you, imitating our gentleness, might
relieve the care^ zvhich zve, in virtue of our
headship, by divine institution, owe to all Churches^
62 THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
and might in some degree discharge our personal
visitation to provinces far distant from us.
For we have intrusted
your affection to represent us on this condition, that
you are called to a part of our solicitude^ but not
to the fulness of our power
But if, in a matter which you believe fit
to be considered and decided on with your brethren,
their sentence differs from yours, let everything be
referred to us on the authority of the Acts, that all
doubtfulness may be removed, and we may decree
what pleaseth God
For the compactness of our unity cannot remain firm ^
unless the bond of charity weld us into an insepar-
able whole ; because, * as we have many members
in one Body, and all members have not the same
office, so we, being many, are one Body in Christ,
and every one members one of another.' For it is
the connection of the whole body which makes one
soundness and one beauty ; and this connection, as
it requires unanimity in the whole body, so especi-
ally demands concord among Bishops. For, though
these have a like digfiity, yet have they not an equal
jurisdiction : since even among the most blessed
Apostles^ as there was a likeness of honour, so was
there a certain distinction of power ; and, the election
of all being equal, pre-eminence over the rest was
given to one. From which type the distinction also
between Bishops has arisen, and it was provided by
a great ordering, that all should not claim to them-
selves all things, but that in every province there
should be one, whose sentence should be considered
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY. 6$
the first among his brethren ; and others again,
seated in the greater cities, should undertake
a larger care, through whom the direction of the
Universal Church should converge to the one See
of Peter, and nothing anywhere disagree from its
head:'
S. Leo wrote this five years before the fourth
General Council, which called him, as we have seen,
" head over the members," and " father of the
children," and " intrusted with the care of the vine
by the Saviour." It is impossible for expressions
more perfectly to tally than those of the Council
with those of the Pope.
Let us consider what S. Leo tells us here.
First, he observes that while the Apostles were
equal as to all power of Order, that is, as to the
whole Sacerdotium, as to what is conferred by con-
secration, yet as to how they should exercise this
power, in what places, and under what conditions,
they were put under one, viz. S. Peter. And thus,
even though they were sent into all the world by our
Lord Himself, yet that mission was to be exercised
under the pre-eminence of one. This means, in
other words, that S. Peter's superiority consisted in
his jurisdiction over them, exactly as S. Jerome
says : " Among the twelve one is chosen out, that
by the appointment of a head the opportunity for
schism might be taken away."
Secondly, " from this type the distinction between
Bishops has arisen," namely, that while all were
equal as to the Sacerdotium (as the same S
Jerome says, " wherever a Bishop is, be it at Rome,
64 THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
or Eugubium, or Constantinople, or Rhegium, or
Alexandria, or Tanae, he is of the same rank, the
SdiVaG priesthood''), the jurisdiction of one differs in
extent from that of another, as is self-evident in
the cases of Rome, and Constantinople, and Alex-
andria : but likewise, to complete the type, there is
a jurisdiction extending equally over all; there is
one Peter among the Apostles, and there is Peter's
successor too among the Bishops. This he goes on
to say. For, —
Thirdly^ There is the Bishop over the Diocese,
the Metropolitan over the Province, the Primate,
or Patriarch, over the Patriarchate, — but all this
for one end, — " in which the reginien and sum," as
Pope Boniface observes, " consists," — namely, that
" through them the direction of the Universal
Church should converge to the one See of Peter,
and nothing anywhere disagree from its head."
Now here, in the Apostolic, and in the Episcopal
Body, in the original '' Forma," and in the " Com-
pages" which sprung from it, there are two powers,
and no more, of divine institution : — the Primacy
of Peter, and the co-Episcopate of the Apostles ;
the Primacy of Peter's successor, and the co-Epis-
copate of his brethren.
All that is between, Metropolitical, Primatial, or
Patriarchal arrangements, are only of ecclesiastical
growth, and therefore subject to diminution, or in-
crease, or alteration ; they do but " relieve the care
which, in virtue of his headship, by divine institu-
tion, the Universal Primate owes to all Churches."
The power of this Primate suffers no diminution
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY. 65
from their existence ; they are not set up against
him, but under him; not to withdraw " the care
which, in virtue of his headship, he owes to all
Churches," but to " relieve it."
Circumstances may make it expedient that under
him metropolitical powers should be concentrated
for whole provinces in single hands, which should
accordingly confirm their subject Bishops, or even
Archbishops.
Circumstances again may make it expedient that
the Universal Primate should directly and immedi-
ately give institution to all Bishops.
But in the one case, equally as in the other, he is
supreme. If the Patriarch is accused, he hears,
judges, absolves, or condemns him. If his ordina-
tion is objected to, he confirms or annuls it; if his
faith is doubted, he clears or he deprives him. If
he is tyrannical, his subject Bishops appeal to the
One Head, and are righted.
In the earliest times, when near three centuries
of persecution were to try the rising Church, it was
expedient, for various reasons, that powers belong-
ing in their fulness to the universal Primate should
be imparted, in a large degree, to others under
him : yet, to mark plainly the source of these powers,
in both cases the missions proceeded from S. Peter.
To Alexandria, the second city of the Roman
empire, he sent his disciple Mark, with patriarchal
powers ; at Antioch, the third city, he had sat him-
self for seven years, and with it he left a portion of
his pre-eminence. But the fulness and supremacy
of that power which his Lord had given to him,
66 THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
for the unity of the mystical Body, he deposited at
Rome. In the first four centuries no See possessed
patriarchal powers but the three Sees of Peter.
Why did no Apostle leave his Apostolic juris-
diction to any Church? S. Paul had founded
Ephesus, and S. John had exercised his Apostolic
power over it, and all the province of Asia, after
Peter's death, but the Bishop of Ephesus held only
an inferior rank. Constantinople rose to patriarchal
rank only by the overbearing domination of the
Greek Emperors, and Jerusalem out of respect to
the Lord's city in the fifth century.
The intense jealousy of everything Western,
which is apparent in the Greek -mind from the
beginning, and after many minor schisms burst out
into fatal violence in the time of Photius, is another
reason why great powers were given to the Sees
of Alexandria and Antioch in the first ages.
But if the Pope, in the "greater causes," called
them to account, his supremacy is undoubted.
In later times it has been thought expedient that
powers, which at their commencement were emana-
tions from S. Peter's Primacy, as we have seen in
the case of Thessalonica, should return to his See,
and that the Head of the whole body should
directly "confirm his brethren."
Many reasons, doubtless, there were for this, —
for instance, would not the very strong nationality
which characterises modern times have broken up
the Church into fragments, had the chief Bishop
of each nation possessed patriarchal powers, where-
as the strong arm of the Roman empire had
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY. 6/
moulded into one many opposite races, though it
could not overcome the inherent antagonism of the
Greek to the Latin ? Would not, again, the violent
jealousy of the civil power have forced its own
subjects in each nation to surrender the free exercise
of their spiritual rights, but for that bond of divine
institution by which our Lord fastened them to
the See of S. Peter? Alas for the hapless Church
which has broken that bond ! Statesmen without
a creed will ride over it rough-shod, and lawyers
decide points of faith, having power to agonise the
conscience, as " in case of appeal from the Admiral's
Court."
Thus in the middle of the fifth century the
universal supremacy of S. Peter's See, as to the
government of the Church's visible society, was
publicly stated, both by Pope and by General
Council, and lies at the basis of the whole structure
of the Church's discipline in the preceding cen-
turies. In its essence it was exactly the same, in
its extent neither more nor less than it is now : for
it was given by our Lord at the birth of the
Church, and all other and inferior powers were
sealed up in it.
But was this supremacy equally indisputable in
matters of faith ? Here we might answer, that he
who is the source of jurisdiction uiust likewise be
the supreme judge of doctrine : for the one great
and visible society lives by and on its faith, and he
who maintains unity in its outward framework must
likewise guard that belief, and preserve pure the soul
which animates the body. Moreover, so often as out-
68 THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
ward communion is imperilled by a breach of faith^
the question of faith is inextricably mixed up with
the question of communion, and one decision deter-
mines both. The claim of spiritual jurisdiction will
crush any power, save that which Christ has made
to bear it. Or, again, we might say that, as a fact,
we owe the true doctrine of the Incarnation, under
God, to this same S. Leo. The Eastern Church,
partly overborne by the civil power, whose chief
minister was a friend of the heresiarch, and partly
sick of a deep inward taint which it never had
strength to throw off, had gone into the heresy of
Eutyches ; legitimately assembled in a General
Council, it had actually accepted his doctrine.
S. Leo annulled the Council ; S. Leo condemned
the doctrine. He caused to assemble once more in
a larger Council that East which through centuries
was swayed backward and forward by the will of
its princes, caused six hundred Bishops to receive
his letter, word for word, in which the true faith
was authoritatively defined, and so was the means
of keeping them for four centuries, as it were in
spite of themselves, in the unity of the Church.
But we will turn to another controversy — one of
the most subtle which has ever distressed the Church
— one which harassed S. Augustine for many a
year. Whither, after all his labours, writings, and
prayers, in the Pelagian controversy, did he turri
for its final solution ? To S. Peter's chair. Two
African Councils had condemned Pelagius, and
their decrees, drawn up by S. Augustine, were sent
for approval to Pope Innocent I., together with
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY. 69
another letter from S. Augustine himself and some
friends, in which he says : " We do not pour back
our streamlet for the purpose of increasing your great
fountain^ but in this, not however a slight tempta-
tion of the time (whence may He deliver us, to
whom we cry, Lead us not into temptation !), we
wish it to be decided by you whether our stream,
hozvever small, flows forth from that same head of
rivers whence comes your own abundance ; and by
your answers to be consoled respecting our common
participation of one grace." ^
In reply, A.D. 416, S. Innocent praises the Council
of Carthage, that " in inquiring concerning these
matters, which it behoves to be treated with all
care by Bishops, and especially by a true, just, and
Catholic Council, observing the precedents of ancient
tradition, and mindful of ecclesiastical discipline,
you have confirmed the strength of our religion not
less now in consulting us, than by sound reason'
before you pronounced sentence, inasmuch as you
approved of reference being made to our judgment,
knowing what is due to the Apostolic See, since all
we who are placed in this position desire to follow
the Apostle himself, from whom the very Epis-
copate and all the authority of this title sprung.
Following whom we know as well how to condemn
the evil as to approve the good. And this too,
that, guarding, according to the duty of Bishops,
the institutions of the Fathers, ye resolve that these
regulations should not be trodden under foot, which
1 Epist., p. 177.
70 THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
they, in pursuance of no human but a Divine sentence^
have decreed ; vis., that whatever was being carried
on, although in the most distant and remote provinces,
sJiould not be terminated before it was brought to the
knowledge of this See ; by the full authority of which
the just sentence should be confirmed, and that thence
all other Churches might derive what they should order,
whom they should absolve, whom, as being beuiired
with ineffaceable pollution, the stream that is worthy
only of pure bodies should avoid; so that from their
parent source all waters shoidd flow, and through the
different regions of the whole world the pure streams
of the fountain well forth uncorruptedT^
Here we have S. Innocent affirming, (i) that
questions respecting the Faith had always been re-
ferred to the judgment of the Holy See : (2) that this
tradition rested on Scripture, that is on the pre-
rogatives granted by our Saviour to S. Peter : (3)
that decisions emanating from the Holy See were
not liable to any error, " that the pure streams of
the fountain should well forth uncorrupted : " (4)
that all the Churches of the world had ever been
bound to conform to them, " that thence all other
Churches might derive what they should order," etc.^
To the Council of Numidia S. Innocent says :
" Therefore do ye diligently and becomingly consult
the secrets of the i\postolical honour (that honour,
I mean, on which, beside those things that are
without, the care of all the Churches attends), as
to what judgment is to be passed on doubtful
1 Coustant., Ep. Rom. Pontif., p. 868.
2 Petit Didier, hi loc.
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY. 7 1
matters, following, in sooth, the prescription of
the ancient rule, which you know, as well as I, has
ever been preserved in the whole world. But this
I pass by, for I am sure your prudence is aware
of it : for how could you by your actions have con-
firmed this, save as knowing that throughout all
provinces answers are ever emanating as from the
Apostolic fountain to inquirers ? Especially so
often as a matter of faith is under discussion, I con-
ceive that all our brethren and fellow-Bishops can
only refer to Peter, that is, the source of their own
name and honour, just as your affection hath now
referred, for what may benefit all Churches in
common throughout the whole world. For the
inventors of evils must necessarily become more
cautious, when they see that at the reference of a
double synod they have been severed from Ecclesi-
astical Communion by our sentence. Therefore
your charity will enjoy a double advantage ; for
you will have at once the satisfaction of having
observed the canons, and the whole world will
have the use of what you have gained : for who
among Catholics will choose any longer to hold
discourse with the adversaries of Christ ? "
Here we may observe, besides what was said
above, (i) that nothing concerning faith was held
for decided, before it was carried to the See of S.
Peter, and had received the Pope's sentence : (2)
that before his sentence the determination of
particular Councils only held good provisionally, —
" what judgment is to be passed on doubtful
matters : " (3) that such determination only had the
Jl THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
force of a consultation or relation as to a difficulty,
made to the Pope before his own sentence, — ** at
the relation," he says, "of a double synod:" (4)
that the Pope's sentence, by which he confirmed
Councils, was a final judgment, excluding the con-
demned from the Church's Communion, "when
they see that they have been severed from Eccle-
siastical Communion by our sentence:" (5) that
Bishops, as well as the faithful in general, always
submitted themselves to such a decree. *' Who
among Catholics will choose any longer to hold
discourse with the adversaries of Christ? "^
S. Innocent the Third could have said no more
about the powers of his See : what does S. Augustine
observe upon it ?
** He answered to all as was right, and as it
became the prelate of the Apostolical See." ^ And
as to the effect of his answer, there are famous
words of S. Augustine, which have passed into a
proverb : " Already two Councils on this matter
have been sent to the Apostolic See ; replies from
whence have also been received. The cause is
terminated; would that the error may presently
terminate likewise ! " ^
We need no more to tell us what S. Augustine
meant by that "Headship, which," he says, "had
ever flourished in the Apostolic See." * It involves,
we see, the necessity that all other Churches should
agree in faith with it, as having deposited in itself
the root of the Apostolic confession, concerning the
1 Petit Didier, in loc. "- Epht. 186.
^Tom. V. p. 645, Scrm. cxxxi. '^ Epist. 43.
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY. Jl
two natures of our Lord, to which the promise was
given by our Lord, that the Church should
be built upon it. S. Augustine and S: Innocent
•express the one true faith under S. Cyprian's image
of the fountain, who in the same most remarkable
passage where he sets forth the ''one Episcopate,
of which each holds a part without division of the
whole," says, " as from one fountain numberless
rivers flow, widely as their number may be diffused
in broad abundance, yet unity is preserved in the
source ; — one still is the head, and the origin one."
The power, therefore, which was to maintain
unity of faith and of communion, does so, and can
only do so, by having, both in matters concerning
faith and in those concerning communion, a coac-
tive jurisdiction, universal, immediate, and supreme.
And in the fifth century this power is seen in
undisputed operation, referring back to our Lord's
institution as its source, and to all preceding ages
of the Church for its exercise, and no one charges
it with usurpation. And here I must go forw^ard
a thousand years, to the date of the Council of
Constance, for the purpose of quoting one who was
the soul of that Council, and the originator of what
are called Galilean opinions, who yet, as will be seen,
expresses exactly the same doctrine as S. Innocent
and S. Leo above, respecting the relation between
the Papacy and the Episcopate.
"The Papal dignity was instituted by Christ,
■supernaturally and immediately, as holding a mon-
archical and royal primacy in the ecclesiastical
hierarchy, according to which unique and supreme
74 THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
dignity the Church militant is called one under
Christ: which dignity whosoever presumes to im-
pugn or diminish, or reduce to the level of any
particular dignity, if he does this obstinately, is a
heretic, a schismatic, impious and sacrilegious. For
he falls into a heresy so often expressly condemned
from the very beginning of the Church to this day,
as well by Christ's institution of the headship of
Peter over the other Apostles, as by the tradi-
tion of the whole Church, in its sacred declarations
and General Councils." And again : " The Episco-
pal rank in the Church as to its primary conferring
was given immediately by Christ to the Apostles
first, as the papal rank to Peter.- The Episcopal
rank had in the Apostles and their successors the
use or exercise of its own power, subject to Peter,
as Pope, and his successors, as he had, and they
have, the fontal plenitude of Episcopal authority.
Wherefore, as concerns such things, those of minor
rank, that is, having cure of souls, are subject to
Bishops, by whom the use of their power is at times
restricted, or stopped, and so it is not to be doubted
can be done by the Pope, in respect to superior
dignitaries, for certain and reasonable causes."
And again he says : " Of which power (of juris-
diction) the plenitude resides in the supreme Pon-
tiff, and is in him entire potentially ; but is derived
to others in degrees, according to the legitimate
determination of that fontal and prime power." ^
^Gerson, De Statihus Ecclesiasticis, consid. i, and De Statu
PrcBlatorum, consid. 2 and 3, and De Protest. Ligandi et Solvendi,
The last quoted by Ballerini.
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY. 75
The Chancellor Gerson is here only expressing-
what had been the unbroken belief down to his
own times, until the great Western schism origi-
nated a long train of disasters which have not yet
ceased to agitate Christendom.
But before I pass from this subject, let me say a
word on what is meant by spiritual jurisdiction. It
is a term of law as well as of theology, and it is
desirable to clear up any ambiguity which may
attend its use, if unexplained.
Every Churchman, then, believes that a Priest,
at his ordination, receives certain spiritual powers ;
and, again, a Bishop, at his consecration, certain
others: these are called powers of order; they are
the same in all Priests and in all Bishops re-
spectively. As regards these, S. Peter had no
superiority over his brethren in the Apostolate,
and the Pope has none over his brethren in the
Episcopate. As regards these, one Bishop does
not excel another Bishop, nor one Priest another
Priest. In the whole of the present subject-matter
these powers of order do not come into question.
But when a Priest has been ordained, where and
how, in what place, and under what conditions and
restrictions, is he to exercise the powers so given
him? All these points the Bishop determines by
assigning to him a particular flock under himself;
that is, he gives him mission ; but he does not
therefore cease to be the immediate pastor him-
self of that flock, over whom he sets another as
subordinate pastor.
And when a Bishop has been consecrated, who
^6 THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
determines where and how, in what place, and
under what conditions he is to exercise the powers
which he has received ? That is, who gives the
Bishop mission ? who appoints such and such a
person to fill such and such a particular diocese ?
This power to give mission is purely spiritual,
eminently and in the highest degree a gift of our
Lord ; and upon it depend for their exercise all
powers whatever which our Lord has committed
to His Church for the salvation of souls, and the
building of His mystical body.
Will any honest mind, will any one who loves
his Saviour, any one who has the spirit of a free-
man in his soul, endure that this' power of mission
should be seized upon and appropriated by the
civil Government of a State ?
But what is the Catholic answer to the question,
*' Who gives the Bishop mission ? " I will give
it in the words of an author to whom I am under
great obligations.
" Episcopal jurisdiction cannot be given, save by
the Pope alone or by the whole Episcopal body
united with the Pope. Let us go to the origin of
things. The power to govern populations in order
to their eternal salvation, to instruct them, to
oblige them to obedience, to bind them by
spiritual penalties, in a word, ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tion, was certainly given by Jesus Christ, nor in its
origin could it be given by any other than by Him.
We are speaking of men united in one society for
the spiritual end of eternal salvation, which society
is called the Church ; we are speaking of flocks
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY. 7/
purchased by the supreme and eternal Shepherd
at the priceless cost of His own blood. We are
speaking of a kingdom which is a spiritual kingdom
of His own acquiring, recovered from the power
of darkness by the victory of the cross and the
glorious triumph over hell. Lastly, we are speak-
ing of populations which the Divine Father has
bestowed on His Son made man, giving to Him
all power over them. Now, to whom did Jesus
Christ condescend to impart this power? To S.
Peter alone before any other ; next to all the
Apostles, comprising therein S. Peter marked out
to be, and made, their head. We read not in the
word of God, written or handed down, and it is
certain that Jesus Christ gave not of Himself im-
mediately to any other this power. The sacred
text notes expressly, that when Jesus Christ con-
ferred the power of governing His Church, there
were only present the eleven Apostles, and He
directed His words only to tbem. The Evangelist
S. Matthew notices the remarkable circumstance
that Jesus Christ commanded the eleven Apostles
to go into Galilee to a place apart, where He ap-
peared, and gave them their mission to instruct
and baptise all nations. Accordingly, the power
to govern the Church, which in due propagation
of the Episcopate was communicated from hand to
hand to others, and has been perpetuated unto us,
was by Jesus Christ, before He ascended into
Heaven, given to the eleven' Apostles only, and
could not be conferred on others, save by one of
the Apostles, who alone had it immediately from
78 THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY.
Jesus Christ. Bishops, considered as individuals ^
do not succeed to the Apostles in the fulness and
universality of the Episcopate. There is only the
Roman Pontiff, successor of S. Peter, and the
whole Episcopal body with the Roman Pontiff at
its head succeeding to the Apostolic College,
which possess the Episcopate in all its fulness,
universality, and sovereignty, as it was instituted by
Jesus Christ. Accordingly, there is only the
Roman Pontiff, and the whole Episcopal body,
which has for subjects all Christians, and which
extends its jurisdiction over the whole Church.
Hence by necessary consequence it follows that
the Roman Pontiff alone, or the whole Episcopal
body, can assign subjects to be governed, and
confer Episcopal jurisdiction. Every one else who
attempts to do this over subjects not his own, does
an act essentially, and of its own intrinsic nature,
null and void, since no one gives what he has not
I will add another passage which seems calcu-
lated specially to meet Anglican misconceptions
of Church government : " Jesus Christ did not
divide His flock into so many portions, nor the
world into so many dioceses, assigning one to
John, one to Andrew, one to Matthew, etc. He
conferred the Episcopate on S. Peter in all its ful-
ness and sovereignty, and thus He conferred it too
on all the Apostolic College, that is, presided over
by S.Peter; each Apostle had a full and universal
1 Bolgeni, UEpiscopato, c. vii. s. 8i.
THE POWER OF THE PRIMACY. 79
power in the zvhole C/mrch, but zvith subordination
to S. Peter. The Apostles were the first to make
a division of nations and dioceses, according as the
seed of God's Word bore fruit, and the Christian
religion acquired followers through all the earth.
Of the Bishops created by the Apostles, some were
not fixed to any people or determinate place, but
were sent hither and thither according as the need
of Christians required. These Bishops acted by
an authority delegated from the Apostles, there-
fore they received it immediately from the Apostles,
who had received it from Jesus Christ. Others
again were settled in a determinate see, and had
assigned a determinate territory to govern ; these
had a fixed and ordinary jurisdiction, but it is
plain that they received it immediately from the
Apostles, who constituted them Bishops rather in
one place than in another, rather over one people
than over another. The disciples of the Apostles
pursued the same method in the further propaga-
tion of the Episcopate ; and by the multiplication
of Bishops dioceses became more and more re-
stricted, and the jurisdiction of each Bishop was
reduced to more confined limits. It is, then, plain
that this jurisdiction was conferred immediately
by those who instituted the Bishops, and assigned
them to this or that determinate people ; and as
these institutors acted according to the instructions
and the discipline received from the Apostles, so
in origin the jurisdiction descended from the
Apostles, and from S. Peter^ who had received it
immediately from Jesus Christ. Thus the streams,
80 THE POWER OF THE PRIMACV.
however multiplied in their course, as S. Cyprian
says, parting themselves to irrigate this or that
plot, and springing one from the other, if you
mount upwards, still are found all parted from one
fountain, which gave to them the first waters and
the first impulse to their movement." ^
Let us only add to this, that he who received
the charge, " Feed My sheep," did not cease to be
their proper pastor, because he divided them among
himself and his brethren, any more than the Bishop,
when he commits a portion of his flock to a Priest
under him, ceases to be his proper pastor ; and as
that commission was to last for ever, forasmuch
as it included all others in itself, and to have a
perpetual succession, because the Church founded
on him who held it was never to fail, so his suc-
cessor ceased not to have a full and proper power
" to feed, to rule, and to govern the Universal
Church." 2
He therefore it is, as the head of the whole
Church, and representing it, who gave mission in
ancient times to the Sees of Rome, Alexandria,
and Antioch, and to all others descending from
them ; and he in modern times who gives mission
to all Bishops directly from his own person ; in
both cases" the fountain-head dwelt in himself un-
diminished ; and this is that universal,. immediate,
and supreme jurisdiction which is the proper
nature of the Primacy.
^ Bolgeni, L'Episcopato, s. 94.
^ Definition of the Council of Florence.
SECTION V.
THE CHURCH'S WITNESS TO THE PRIMACY.
We have now then considered the Primacy of S.
Peter's See as a power in present possession,
acknowledged by many various nations, continued
on by a most wonderful providence of God, wholly
without a parallel, for eighteen hundred years,
unchanged while everything else around has
changed again and again, that is, empires, races,
manners, civilisation, literature, the centre of politi-
cal power, the centre of moral gravity ; a power
still existing, which has seen all the monarchies of
Europe arise as children around it, and all the
nations of Europe come to its feet for instruction ;
and which therefore presents itself with every
claim to consideration which a power can have ;
with a right, moreover, to interpret in its own
favour, if indeed that be needful, expressions in
ancient authors concerning it, which refer to its
headship, without defining it
We have seen, moreover, that this power is
based, not on any grant of the Church of God,
not on any concessions of its Bishops from age to
age, but on the express words of the Founder of
that Church, words so remarkable that they prove
6
82
themselves to be His who spake as never man
spake, in that v^^hile they convey the supreme
power which is to rule and guide that Church for
ever, to be seated at its heart, and to move its
hands, they enfold in themselves the living germ
from which all its organisation has sprung. In
them a root is planted by the Maker of all things,
which contains potentially the tree with all its
wide-spreading branches, down to the minutest
leaf of its vast and varied foliage.
Thirdly, the end and object for which this
central power is created has been set forth ; that
unity of faith and of communion, that building
up of the Mystical Body to the -measure of the
stature of the perfect man, which is a primary
purpose of our Lord's Incarnation, and points to
a glory only to be revealed at the " restitution of
all things."
Fourthly, the nature of this power has been
explained as consisting in a universal, immediate,
and supreme jurisdiction over the whole Church ;
such as the very words of institution themselves
convey, and such as is imperatively demanded to
fulfil the purpose for which the Lord created the
power ; nay, for which He Himself became in-
carnate.
One thing only remains, to show that the Church
has borne witness, throughout her existence, to a
power which she did not create, the secret of her
own union, vigour, and strength. This has only
been done in a few instances at present, though
these are among the most decisive which antiquity
TO THE PRIMACY. 83
supplies. But I proceed to give abundant proof
to every candid mind of what I have heretofore
laid down.
The Primitive Church, during nearly three
centuries, in which it was exposed to continual
persecution, was never assembled in a General
Council. During that time it was governed by
its own Episcopate, cast into the shape which it
had received from the moulding hand of S. Peter
himself, at the head of the Apostolic College.
That Apostle, in his own lifetime, established three
primatial Sees, of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch,
— the mother Churches of three great patriarchates,
which, as Church after Church was propagated
from them, and received its Bishop, yet retained
over them a parent's right of correction and in-
spection. Of these, the two latter, the Sees of
Alexandria and Antioch, were subordinate to the
See of Rome, to whose Bishop their Bishops were
accountable for the purity of their faith, and the
due government of their Church. The records of
these three first centuries have in a large degree
perished ; but we see standing out of them
certain facts, which cannot be accounted for but
by the Roman Primacy, viz., that the Bishop of
Rome, and he alone, claims a control over the
Churches of the whole world, threatening to sever
from his communion (and sometimes carrying
that threat into execution) such as do not
maintain the purity of that faith which he is
charged to watch over, and the rules of that
communion which had come down from the
84 THE church's witness
Apostles. The well-known instances of S. Clement
writing to the Church of Corinth to heal its divi-
sions, in the very lifetime of S. John, of S. Victor
censuring the Asiatic, and S. Stephen the African
Churches, and of S. Dionysius receiving an apology
for his faith from his namesake, the Bishop of
Alexandria, are sufficient proofs of this. The
force of the fact lies in this, that the Bishop of
Rome, and he alone, claims, as need may arise,
a control over all ; but no one claims a control
over him.
But as soon as the ages of persecution are past,
as soon as the Church Catholic is allowed to develop
free action as one corporate whole, and to exert the
powers which God had planted within her, S. Peter
is found on the throne of the Roman Pontiffs,
superintending, maintaining, consolidating her out-
ward framework and her inward faith.
In the year 325, at the great Nicene Council, the
pre-eminent authority of the Bishops of Rome,
Alexandria, and Antioch, is acknowledged, the
former of these being referred to as a type to
sanction a claim of the latter over his subject
Bishops, and it is stated that " the Roman Church
always had the primacy." The Bishop of Corduba,
in Spain, apparently at once Papal Legate and
Imperial Commissioner, and Vitus and Vincentius,
Legates of S. Sylvester, presided over the Council ;
and " it was determined that all these things should
be sent to Sylvester, Bishop of the city of Rome,"^
^ Codex Canonum Sedis Apostolicce, S. Leo, torn. iii. p. 46, edit.
Ballerini.
TO THE PRIMACY. 85
for his confirmation, which only could make the
Council ecumenical, as may be seen even from the
fact that of three hundred and eighteen Bishops
twenty-two alone belonged to Europe.
In the year 347, a great Council was held at
Sardica, intended to be ecumenical. It was pre-
sided over by the same Bishop of Corduba, and in
its synodicai letter to Pope Julius, tells him, " for
this will seem the best, and by far the most fitting,
if the Lord's Bishops make reference from all the
provinces to the head, that is, the See of the Apostle
Peter r ^
Thus these two great and most ancient Councils
do not in the least define the nature of that Primacy
which they refer to as an existing fact from the
beginning in the Church. So true is that which
was stated by a Roman Council of seventy Bishops,
under Pope Gelasius, in the year 494, which, after
naming the canon of Scripture, the present Roman
canon, says, " next to all these Scriptures of the
Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles, on which the
Catholic Church by the grace of God is founded,
this too we think should be remarked, that though
all the Catholic Churches throughout the world be
but one bridal-chamber of Christ, yet the holy
Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church has been
preferred to the rest by no decrees of a Council, but
has obtained the Primacy by the voice in the
Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Himself, saying :
^ Thou art Peter,' etc.
^ Mansi, iii. 40.
86 THE church's witness
" To whom was given also the society of the
most blessed Apostle Paul, the vessel of election,
who on one and the same day suffering a glorious
death with Peter in the city of Rome, under Caesar
Nero, was crowned ; and they alike consecrated to
Christ the Lord the above-named holy Roman
Church, and as such set it above all the cities in
the whole world by their presence and venerable
triumph.
" First, therefore, is the Roman Church, the See
of Peter the Apostle, ' not having spot, or wrinkle,
or any such thing.'
" But second is the See consecrated at Alex-
andria, in the name of blessed Peter, by Mark,
his disciple and Evangelist, who was sent by Peter
the Apostle into Egypt, taught the word of truth,
and consummated a glorious martyrdom.
" And third is the See held in honour at Antioch
in the name of the same most blessed Apostle
Peter, because that he dwelt there before he came
to Rome, and there first the name of the new
people of the Christians arose." ^
I now, then, proceed to bring witnesses to the
seven following points, which I hope to prove in
order :
I. A general supremacy in the Roman See over
the whole Church ; a supremacy exactly the same
in principle with that which is now claimed.
II. The grounding of this supremacy on the
attribution of Matt. xvi. i8, Luke xxii. 31, and
1 Mansi, viii. 149.
TO THE PRIMACY. 8/
John xxi. 15, in a special sense to the Pope, as
successor of S. Peter.
III. The original derivation of Episcopal Juris-
diction from the person of Peter, and its perpetual
fountain in the See of Rome as representing him.
IV. The Papal supremacy over the East, ac-
knowledged by its own rulers and Councils before
the separation.
V. The Pope's attitude to Councils, as indicating
his rank.
VI. His confirmation of Councils.
VII. The necessity of communion with the
Pope.
In so wide a field I can but select the more emi-
nent proofs; but they will be enough to convince all
who are capable of conviction.
I. And first, as to general supremacy, I will take
the testimony of the great Ecumenical Councils
from the third in the year 431, to the eighth in the
year 869, for these were all composed of Eastern
Bishops, the Papal Legates being often the only,
or nearly the only, Westerns present ; besides,
therefore, their intrinsic authority, they supply a
proof that what was stated before them without
contradiction, and by them, in favour of the great
Western See, was quite indisputable. If any could
have disputed it, they would : for " they were all
held' in the East, by Bishops of the East, under
the influence of the Emperors of the East." ^
The third Council was held at Ephesus in 431,
^ Guizot, Civilisation en France, 12 le9on.
88 THE church's witness
to judge Nestorius, Archbishop of Constantinople.
It was presided over by S. Cyril of Alexandria, by
a special commission from Pope Celestine, and
besides was attended by three Papal Legates. The
following are some of their proceedings in the
Council :
" Arcadius, Bishop and Legate of the Roman
Church, said : ' Let your Blessedness order to be
read to you the letters of holy Pope Celestine,
Bishop of the Apostolic See, and to be named with
all veneration, which have been brought by us, by
which your Blessedness will be able to learn wkaf
care he bears for all the Churches.'' " ^
In these letters is said : " We' have directed,
according to our solicitude, our holy brethren and
fellow-Priests, men of one mind with us and well
approved, Arcadius and Projectus, Bishops, and
Philip our Presbyter, who shall be present at your
acts, and shall carry into effect what we have before
determined ; assent to zvhoni zve doubt not will be
accorded by your Holiness'.' ^
This means that the Pope had already condemned
Nestorius, and deposed him, unless he retracted ;
which throws light on the following sentences of
the Council on him :
'* Compelled by the sacred canons and the letter
of our most holy father a7td fellow-minister, Celestine,
Bishop of the Roman Church, we have with tears
come of necessity to this painful sentence against
him." 3
^ Mansi, iv. 1282. ^ Coustant., Ep. Rom. Pont., 1162.
^ Mansi, iv. 1211.
TO THE PRIMACY. 89
Farther on — " Philip, Presbyter and Legate of
the Apostohc See, said : ' We return thanks to the
holy and venerable Council, that the letters of our
holy Pope having been read to you, you have joined
yourselves as holy members to a holy head. For
your Blessedness is not ignorant that the blessed
Apostle Peter is head of the whole faith, and of the
Apostles likewise' " ^
And again, after hearing the acts against
Nestorius read, the same says : "It is doubtful to
no one, but rather known to all ages, that holy and
most blessed Peter, prince and head of the Apostles,
J)illar of the faith, a?id fou7idatio?t of the Catholic
Church, received from our Lord fesus Christ, Saviour
and Redeemer of the human race, the keys of the
kingdom of Heaven, and that the power of loosing
and binding sins was given to him ; who to this
very time and for ever lives, and exercises Judg-
ment in his successors. And so our most blessed
Pope Celestine the Bishop, his successor in due
order, and holding his place, has sent to this holy
Council us to represent him." '^
S. Cyril, having heard this declaration of the
Legate, moved that he and the other Legates,
■" since they had fulfilled what was ordered them "
by Pope Celestine, should set their hands to the
-deposition of Nestorius, " and the holy Council
said : Inasmuch as Arcadius and Projectus, Legates,
and Philip, Presbyter and Legate of the Apostolic
See, have said what is fitting, it follows that they
should also subscribe and confirm the acts."
1 Mansi, iv. 1290. ^ Ibid.
9Q THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
S. Cyril, most zealous of all men for the rights
of the Eastern Church, saw nothing strange in what
is here said of the Pope.
In the year 45 1 the great Council of Chalcedon
was called to censure the heresy of Eutyches. S.
Leo had, in a letter to Flavian, Archbishop of
Constantinople, laid down the true faith ; and he
speaks in the following letter to the Council of the
obedience which he expected to be rendered to his
decision.
" In these brethren, Paschasinus and Lucentius,
Bishops, Boniface and Basil, Presbyters, who have
been sent from the Apostolic See, let your Brother-
hood deem me to preside over- the Council, my
presence not being disjoined from you, for I am
there in my representatives, and long since have
not been wanting in setting forth the Catholic Faith :
for you cannot be ignorant what from ancient
tradition we hold, and so cannot doubt what we
desire. Wherefore, most dear brethren, rejecting alto-
gether the boldness of disputi7tg against the faith in-
spired from above, let the vain unbelief of those who are
in error be quiet, nor venture to defend what may not
be believed ; inasmuch as, according to the authorities
of the Gospel, the words of the Prophets, and the
Apostolic doctrine, it has been most fully and clearly
declared, in the letter we have sent to the Bishop
Flavian of happy 7?iemory, what is the pious and
sincere confession concerning the mystery of the
Incarnation of our Lord fesus Christ T ^
Dioscorus, Archbishop of Alexandria, and
1 S. Leo, Ep. 93.
TO THE PRIMACY. pi
president of the Council at Ephesus two years
before, had taken his place among the Bishops ;
but at the very opening of the Council, Paschasinus,
Legate of the Apostolic See, said : " We have in our
hands the commands of the most blessed and
Apostolic man, Pope of the city of Rome, which is the
head of all Churches, ifi which his Apostleship has
thought good to order that Dioscorus should not sit in
the Council, but be introduced to make his defence.'*
And Lucentius, another Legate, gives the reason :
" He must give an account of the judgment he
passed ; inasmuch as, not having the right to judge,
he presumed, and dared to hold a Council without
the authority of the Apostolic See, which never was
lawful, never has been done." ^
And Dioscorus takes his seat as a criminal.
The condemnation of Dioscorus is afterwards
passed in the following terms by the Pope's Legates :
" Paschasinus, — and Lucentius, — and Boniface, —
pronounced. Leo, most holy and blessed Arch-
bishop of great and elder Rome, by us, and by this
holy Council, together with the most blessed Apostle
Peter, who is the Rock and ground of the Catholic
Church, and the foundation of the right faith, hath
stripped him as well of the rank of Bishop, as also
hath severed him from all sacerdotal ministry.'"^
All assent to this.
Moreover, the Council subscribes to every particle
of S. Leo's, letter.
I have already given above the substance of their
letter to him. No stronger terms can be found to
^ Mansi, vi. 579, 582. ^ Ibid., 1047.
92 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
express the supremacy than those there voluntarily
tendered to him.
Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople, humbly
assures him, as the Council had done, " that all the
force of the acts and their confirmation had been
reserved to the authority of your Blessedness."^
Notwithstanding, S. Leo confirms their decrees
only as to matters of faith, and refuses the canon
about the See of Constantinople.
Thus the full Papal Supremacy is set forth in
these two Councils, held at the most flourishing
period of the ancient Church ; and not only so, but
it is recognised as existing from the beginning, and
founded on the prerogatives given' by our Lord to
Peter, whose person is viewed as continued on in
his successors ; and the grant of infallibility,
deposited in the Church, is not obscurely declared
to be seated in the person of her chief.
The two opposed heresies of Nestorius and
Eutyches had distracted the East for more than
two centuries after the Council of Chalcedon. At
length, in the year 680, the sixth General Council
meets at Constantinople, to censure the Monothe-
lite error, the last refinement of Grecian subtlety
upon the grosser form of Eutyches. The Roman
empire of the West had long fallen ; the political
estrangement between the two parts of Christen-
dom much increased. But the acknowledgment of
the Pope's headship is as definite as ever.
Pope Agatho writes thus to the Emperor :
" Peter, who, by a triple commendation received
^ S. Leo, Ep. 132,
TO THE PRIMACY. 93
the spiritual sheep of the Church from the Re-
deemer of all Himself, to be fed by him ; under
whose safeguard this his Apostolical Church hath
never turned aside from the path of truth to any
error whatsoever ; whose authority, as of the Prince
of all the Apostles, the whole Catholic Church at
all times, and the universal Councils faithfully em-
bracing, have in all respects followed." ^
His letter is read in the Council, and approved ;
and it answers him thus :
" Greatest diseases require stronger remedies, as
you know, O most Blessed ; and therefore Christ,
our true God, the Virtue truly Creator and Governor
of all things, hath given us a wise physician, your
Holiness, honoured of God ; who firmly repellest
the contagious plague of heresy by the antidotes of
orthodoxy, and impartest the strength of health to
the members of the Church. And therefore we
willingly leave what should be done to you, as
Prelate of the first See of the Universal Church,
standing on the firm rock of faith, having read
through the letter of a true confession sent by your
Paternal Blessedness to our most religious Emperor ;
which we recognise as divinely written from the
supreme head of the Apostles!' ^
A hundred years later, in 789, Pope Hadrian
writes to Tarasius, the newly-elected Patriarch of
Constantinople, a letter, which is read in the
seventh General Council, and expressly approved
and accepted both by the Archbishop and the
Council. He begins by speaking of " the pastoral
1 Mansi, xi. 239. ^ Ibid., 683.
94 THE church's witness
care with which it befits us to feed the people of
God ; " goes on to say, that only the correctness of
faith in Tarasius allowed him to overlook the
irregularity of his promotion from a layman ; and
then, after quoting '' Thou art Peter," adds, " whose
See is conspicuous, as holding primacy over the
whole world, and is the head of all the Churches of
God. Whence the same blessed Apostle Peter, by
the charge of the Lord feeding the Church, hath
left nothing out of his range, but always hath held
and holds the headship. To which, if your Holi-
ness desires to adhere, and with a pure and un-
corrupt mind, in the sincerity of your heart, studies
to keep the sacred and orthodox mould of doctrine
delivered by our Apostolic See," ^ etc.
This seventh Council, rejecting a former great
Council of some hundred Bishops, held thirty years
before at Constantinople, from being general,
says :
" How was it great and universal? for it had not
the countenance of the Roman Pope of that time,
nor of the Bishops who are about him, nor by his
Legates, nor by an encyclical letter, as the law of
Councils requires r ^
But far more remarkable yet are the proceedings
of the eighth Council, in 869, as if Providence had
willed that before the Greek schism was accom-
plished, the strongest possible testimony against
itself, and for that authority which it would be led
in self-defence to deny, should be borne by the
Patriarchs and Bishops of the East.
^ Mansi, xii. 1077-1084. ^ Ihid.^ xiii. 207.
TO THE PRIMACY. 95
At the beginning of the Council, the Papal
Legates require that every Bishop should sign and
deliver to them for transmission to the Pope a pro-
fession of faith, similar in its chief parts to that
which had been sent more than three hundred
years before from Pope Hormisdas to the Patriarch
of Constantinople, after the schism of Acacius, on
signing which the Patriarch and all the Bishops of
the East were readmitted to communion.
The Legates are obeyed. The profession runs
thus:
" Because the sentence of our Lord Jesus Christ
cannot be passed by, who says : ' Thou art Peter,
and upon this rock I will build My Church,' these
words are proved by the real effect which has
followed ; because in the Apostolic See the Catholic
religion has ever been kept immaculate, and holy
doctrine celebrated there. Wherefore, by no means
desiring to be separated from its faith and doctrine,
and following in all things the constitutions of the
Fathers, and chiefly of the holy Prelates of the
ApostoHc See, we anathematise all heresies. . . .
Condemning, particularly, Photius and Gregory of
SyvdiCUSQ, parricides, that is, who have not feared to
put out their tongue against their Spiritual Father.
Since, following in all things the Apostolic See,
and observing in all things its constitutions, we
hope that we may be worthy to be in one com-
munion, which the Apostolic See sets forth, in
which is the co7nplete and triLe solidity of the Christian
religion. But this my profession I (such a Bishop)
have written with my own hand, and delivered to
96 THE church's witness
thee, most holy Hadrian, Supreme Pontiff and
Universal Pope." ^
The following letter of S. Ignatius, Patriarch of
Constantinople, to Pope Nicholas, was also read
and approved in the Council. It begins :
" Of the wounds and sores of human members
art has produced many physicians ; of whom one
has treated this disease, and another that, using in
their experience amputation or cure. But of these,
which are in the members of our Saviour Christ
and God, the Head of us all, and of His spouse the
Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Supreme Chief
and most powerful Word, Orderer, and Healer, and
Master, the God of all, hath produced one singular,
pre-eminent, and most Catholic Physician, your
fraternal Holiness and paternal Goodness. Where-
fore He said to Peter, the great and supreme
Apostle : ' Thou art Peter,' etc. And again : * I
will give to thee the keys,' etc. For such blessed
words He did not, surely, according to a sort of lot,
circumscribe and define to the prince of the
Apostles alone, but transmitted by him to all who,
after him, according to him, were to be made
supreme pastors, and most divine and sacred
Pontiffs of olden Rome. And therefore, from of
old and the ancient times, when heresies and con-
tradictions have arisen, many of those who preceded
there your Holiness and supreme Paternity, have
many times been made the pluckers-up and de-
stroyers of evil tares,- and of sick members, plague-
^ Mansi, xvi. 27.
TO THE PRIMACY. 9/
struck and incurable : being, that is, successors of
the prince of the Apostles, and imitating his zeal in
the faith, according to Christ : and now in our times
your Holiness hath worthily exercised the power
given to you by Christ." ^
This letter also of Pope Nicholas to the Emperor
Michael, was read and approved in the Council.
"That headship of divine power, which the
Maker of all things has bestowed on His elect
Apostles, He hath, by establishing its solidity on
the unshaken faith of Peter, prince of the Apostles,
made his see pre-eminent, yea, the first. P"or, by
the word of the Lord it was said to him, ' Thou art
Peter,' etc. Moreover, Peter so entirely ceases not
to maintain for his own people the structure of the
Universal Church unshaken and rooted in the
strength of faith, from the firmness of the Rock,
which is Christ, that he hastens to reform by the
rule of right faith the madness of the wandering.
For, according to the faithful maintenance of the
Apostolical tradition, as yourselves know, the holy
Fathers have often met, by whom it has both been
resolved and observed, that without the consent of
the Roman See and the Roman Pontiff no
emergent deliberation should be terminated." ^
To Photius himself Pope Nicholas says, as read
in the Council, after setting forth the Primacy in
like terms :
" Because the whole number of believers seeks
doctrine, and asks for the integrity of the faith,
1 Mansii xvi. 47. ^ Ibid., 59.
98 tub: church's witness
and those who are worthy solicit the deliverance
from crimes from this holy Roman Church, which
is the head of all Churches, it behoves us, to whom
it is intrusted, to be anxious, and the more fervently
to be set on watch over the Lord's flock," ^ etc.
And this letter of the same Pope to the Arch-
bishops, Metropolitans, and Bishops, subject to the
See of Constantinople, is also read in the Council.
" Wherefore, because, as your wisdom knows, we
are bound by the care of all Christ's sheep, holding
through the abundance of heavenly grace his place,
to whom is especially said by God, ' Feed My
sheep ; ' and, ' again, ' And thou, when thou art
converted, confirm thy brethren ; ' we could not so
dissimulate or neglect, but that we should visit our
sheep dispersed and scattered, and confirm in the
faith and good conduct our brethren and neigh-
bours." 2
Lastly, in its second Canon, the Council itself
enacts :
" Obey those set over you, and be subject to
them, for they watch for your souls, as those that
shall give account : thus Paul, the great Apostle,
commands. Therefore^ holding most blessed Pope
Nicholas for the organ of the Holy Spirit, as too
most holy Pope Hadrian, his successor, we decree
and approve that all things, which by them at
different times have been set forth and promulged
synodically, as well for the defence of the Church
of Constantinople as for the expulsion of Photius,
be kept and maintained." '^
^ Mansi, xvi. 6g. -Ibid., loi. ^Ibid., i6o.
TO THE PRIMACY. 99
And in the twenty-first Canon it forbids even a
General Council '•' boldly to give sentence against
the supreme Pontiffs of elder Rome." ^
And here, indeed, one might stop ; for supremacy
as to government, and infallibility as to faith, have
been, in these extracts of the ancient Councils,
again and again set forth as belonging to the See
of Rome. What more can be asked ?
S. Ambrose, in the year 390, at the head of his
Council of Bishops, thus thanked Pope Siricius, for
■condemning the heretic Jovinian, and transmitting
his condemnation to all Churches : " We recognise
in the letter of your Holiness the watchfulness of
the good shepherd, who carefully guards the door
-committed to you, and with pious solicitude defends
Christ's fold, worthy whom the Lord's sheep may
hear and follow. — And so Jovinian, Auxentius, etc.,
whom your Holiness has condemned, know to be
condemned by us likewise, according to your judg-
ment," 2
The Decretal Letters of the Popes of the first
three centuries have perished ; but with Siricius, in
the year 384, a complete series of them commences.
They are the public acts of the Church's Chief
Bishop, in his ordinary government, written to
Bishops all over the world, and accepted as laws
by them to whom they were written. A learned
writer, who has compiled the most ancient, says of
them : " Out of so many Pontiffs singular for their
learning and holiness, whom I will not say to
^ Mansi, xvi. 174. -Ibid., ili. 664.
100 THE CHURCH S WITNESS
charge, but even to suspect, of arrogance or pride^
were rash in the highest degree, not one will be
found who does not believe that this prerogative
has been conferred on himself or his Church, to be
the head of the whole Church. On the other hand^
among so many great Churches of the Christian
w^orld, founded by the Apostles or their successors,,
not one will be found whose Prelate was so am-
bitious as to venture to call himself head of the
whole Church."^
Let us see how this appears in all the demeanour
and language of these ancient Popes : how exactly
the power which is claimed and exercised now was
claimed and exercised at the end of the fourth
century, and from that time forward, not as a new
thing, but as existing from the first, by our Lord's
institution, and as in full and undisputed operation.
Siricius, A.D. 385, to the Bishop of Tarragona, in
Spain, says: "We bear the burdens of all who
labour, or rather, the blessed Apostle Peter bears
these in us, who in all things, as we trust, protects
and defends us, the heirs of his administration."
And, "you have made reference to the Roman
Church, that is, the head of your body!' ^
His successor, Anastasius, to John, Bishop of
Jerusalem, A.D. 400, condemning the opinions of
Origen :
" Certainly I shall not be wanting in care to-
guard the faith of the Gospel in respect to my
popidations, and so far as I am able to hold inter-
' Coustant,, Prcf., p. iii. '^ Ibid., pp. 624, 637.
TO THE PRIMACY. lOI
course, by letters, witJi the paints of my body over
the different countries of the earth." ^
His successor, Innocent, two letters from whom,
so highly praised by S. Augustine, I have given
above, speaks, A.D. 410, to the Bishop of Nocera,
"*'as referring to us, that is, the head and apex of the
Episcopate!' '^
Pope Celestine, in 430, writes to the clergy and
people of Constantinople, harassed by the heresy of
Nestorius :
" When I am about to speak to those who make
up the Church, let the Apostle's words furnish me
with a beginning : ' beside all those things which
are without my daily pressure of toil, the care of all
the Churches.' So we too, though at a great
distance, when ive learnt that our members luere
being rent by perverse doctrine, in our paternal
solicitude burning us for you, were kindled at the
fire which was scorching others : although among
the Churches of God, which everywhere make up
one bridal-chamber of Christ, nothing be distant,
nothing can be accounted as foreign. Since, there-
fore, you are our bozoels" etc.^
His successor, Xystus, announcing his election to
S. Cyril, says : " God hath deigned to call us to the
supreme height of the Priesthood." ^
Pope Zosimus, successor of S. Innocent, and two
years after the letters quoted above from him, writes
thus in 418, to Aurelius, Primate of Africa, and the
Council of Carthage :
1 Coustant., p. 728. - Ih'uL, p. gio. =* Ibid., p. 1131.
^ Ibid., p. 1231.
I02 THE CHURCH S WHNKSS
" Although the tradition of the Fathers has as-
signed so great an authority to the Apostolic See^
that no one may venture to call in question its
judgment, and has maintained this always by its
canons and rules, and though ecclesiastical discipline,,
as shown in the current of its laws, pays the rever-
ence which it owes to the name of Peter, from
whom likezvise itself descends : for canonical anti-
quity, by the judgment of all, hath willed the power
of this Apostle to be so great, from the very pro-
mise of Christ our God, that he can loose what is^
bound, and bind what is loosed ; and an equal
power is given to those who enjoy, with his consent,
the inheritance of his See ; for he has a care as well
for all Churches, as especially for this, where he
sat : nor does he permit any blast to shake a privi-
lege or a sentence to which he has given the form
and immovable foundation of his own name, and
which, without danger to themselves, none may
rashly attack : Peter then, being a head of such
authority, and the zeal of all our ancestors having
further confirmed this, so that the Roman Church
is established by all human as well as divine
laws and discipline — whose place you are not ignor-
ant that we rule, and hold the power of his name —
rather, most dear brethren, you know it, and as
Bishops are bound to know it ; such then, I say,
being our authority, t/iat no one can question our
sentence^ we have done nothing which we have not
of our own accord referred in our letters to your
knowledge." ^
^ Coustant., p. 974.
TO THE PRIMACV. 103
But the civil power of that day agreed with the
Pope in its estimate of his rights. The following is
the edict of the Emperor Valentinian, given when
S. Leo met with opposition from Hilary of Aries,
in 445.
" Since therefore the merit of S. Peter, who is the
chief of the Episcopal coronet, and the dignity of
the Roman city, moreover the authority of a sacred
Synod, have confirmed the Primacy of the Apostolic
See, that presumption may not endeavour to attempt
anything unlawful contrary to the authority of that
See ; for then at length the peace of the Churches
will everywhere be preserved, if the whole {tmiver-
sitas) acknowledge its ruler. These rules having
been kept inviolably hitherto, etc. We decree, by
this perpetual command, that no Gallican Bishops,
nor those of the other provinces, may attempt to do
anything contrary to ancient custom without the
authority of the venerable man, the Pope of the
Eternal City ; but let them all deem that a law, what-
soever the authority of the Apostolic See hath sanctioned
or may sanction.'' 1
In the year 499, Pope Symmachus was unjustly
accused on a charge of immorality. The Bishops
of Italy, whom King Theodoric wished to try him,
told the king, " that the person who was attacked
ought himself to have called the Council, knowing
that to his See in the first place the rank or chief ship
of the Apostle Peter, and then the autJiority of vener-
able Councils following out the Lord's comniafid, had
' Baronius, Ann., 445.
104 THE CHURCH'S witness
coimnitted a power witJwut its like in the Churches :
nor would a precedent be easily found to show that
in a similar matter the Prelate of the aforementioned
See had been subject to the judgment of his in-
feriors." ^ Even when the Pope sanctioned the
Council, they refused to try him, pronouncing him
" so far as regards men discharged and free, because
the whole matter has been left to the divine judg-
ment."
Yet jealous as they had been of the Pope's
rights, the Bishops of Gaul were in alarm at the
very thought of his being tried. Their feelings were
expressed in the name of all by the most illustrious
of their number, S. Avitus of Vienne, who, in a
letter to the Roman Senators, Faiistus and Sym-
machus, says : " We were in a state of anxiety and
alarm about the cause of the Roman Church, inas-
much as we felt that our order was endangered by an
attack upon its heady Again, further on, "What
license for accusation against the headship of the
Universal Church ought to be allowed?" And,
" As a Roman Senator and a Christian Bishop, I
conjure you that the state of the Church be not less
precious to you than that of the Commonwealth.
If you judge the matter with your profound con-
sideration, not merely is that cause which was
examined at Rome to be contemplated, but as, if
in the case of other Bishops any danger be incurred,
it can be repaired, so if the Pope of the City be put
in question^ 7tot a single Bishop, but the Episcopate
1 Mansi, viii. 248.
TO THE PRIMACY. IO5
itself, will appear to be in danger. He ivho rules the
Lord's fold will render an account how he ad-
ministers the care of the lambs intrusted to him ;
but it belongs not to the flock to alarm its own
shepherd, but to the Judge. Wherefore restore to
us, if it be not yet restored, concord in our chief." ^
No mediaeval Saint, as it seems, understood the
Pope's office and universal charge better than S,
Avitus.
Ennodius, afterwards Bishop of Ticinum, wrote a
defence of this Council, which was so approved as
to be put among the Apostolical decrees : in this he
says : " God perchance has willed to terminate the
causes of other men by means of men ; but the Pre-
late of that See He hath reserved, without question,
to His own judgment. It is His will that the suc-
cessors of the blessed Apostle Peter should owe
their innocence to Heaven alone, and should mani-
fest a pure conscience to the inquisition of the most
severe Judge. Do you answer, such will be the
condition of all souls in that scrutiny? I retort,
that to one was said : ' Thou art Peter,' etc. And
again, that by the voice of holy Pontiffs, the dignity
of his See has been made venerable in the whole
world, since all the fait J if nl everywhere are submitted
io it, and it is marked out as the head of the whole
Bodyr ^
The same S. Avitus, writing a few years later to
Pope Hormisdas, says : " Whilst you see that it is
suitable to the state of religion, and to the full rules
^ Mansi, viii. 293. ^ Ibid., 284.
I06 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
of the Catholic faith, tJiat tJie ever-watchfiil care oj-
your exhoj'tation should inform the flock committed ta
you throughout all the viembers of the Universat
Church. As to the devotion of all Gaul, I will pro-
mise that all are watching for your sentence respect-
ing the state of the faith." ^
And to Senarius, Count of the Patrimony of
Theodoric : " You know that it is one of the laws,
regarding Councils, that in things which pertain to
the state of the Church, if any doubt arises, we-
should, as obedient members, recur to the supreme
Bishop of the Roman Church, as to our headT ^
When Pope Silverius, by a succession of intrigues,,
had been banished from Rome, under Justinian, in
the year 538, he came to Patara, the Bishop of
which city w^ent to the Emperor, '' and called to
witness the judgment of God respecting the expul-
sion of the Bishop of so great a See, saying that
there were in this world many kings, but not one,,
as that Pope is, over the Church of the whole
world." 3
No one, so far as I know, has ever accused the
great Pope Gregory of usurpation, least of all should
an Englishman. He wrote to the Emperor of the
day :
" To all who know the Gospel, it is manifest that
the charge of the whole Church was intrusted by the
voice of the Lord to the holy Apostle Peter, chief of
all the Apostles. For to him is said, / Peter, lovest
thou Me ? feed My sheep.' To him is said, ' Behold,
1 Mansi, viii. 408. '"^Gallandi, x. 726,
^Baronius, AnnaL, 538, 13, from Liberatus Diaconiis.
TO THE I'RIMACV. lO/
Satan hath desired to sift you," etc. To him is said^
* Thou art Peter,' etc. Lo, he hath received the
keys of the kingdom of Heaven, the power of binding
and loosing is given to him, the care of the wJiole
Church is committed to him and the Primacy, and
yet he is not called Universal Apostle." ^ S^
Gregory well knew that in his own simple title,
" Gregory, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God,'"
everything was conveyed ; he was pre-eminently
the Bishop, and needed not the titles Ecumenical
Patriarch, or Universal Apostle, to set forth his
charge of Supreme Shepherd. S. Gregory, like all
his predecessors and all his successors, was well
assured that the Rock was that single point of the
Church which could never be moved. " Who is
ignorant," says he, " that the holy Church is
established on the firmness of the chief of the Apostles,
who in his name expressed the firmness of his mind^
being called Peter from the Rock ? '' '^
This is again attested by an Eastern, S. Maximus,
Abbot of Constantinople, afterwards martyred for
the faith. He says in a certain letter concerning
Pyrrhus, Patriarch of Constantinople, a chief of the
Monothelites, about 650 :
" If he would neither be a heretic, nor be con-
sidered one, let him not satisfy this or that person,
for this is superfluous and irrational ; since just as
when one is scandalised by him, all ?iYQ scandalised ;
so when one is satisfied, all beyond a doubt are
satisfied too. Let him hasten before all to satisfy
1 S. Greg., Ep., lib. v. 20.
^ Ibid., lib. vii. 40.
I08 THE church's WITNESS
the Roman See. That done, all will everywhere,
with one accord, hold him pious and orthodox. For
he merely talks idly when he thinks of persuading
and imposing on suchlike as me, and does not
satisfy and implore the most blessed Pope of the
most holy Roman Church, that is, the Apostolic See,
which from the very Incarnate Word of God, but also
from all holy Councils, according to the sacred canons
and rules has received and holds in all persons, and
for all things, empire, authority, and power to bind
and to loose, over the universal holy Churches of God,
which are in all the world. For when this binds and
looses, so also does the Word in Heaven, who rules
the celestial virtues!' ^ And just before, " Who
anathematises the Roman See, that is, the Catholic
Churchy
Once more let us take another Eastern, S. Theo-
dore, Abbot of the Studium at Constantinople, who,
in the year 809, writes : "To the most holy and
supreme Father of Fathers, my Lord Leo, Apostolic
Pope :
" Since on the great Peter, Christ our God, after
the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, conferred also
thedignity of the pastoral Headship, to Peter surely,
or his successor, whatever innovation is made in the
Catholic Church by those who err from the truth
must be referred. — Save us. Arch-pastor of the
Church which is under Heaven." ^^
Now, from these testimonies it will be seen that
the nature of the supremacy which they set forth is,
^ Mansi, x. 692.
'^ Baronius, Annul. ^ 809, 14.
TO THE PRIMACY. lO^
a charge of the whole flock of our Lord Jesus Christy
reaching therefore to every need of the flock, not
intruding- ox\ the particular duties of any subordinate
pastorship, but embracing, regulating, and main-
taining all, so that the same great Pontiff Gregory
observes : " As to what he says that he is subject to
the Apostolical See, / knoiv not what Bishop is not
subject to it, if any fault be found in Bishops. But
when no fault requires it, all ai^e equal according to
the estimation of humility : " ^ who also charges his
defensor in Sicily not to meddle with the jurisdic-
tion of Bishops ; and censuring an act of dis-
obedience in another Bishop, tells him : '' Had
either of the four patriarchs done this, so great an
act of contumacy could not have been passed over
without the most grievous scandal." - And this
charge necessarily includes guardianship of the faith,
and therefore the supreme judgment in causes
touching it, and, by consequence, the gift of not
being deceived in that judgment.
It is a dream to imagine any other or lesser
Primacy than this, which alone could maintain
unity.
II. With regard to the second point, almost every
testimony hitherto adduced grounds the Primacy on
one or other, or all, of the three sayings of our Lord
to Peter, who is invariably regarded as continued
on, and living in his successors. And this brings,
me to the third point.
III. The ordinary government of the Church is,
1 S. Greg., Ep., lib. ix. 59.
-Ibid., lib. ii. 52.
1 lO TllK CHURCH'S WITNESS
perpetually referred back to Peter, as the great type
of the Bishop ; in fact, the first Bishop himself, and
of the whole flock, and so the root and origin of the
Episcopate ; but as his person was to be continued
on through all his successors, and the Episcopate
to be an ever-subsisting power, so he is viewed as a
living root ever upbearing the tree, and a fountain
ever casting forth its stream. Let us see this idea,
possessing, as it did in truth, the early Fathers,
carried out from their hints and intimations into
more and more perfect consciousness, till it is
evolved by the complete reason and the fervent love
of a S. Thomas and a S. Bonaventure.
First, Tertullian in the second century : " For if
thou thinkest the Heaven yet shut, remember that
the Lord has left the keys of it to Peter, and through
him to the Church.''^
The whole mind of S. Cyprian seems penetrated
with this thought. Thus he says :
"This will be" (that is, falling away from the
Church into heresy and schism), "most dear
brethren, so long as there is no regard to the source
of truth, no looking to the head, nor keeping to the
doctrine of our Heavenly Master. If any one con-
sider and weigh this, he will not need length of
comment or argument. It is easy to offer proofs to
a faithful mind, because in that case the truth may
be quickly stated. The Lord saith unto Peter:
' I say unto thee,' saith He, ' that thou art Peter,'
etc. To him again, after His resurrection, He says,
^ ScorpUxcc, lo.
TO THE I'RIMACY. Ill
"^ Feed My sheep.' Upon him, being one, He builds
His Church ; and though He gives to all the
Apostles an equal power, and says, ' As My Father
hath sent Me, even so I send you,' etc. ; yet in
order to manifest unity He has by His own author-
ity so placed the source of the same unity as to
begin from one. Certainly the other Apostles also
were what Peter was, endued with an equal fellow-
ship both of honour and power ; bnt a coninience-
inent is made from unity, that the Church may be
set before us as one ; which one Church in the Song
of Songs doth the Holy Spirit design and name in
the person of our Lord : ' My Dove, My Spotless
One, is but one ; she is the only one of her mother ;
^lect of her that bare her/ He who holds not this
unity of the Church, does he think that he holds
the faith ? He who strives against and resists the
Church, is he assured that he is in the Church ?
For the blessed Apostle Paul teaches this same
thing, and manifests the sacrament of unity, thus
speaking : ' There is one Body and one Spirit, even
as ye are called in one hope of your calling ; one
Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God.' This
unity firmly should we hold and maintain, especi-
ally we Bishops presiding in the Church, in orcler
that we may approve the Episcopate itself to be
one and undivided. Let no one deceive the Brother-
hood by falsehood ; no one corrupt the truth of our
faith by a faithless treachery. The Episcopate is
one, of which a part is held by each without divi-
sion of the zvhole. The Church too is one, though
she be spread abroad, and multiplies with the in-
112 tup: church's witness
crease of her progeny. Even as the sun has rays
many, yet one light ; and the tree boughs many, yet
its strength is one, seated in the deep-lodged root ;
and as, when many streams flow down from one
source, though a multiplicity of waters seem to be
diffused from its broad overflowing abundance,,
unity is preserved in the source itself. Part a ray
of the sun from its orb, and its unity forbids this
division of light ; break a branch from the tree, once
broken it can bud no more ; cut the stream from its
fountain, the remnant will be dried up.
" Thus the Church, flooded with the light of the
Lord, puts forth her rays through the whole world,
yet with one light, which is spread upon all places^
while its unity of Body is not infringed. She
stretches forth her branches over the universal
Earth, in the riches of plenty, and pours abroad
her bountiful and onward streams ; yet there is one
Head, one Source, one Mother, abundant in the
results of her fruitfulness."
Now in this famous passage no one can doubt
that Cyprian is setting forth the Church Catholic,,
and his very drift is to prove against heresy and
schism that she is one, and not only undivided, but
indivisible. What, then, is the counterpart in his
mind to the images of the sun's orb, the tree's root,,
the fountain, the head, and the mother ? What, but
the person and See of Peter, with which he began ?
It is easy, he says, to offer proofs to faith, because
the truth is quickly stated. What truth ? Peter's
Primacy, and Universal Pastorship, i
1 De Unitatc Ecclcsicr, 3.
TO THE PRIMACY. II3
And to this he refers again and again :
" Peter thus speaks, upon whom the Church was
to be built ^ teaching in the name of the Church!'^
" Peter, whom first the Lord chose, upon whom
He built His Church." 2
" Peter, upon whom the Church was founded by
God's condescendence." ^
" One Church founded by Christ the Lord upon
Peter in the origin and principle of unity." *
"The Lord to Peter y^rj-^, iipon zvhoui He built
the Church, and fj'om whom He instituted and set
forth the origin of unity, gave that power, that what
he had ' loosed on Earth should be loosed in
Heaven.'" 5
" God is one, and Christ one, and the Church
one, and one the chair founded upon the rock by the
Lord's voiced ^
To Pope Cornelius, of himself, " we know that we
exhorted them to acknowledge and to hold by the
root and the womb of the Catholic Church"
And to the same :
" They dare to set sail and to carry letters to the
Chair of Peter, and that principal Church from
which the Unity of the Priesthood took its origin."^
" Our Lord speaks in the Gospel, when He is
ordering the honour of the Bishop, and the principle
of His Church, and says to Peter : ' I say unto
thee,' etc. Fro?n this, through the changes of times
and successions, the ordination of Bishops, and the
i£/.6g. '^Ep.yi.
^ De Bono Fatientice.
^Ep.^o. "Ep.Ti,
6E^40.
7£/. 45 and 55.
114 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
principle of the Church, descends, so that the
Church is constituted upon Bishops." ^
The thought of S. Cyprian is elucidated a little
later by S. Optatus. Arguing with a Donatist
adversary, he observes :
^' You cannot deny that you know that the Chair
of VQtQr first of all was fixed in the city of Rome,
in which Peter, the head of all the Apostles, sat ;
whence too he was named Cephas ; in which single
chair unity was to be observed by all, so that the rest
of the Apostles should not each maintain a chair to
themselves ; and that forthwith he should be a schis-
matic and a sinner who against that singular chair
set up another'' ^
And again :
" For the good of unity, blessed Peter both de-
served to be preferred to all the Apostles, and alone
received the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, which
should afterwards be communicated to the rest.'' ^
S. Pacian, of Spain, to another Donatist, about
the same time :
" He spake to one, that from one He might shape
out unity!' *
S. Ambrose is possessed with the same view.
Speaking in the name of the Council of Aquileia,
assembled from almost all the provinces of the
West, to the Emperor Gratian, he says: "Your
Clemency was to be entreated not to suffer the
1 Ep, 27.
- S. Opt., cont. Parni., lib. ii. c. 6.
■^ Ibid., lib. vii. c. 3.
^ S. Pacian, Third Letter to Senipronian, 26.
TO THE PRIMACY. 1 1 5.
Roman Church, the head of the whole Roman
world, and that sacred faith of the Apostles, to be
thrown into disturbance. For therice, as from a
fountain-head^ tlie rights of venerable comimmion
flow unto ally ^
Meaning, I suppose, that no other particular
Church has a right to demand communion with
■other Churches, unless itself communicate with the
Roman Church. ^
Speaking of the passage, " Thou art Peter," he
says : " Because, therefore, Christ, by His own
authority, gave the kingdom^ could He not confirm
this man's faith ? whom when He calls the rock, He
indicates the foundation of the Church." '^ And
again : " This is that Peter to whom He said :
' Thou art Peter,' etc. Therefore, where Peter is^
there is the Church : where the Church is, there is
no death, but eternal life. " ^
Peter and the Church are viewed as existing to-
gether; and the presence of Peter so living in his
successors indicates the Church : and is the founda-
tion, not once, but for ever. As long as the build-
ing lasts, the foundation supports it.
At the same time, A.D. 386, Pope Siricius wrote
to the Bishops of Africa : "Of Peter, through
whom both the Apostolate and Episcopate in
Christ took its beginning." ^
^ Mansij torn. iv. 622.
-See Ballerini, De Vi ac Rationc Primatiis, c. 31.
'■' Dc Fide, lib. iv. 5.
■* In Psal xl.
^Coustant., p. 651.
Il6 THE CMURCirs WITNESS
In like manner S. Jerome :
" But you say the Church is founded upon Peter ;
although in another place this self-same thing takes,
place upon all the Apostles, and all receive the keys
of the kingdom of Heaven, and the strength of the
Church is consolidated equally upon them : never-
theless, for this reason out of the tivelve one is selected,
that by the appointment of a Head the occasion of
schism may be taken awayT ^
If a head was necessary for Apostles, how much
more for Bishops ! So S. Jerome thought, when he
cried froni the patriarchate of Antioch to Pope
Damasus : " I speak with the successor of the
fisherman, and the disciple of the cross. I, who
follow none as my chief but Christ, am associated
in communion with thy Blessedness, that is, with
the See of Peter. On that rock the Church is built,.
I know. Whoso shall eat the Lamb outside that
house is profane. Whoso gathereth not with thee,
scattereth : that is, he who is not of Christ is of
Antichrist." 2 -
And now we are brought to that great Saint who>
is among the Fathers what Paul is among the
Apostles, and S. Thomas among Doctors. Does he
recognise S. Peter as the root of Church govern-
ment, and as continuing on in his successors ?
It would be quite enough to refer to his strong
approval of those letters of Pope Innocent, given
above, which set forth this idea so plainly. But he
speaks in his own person :
^Against Jovinian, torn. ii. 279.
'^ To Damasus, Ep. 15.
TO THE I'RIMACY. II/
"lam held," he said to a Manichaean, "in the
CathoHc Church by the consent of nations and of
races : by authority, begun in miracles, nurtured in
hope, attaining its growth in charity, established in
■antiquity. I am held by the succession of Bishops
down to the present Episcopate from the very See
of Peter the Apostle, to whom the Lord, after His
resurrection, intrusted His sheep to be fed. Lastly,
I am held by the very name of Catholic." ^
Now the force of this third reason lay in the
universality and in the continuance of S. Peter's
pastorship.
And to another Manichaean :
*' Shall we then hesitate to hide ourselves in the
bosom of that Church, which, even by the con-
fession of the human race, hath obtained possession
of supreme authority from the Apostolic See, by the
succession of Bishops, while heretics in vain have
b^en howling round her, and have been condemned
partly by the judgment of the very people, partly
by the weight of councils, partly also by the majesty
of miracles? " ^
But to the Donatists, who enjoyed, and that
without the anxiety of a doubt, the Apostolical
succession, with the full sacramental system of the
Church, as well as her faith, save the point of their
schism, he cries out :
" You know what the Catholic Church is, and
what that is cut off from the vine ; if there are any
among you cautious, let them come ; let them find
1 Tom. viii. 153.
"^Dc Utilit. Cred., 17.
Il8 THE CHURCITS WIIM.SS
life in the root. Come, brethren, if you wish to be
engrafted in the vine : a grief it is when we see you
lying thus cut off. Number the Bishops even from
the very seat of Peter : and see every succession in
that line of Fathei-s : that is, the Rock, which the
proud gates of Hell prevail not against T ^
Beyond a doubt, then, S. Augustine viewed Peter
as continuing on in his successors. But what wa^i
his special office as Primate ?
"He saith to Peter, in whose single person He
casts the mould of His Church : ' Peter, lovest thou
Me?"'2
" In single Peter the unity of all pastors was
figured out.'' ^
" For Peter himself, to whom He intrusted His
sheep as to another self, He willed to make one with
Himself, that so He might intrust His sheep to him :
that He might be the Head, the other bear the
figure of the Body, that is, the Church^ ^
-' Peter it was who answered, ' Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God.' One for many
he gave the answer, being the oneness in the many.^^ ^
" That one Apostle, that is Peter, first and chief
in the order of Apostles, in whom the Church was
figured." 6
" Which Church the Apostle Peter in virtue of
1 Psalm, in Donatistas, torn. ix. 7.
'^Serm. cxxxvii. 3, torn. v. 664.
■''Serni. cxlvii. c. 2, p. 702.
^Scrni. xlvi. p. 240.
•^ Serni. Ixxvi. p. 415.
'''Ibid., p. 416 g.
TO THE PRIMACY. I 19
the Primacy of his Apostolate represented, l?ez7i^ f/ie
type of its universality T '^
" It is said to him, ' I will give to thee the keys
of the kingdom of Heaven,' as if he alone had re-
ceived the power of binding and loosing ; the case
really being that he singly said that in the name of
all, and received this together with all, as representing
unity itself ; therefore one in the name of all ^ because
he is the unity in all.'' '^
"The Lord Jesus chose out His disciples before
His Passion, as ye know, whom He named
Apostles. Amongst these Peter alone almost every-
where was thought worthy to represent the whole
Church. On account of that very representing of the
whole Church, which he alone bore, he was thought
worthy to hear : 'I will give to thee the keys of
the kingdom of Heaven.' For these keys not one
man, but the unity of the Church received. Here,
therefore, the superiority of Peter is set forth, because
he represented the very universality and unity of the
Church, when it was said to him : 1 give to thee,
what was given to all. Deservedly also, after His
resurrection, the Lord delivered His sheep to Peter
himself to feed ; for he was not the only one among
the disciples who was thought worthy to feed the
Lord's sheep, but when Christ speaks to one, unity
is commended : and to Peter above all, because
Peter is the first among the Apostles." -^
It would be hard to express the Papal idea more
exactly than in these words: ''Peter, who is the
^ Tom. iii. pars ii. 822. ^ Tom. iii. pars ii. 800.
'■' Scriii. ccxcv.
120 THE CHURCH S WITNESS
mould of the Church," " in whom the unity of all
pastors is figured," "who bears the figure of the
Body, that is, the Church," " the oneness in the
many," ''the type of universality and of unity,"
and as such " receiving the keys together with all."
But before leaving the African Church let us
look forward to the year 646, when we find it in a
body writing thus to Pope Theodore :
" To the most blessed Lord, raised to the height
of the Apostolic throne, the holy Father of Fathers,
and the Pontiff supreme over all prelates, Pope
Theodore, Columbus, Bishop of the first See of the
Council of Numidia, and Stephen, Bishop of the
first See of the Byzacene Council, and Reparatus,
Bishop of the first See of the Council of Mauritania,
and all the Bishops of the three above-mentioned
Councils of the province of Africa.
" No one can doubt that there is in the Apostolic
See a great unfailing fountain, pouring forth waters
for all Christians, whence rich streams proceed,
bountifully irrigating the whole Christian world.
To this, in honour of the most blessed Peter, the
decrees of the Fathers have assigned all peculiar
reverence, in inquiring into the things of God,
which should everywhere be carefully examined,
but specially by the apostolic head of the prelates
himself, whose solicitude of old it is to condemn
the evil and to approve the good. P'or by ancient
rules it has been established that whatever was
being carried on," etc. ; ^ and then they proceed to
^ Mansi, x. gig.
TO THE PRIMACY. 121
incorporate that very answer given in 416 by Pope
Innocent to the Council of Carthage, which I have
cited above, which we have seen S. Augustine ap-
proving, and which sets forth the powers of the
Apostolic See, as the living fountain of the Church.
Meanwhile let us glancs at the view which the
Greek Fathers have of the person and office of
Peter.
Origen speaks "<?/" the sum of authority being
delivered to Peter as to feeding the sheep, and the
Church being founded upou him as upon the
Earthr ^
Gregory of Nyssa : " Through Peter He gave to
Bishops the key of celestial honours." ^
His brother, S. Basil : " He that, through the
superiority of his faith, received upon himself the
building of the Church ; " and,
" Blessed Peter, selected before all the Apostles,
alone receiving more testimonies and blessings
than the rest, that was intrusted with the keys of
the kingdom of Heaven."^
Gregory of Nazianzum: " Do you see, of Christ's
disciples, all being lifted up high, and worthy of
the election, one is called the Rock, and is intrusted
with the foundations of the Church P" *
S. Chrysostom, out of many passages: "One
intrusted by Christ with the flock," — "himself put
in charge of all," — " Christ put into his hands the
^ In Roni., lib. v. torn. iv. 568.
^ De Castlgat., torn. ii. 746.
^ Adv. Eiinom. ii., torn. i. 240, and torn. ii. 221.
* Orat. xxxii., torn. i. 501.
122 THE CIIUKCnS WITNESS
presidency of the Universal Church," — " He put
into the hands of a mortal man power over all
things in Heaven when He gave him the keys."
Now the great Eastern Councils, in the next
generation to these Fathers, acknowledge the Pope
as sitting in Peter's seat.
I have already quoted ^ a remarkable letter of
Pope Boniface, in the year 422, which fully sets
forth the idea we are tracing ; and another of S.
Leo ; but I add the following :
" To our most beloved brethren, all the Bishops
throughout the province of Vienne, Leo, Bishop of
Rome.
" The Lord hath willed that the mystery of this
gift (of announcing the Gospel) should belong to
the office of all the Apostles, on the condition of its
being chiefly seated in the most blessed Peter, first of
all the Apostles: and from him, as it were from the
Heady it is His pleasure that His gifts should flom
into the whole Body, that whoever dares to recede
from the Rock of Peter may know that he has nv part
in the divine mystery. For him hath He assumed
into the participation of His indivisible unity, and
willed that he should be named what He Himself
is, saying : ' Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I
will build My Church,' that the i^earing of the eternal
temple by the wonderful gift of the grace of God
might consist in the solidity of Peter, strengthening
with this firmness His Church, that neither the
rashness of men might attempt it, nor the gates of
Hell prevail against it." ^
1 See above, sect, 4. ^ S. Leo, Ep. 10.
TO THE PRIMACY. 1 23
The Empress Galla Placidia, about the same
time, 450, writes to the Emperor Theodosius :
" Let your Clemency give order that the truth of
the faith of the Catholic religion be kept immacu-
late : that according to the form and definition of
the Apostolic See, which we also equally venerate
as of especial dignity, Flavian remaining in the rank
of his priesthood wholly unharmed, judgment be
issued by the Council of the Apostolic See, in which
he first, who was worthy to receive the heavenly
keys, ordered the chiefship of the Episcopate to
be." 1
This was to support the single authority of S.
Leo against the regularly called Ecumenical
Council of Ephesus, in 449.
In the year 490 Pope Felix IIL writes to the
Emperor Zeno, praising the newly-elected Patriarch
Flavita, for " referring the cominencement of Jiis
dignity to the See of the blessed Apostle Peter ; "
and speaks of his letter, in which he wished to be
" supported by that power, from which, at the
desire of Christ, the full grace of all Pontiffs is
derived!' ^
Pope Gelasius, in 492, speaks of the See of Peter,
*' through which the dignity of all Bishops has ever
been strengthened and confirmed, and for which, by
the all-prevailing and peculiar judgment of the
three hundred and eighteen P'athers, its most
ancient honour zvas maintained. Inasmuch as they
remembered the sentence of the Lord." He then
1 S. Leo, Ep. 56. - Mansi, vii. 1098.
124 THE CHURCH S WITNESS
quotes the three passages, and goes on, " Why,
then, is the Lord's discourse so often directed to
Peter ? Were not then the other holy and blessed
Apostles endued with similar virtue? Who would
venture to assert this ? But, ' that by the appoint-
ment of a head the occasion of schism might be
removed,' and that the Body of Christ might be
shown to be of one compactness, meeting in one
head by the most glorious bond of affection, and
that the Church, which should be faithfully be-
lieved, might be one, and one the house of the one
Lord and one' Redeemer, in which we should be
nourished of one Bread and one Cup. Wherefore,
as I have said, our ancestors, those reverend
masters of the Churches, being full of the charity
of Christ, sen^ to that See in which Peter the Apostle
had sat the commencement of theii" Episcopate, asking
from thence the strojigest confirmation of their own
solidity, hi order that by this sight it may be
evident to all that the Church of Christ is really in
all respects one and indissoluble, which, wrought
together by the bond of concord, and the wondrous
contexture of charity, is shown to be that robe op
Christ, single and undivided throughout, which not
even the very soldiers who crucified the Lord dared
to part:' ^
In a fragment of a letter of the Pope Vigilius, in
538, we have :
"To no one well- or ill-informed is it doubtful that
the Roman Church is the foundation and the mould
1 Mansi, viii. 75.
TO THE I'RIMACV. 1 25
of the Churches, from which no one of right behef
is ignorant that all Churches have derived their
beginning. Since, though the election of all the
Apostles was equal, yet a pre-eminence over the
rest was granted to blessed Peter, whence he is
also called Cephas, being the head and beginning
of all the Apostles : and what hath gone before in
the head must follow in the members. Wherefore
the holy Roman Church, through his merit con-
secrated by the Lord's voice, and established by
the authority of the holy Fathers, holds the
Primacy over all Churches, to which as well the
highest concerns of Bishops, their causes, and com-
plaints, as the greater questions of the Churches,,
are ever to be referred, as to the head. For he
who knows himself to be set over others should not
object to one being placed over himself For the
Church itself, which is the first, has bestowed its
authority on the rest of the Churches with this con-
dition, that they be called to a part of its solicitude,
not to the fulness of its power. Whence the causes
of all Bishops who appeal to the xApostolic See,
and the proceedings in all greater causes, are
known to be reserved to that holy See ; especially
as in all these its decision must always be awaited :
and if any Bishop attempts to resist this course, let
him know that he will give account to that holy
See, not without endangering his own rank." ^
It is natural that the governing power should
speak more fully of itself, but other Bishops express
just the same idea. Thus S. Csesarius, A.D. 502^
^ Mansi, ix. 33.
126 THE church's WITNESS
Archbishop of Aries, addressing a series of questions
to Pope Symmachus, speaks of the Roman See as
the original fountain, and tJierefore the continual
guardian of the Church's laws. ''As from the
person of the blessed Apostle Peter the Episcopate
takes its beginning, so it is necessary that your
Holiness should plainly show by competent rules
to the different Churches what they are to ob-
serve." ^
And John, Archbishop of Ravenna, speaks to S.
Gregory of '' that most holy See which transmits its
rights to the universal Church^ ^
And Stephen, Metropolitan of Larissa, in 531,
petitions Pope Boniface for help, reminding him that
'' Peter, the P'ather and Doctor of your holy Church,
and of the whole world, when the Lord said to him
the third time, ' Lovest thou Me? feed My sheep,'
first delivered toyoii. his commission, and then through
you bestowed it on all the holy Churches throughout
the world!' ^
In this faith our own Bede was nurtured, who
says : " For this blessed Peter, in a special way,
received the keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and
the headship of judicial power, that all believers
throughout the world may understand, that who-
soever in any way separate themselves from the
unity of his faith or of his society, such are not
able to be absolved from the bonds of their sins, nor to
enter the threshold of the heavenly kingdom" *
The great Archbishop Hincmar, the most vigorous
1 Mansi, viii. 211. ^ S. Greg., Ep., lib. iii. 57.
'■^ Mansi, viii. 741. ^Homily on S. Peter.
TO THE PRIMACY. 12/
defender of the rights of the Episcopate in the ninth
century, says :
"In that See the Lord presiding as on His own
throne examines the acts of others, and dispenses all
wonderfully as from His own seat"
And again :
" Catholic Bishops, we decree and judge all things
according to the sacred canons and the decrees of the
Pontiffs of the Apostolic See : the Apostolic See,
and the Catholic Church, in our persons, that are
created Bishops in the stead of Apostles, as in order-
ing coorders, and in decreeing canonically decrees
together, and in judging judges together with us.
And we who execute the sacred canons and the
decrees of the Pontiffs of the Roman See, under the
judgment of the Apostolic Rock itself, in this no-
thing else but supporters of those who judge with
justice, and executors of righteous judgments, pay
obedience to the Holy Spirit, who hath spoken
through them, and to the Apostolic See,/;w;/ which
the stream of religion, and of ecclesiastical orders and
canonical judgment, has flowed forth T ^
And in the same age, A.D. 847, writes "the
Emperor Lothaire to our most holy spiritual Father,
Leo, Supreme Pontiff, and Universal Pope." " The
supernal disposition hath therefore willed the
Apostolic See to hold the Primacy of the Churches,
which See, through the most blessed Apostle Peter,
in the whole world, on whichever side the Christian
religion is diffused, is the head and foundation of
^ Hincmar, quoted by Thomassin, Dhc. de PEglise, part i. lib.
i. c. 5.
128 TIIK church's witness
sanctity, that in whatsoever causes, questions, or
matters, the necessity of the Church might advise^
all should recur as to the standard of religion, and
the foimtaiii-kead of equity T ^
Lastly, Pope Gregory IV., in 830, writes to all
Bishops : " We enjoin not anything new in our
present orders, but confirm those things which seem
of old allowed : as no one doubts, that not merely
any pontifical question, but every matter of
holy religion, ought to be referred to the Apostolic
See as the head of the Churches, and thence to take
its rule whence it derived its beginning, that the head
of the institution seem not to be left out, the sanction
of whose authority all Bishops should hold, who desire
not to be torn f'oni the solidity of the Apostolic Rock^
071 which Christ has built the Universal Church.'' ^
And here, before the termination of the ancient
discipline, and the separation of the East, and before
the introduction of the false decretals, I conclude
this line of witnesses, adding only the testimony,
four hundred years later, of the two great schoolmen,,
who in this assuredly, as in a multitude of other
instances, have only set forth in their full light
principles which had worked from the beginning in
the Church. It is the same belief, implicit in S.
Augustine, explicit in S. Thomas; faith but uses,
reason as her handmaid in the latter to explain
what she saw with direct vision in both.
" It is plain that the supreme power of govern-
ment over the faithful belongs to the Episcopal
dignity. But likewise,
1 Mansi, xiv. 884. ^Ibid., xiv. s^^J- ■ .
TO THE PRIMACY. 1 29
''I. That though populations are distinguished
into different dioceses and cities, yet as there is one
Church, so there must be one Christian people.
As, therefore, in the spiritual population of one
Church, one Bishop is required to be the Head of
the whole population, so in the whole Christian
people one is required to be the Head of the whole
Church.
" 2. Also, for the unity of the Church it is re-
quired that all the faithful agree in faith. But con-
cerning points of faith it happens that questions
are raised. Now the Church would be divided by
a diversity of opinions, unless it were preserved in
unity by the sentence of one. So then it is de-
manded for the preservation of the Church's unity
that there be one to preside over the whole Church.
Now it is plain that Christ is not wanting in
necessary things to the Church which He loved,
and for which He shed His blood, since even of the
synagogue it is said by the Lord, ' What more ought
I to have done for My vineyard, which I have not
done ? ' (Isa. v. 4). We cannot therefore doubt that
one, by the ordering of Christ, presides over the
whole Church.
" 3. Further, no one can doubt that the regimen
of the Church is best ordered, inasmuch as it is dis-
posed by Him through whom ' kings reign, and
princes decree justice' (Prov. viii. 15): now it is
the best regimen of the multitude to be governed
by one, which is plain from the end of government,
namely, tranquillity : for that, and the unity of the
subjects, is the end of the ruler. Now one is a more
9
I30 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
congruent cause of unity than many. Thus it is
plain that the regimen of the Church is so disposed
that one presides over the whole.
''4. Moreover, the Church militant is drawn by
likeness from the Church triumphant, whence John
in the Apocalypse saw Jerusalem descending from
Heaven, and Moses was told to make all things
according to the pattern shown to him in the Mount.
Now in the Church triumphant One presides, who
presides also over the whole universe, that is, God :
as it is said (Rev. xxi. 3) : ' They shall be His
people, and God Himself shall be with them, their
God.' Therefore, also, in the Church militant there
is one who presides over all. This is what is said in
Hosea i. 1 1 : ' Then shall the children of Judah and
the children of Israel be gathered together, and
appoint themselves one head ; ' and the Lord says,
in John x. 16 : 'There shall be one fold, and one
shepherd.'
" But should any one object that Christ is the
One Head and One Shepherd, who is the One
Bridegroom of the One Church, it is not a sufficient
answer. For it is plain that Christ Himself
performs the Church's Sacraments : for He it is
who baptises, He who remits sins. He is the true
Priest who offered Himself on the altar of the
cross, and by whose virtue His body is daily
consecrated on the Altar : and yet, because He was
not at present to be corporally with all the faithful.
He hath chosen ministers by whom He dispenses
the aforenamed to the faithful. Therefore, by the
same reason, because He was about to withdraw
TO THE PRIMACY. 131
from the Church His corporal presence, it was
behoving that He should commit to some one the
charge of the Universal Church in His place.
Hence it is that He said to Peter, before His
ascension : ' Feed My sheep : ' and before His
passion : 'Thou, when thou art converted, confirm
thy brethren : ' and to him alone He promised : ' I
will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of
Heaven,' that the power of the keys might be pointed
out as to be derived through him to others, for the
preservation of the Churches unity.
'' But it cannot be said that, although He gave
this dignity to Peter, yet it is not derived through
him to others. For it is plain that Christ so set
up His Church that it should last for ever, according
to that of Isaiah ix. 7 : * He shall sit upon the
throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order
it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice
from henceforth for ever.' Plain, therefore, is it
that He set up in their ministry those who then
were, in such a way that their power should be
derived unto their successors for the good of the
Church unto the end of the world ; especially as
He says Himself: ' Lo, I am with you alway to
the end of the world.'
" But by this is excluded the presumptuous error
of certain persons, who endeavour to withdraw
themselves from obedience and subjugation to
Peter by not recognising his successor, the Roman
Pontiff, as Pastor of the Universal Church."^
^ S. Thomas, Sumnia contra Gentiles, iv. 76,
132 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
S. Bonaventure adds to this all that is needed :
*' Our Lord Jesus Christ, Creator and Governor
of all things, when He was about to ascend into
Heaven intrusted His Holy Church to His
Apostles, for its government and diffusion, princi>
pally to the blessed Apostle Peter, to whom He
said specially three times, concerning the universal
flock of the faithful : ' Feed My sheep.' But that
the Universal Church might be governed in a more
ordered manner, the holy Apostles arranged it into
Patriarchates, Primacies, Archbishoprics, Bishop-
rics " (he means the thing, not the names, for these
are .later), " Parishes, and other canonical distinc-
tions : that, inasmuch as by one or by few the
individual faithful could not be fitly provided with
all things 'necessary to salvation, many might be
called to a participation of this care, according to
their several limitations, for the good of souls ; and,
in proportion to the extent of pastoral care, each
one of them too received a certain power of authority^
the fulness of ecclesiastical power dwelling in the
Apostolic See of the Roman Church, in which the
Apostle Peter, Prince of the Apostles, specially
sat, and left there to his successors the same
power.
" But threefold is the fulness of this power, viz.^
in that the Supreme Pontiff himself Wc';?^ has the
whole fulness of authority which Christ bestowed
on His Church, and that he has it everywhere in
all Churches as in his own special See of Rome,,
and that from him all authority flows unto all
inferiors ■ throughout the Universal Church, as it
TO THE PRIMACY. 1 33
is competent for each to participate in it, as in
Heaven all the glory of the Saints flows from the
very fountain of all good, Jesus Christ, though each
share it in different degrees according to their
capacity." ^
The sum of all this is, what age after age is
bringing out with more and more distinctness, that
the visibility and unity of the Church depend on
the Supreme Pontiff; those who reject him maintain
neither One Body nor One Spirit.
And it surely adds very greatly to the force of the
preceding argument, that on the other side no in-
telligible view as to the origin and maintenance of
mission and jurisdiction in the Church can even be
presented to the mind. You search in vain for
any antagonist system which will hold together,
which will bear to be thought upon, and not run
up into confusion and anarchy. What is this, after
all, but saying, that a Body requires a Head, and
a visible Body a visible Head ?
IV. I now come to the fourth point, that the
Papal Supremacy over the East was acknowledged
by its own rulers and Councils before the separa-
tion.
This indeed is already fully involved in the first
and second points, but I add a few more special
proofs.
The first which I shall bring would seem to
render all others needless. In the year 519 was
terminated a schism of thirty-seven years, brought
^ S. Bonaventure, Cur Fratres Minores prcediccnt, torn. vii. 366.
134 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
about by the wickedness of Acacius, formerly
Patriarch of Constantinople, who, with the whole
civil power of the Greek Emperor to back him,
had communicated with heretics, interfered with
the succession of the Patriarchs of Alexandria and
Antioch, and caused unnumbered evils to the
Eastern Church. By the advice of Acacius, the
Emperor Zeno had put forth a decree, called the
Henoticon, or preserver of peace, which made it
an open question to hold or deny the faith of the
Council of Chalcedon ; and he forced the Bishops
throughout his empire to sign this. The alleged
purpose was to keep both parties, the Eutychean
heretics and the Catholics, in the Church. Acacius,
for his misdeeds, had been solemnly deposed and
excommunicated by Pope Felix ; but he was sup-
ported by the Emperor in possession of the See of
Constantinople, and other Patriarchs succeeded him ;
and the whole East became severed from the West,
save that great numbers in all parts adhered to the
Roman communion in spite of persecution. At
length, in the year 519, peace was restored on
these terms : That the Patriarch John, of Con-
stantinople, and all the Bishops subject to him,
should sign a formulary, dictated by Pope Hor-
misdas, in which they professed obedience in all
things to the See of Rome, acknowledged in it a
primacy by gift of our Lord, which involved
perpetual purity of faith and necessity of com-
munion with that See, and anathematised by name
their own Patriarch Acacius, and all who had
followed him. I have given the form in the pro-
TO THE PRIMACY. 1 35
ceedings of the eighth Council, where it was
used again. The Patriarch John sets forth the one
chair of the Episcopate, saying : " I declare the
See of the Apostle Peter, and that of the Imperial
City (Constantinople), to be one See ; promising
for the future that those severed from the com
munion of the Catholic Church, that is, not agree-
ing in all things with the Apostolic See, shall not
have their names recited at the sacred mysteries." ^
Submission more complete can hardly be im-
agined.
In the year 536 the Emperor Justinian signed
.the same formulary, and presented it to Pope
Agapetus, to clear himself from the imputation of
favouring the heresy of Anthimus, Patriarch of
Constantinople, whom that Pope had just deposed.
He says in it: "Wherefore following in all things
the Apostolic See, we set forth what has been
ordained by it. And we profess that these things
shall be kept without fail, and will order that all
Bishops shall do according to the tenor of that
formulary : the Patriarchs to your Holiness, and
the Metropolitans to the Patriarchs, and the rest
to their own Metropolitans : that in all things our
Holy Catholic Church may have its proper solid-
ity!' •'
How could the Emperor Justinian express more
plainly his belief that the Apostolic See was the
rock of the Catholic faith, which indeed is said
expressly at the beginning of the formulary?
1 Mansi, viii. 451. ^Ibid., 857.
136 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
About the year 650, Pope S. Martin exercises
his power of universal jurisdiction by constituting
John, Bishop of Philadelphia, his Vicar in the East,
''that you may correct the things which are want-
ing, and appoint Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons
in every city of those which are subject to the See
both of Jerusalem and of Antioch ; we charging
you to do this in every way, in virtue of the Apos-
tolic authority which was given us by the Lord in
the person of most holy Peter, prince of the
Apostles; on account of the necessities of our time,
and the pressure of the nations." ^
All that I have laid down under the third point
is required to justify this exercise of authority.
Again, Pope Gelasius asks why Acacius, Patri-
arch of Constantinople, "had not been diligent to
give in accounts to the Apostolic See, from which
he knew that the care of those regions " (the East in
general) " had been delegated to him" ^
The following are cases of the confirmation of
Eastern Patriarchs by the Roman See :
Pope Celestine confirms Maximianus in the See
of Constantinople, after the deposition of Nestorius,
A.D. 432. He writes to him : " Take the helm of
the ship well known to you, and direct it, as we
know that you have learnt from your predeces-
sors." ^
The same Pope having written to the Bishops of
Alexandria, Antioch, and Thessalonica, authorising
the translation of Bishops, provided it were for the
^ Mansi, x. 806. '^ Ibid., viii. 6i.
^Coustant., 1206.
TO THE PRIMACY. 1 37
general good, Proclus was transferred from Cyzicus
to the Patriarchal Chair of Constantinople.^
Pope Simplicius (a.d. 482) in his letter to
Acacius, Patriarch of Constantinople, says that
nothing was wanting to a new Patriarch of Alex-
andria, '^ save that he might receive that establish-
ment in his See ivhich he desired by the assent of our
Apostolic riile!"'^ And of the Patriarch of Antioch :
*' Having embraced, in the bosom of the Apostolic
See, the Episcopate of our brother and fellow-
bishop Calendion, we take into the number of our
fellowship, through the grace of Christ our God,
in the union of our order {collegii), the prelate of so
great a city."
Maximus, Patriarch of Antioch, had been ir-
regularly appointed by Dioscorus, at the Robbers'
Council of Ephesus, 449 ; but he is confirmed in
his See by S. Leo, at the Council of Chalcedon.
" Anatolius, Archbishop of Constantinople,
spoke. We decree that nothing done in that called
a Council shall hold good, except concerning most
holy Maximus, Bishop of the great city of Antioch ;
since most holy Leo, Archbishop of Rome, by
receiving him into communion, hath judged that he
should govern the Church at Antioch; which pre-
scription I too, following, have approved, and all
the present holy Council." ^
The following refer to appeals :
Pope Boniface L (A.D. 422), writing to the
^ Socrates, Hist., vii. 39, 40. Thomassin, Discipline de VEgUse,
part ii. lib. ii. c. 61.
^Mansi, vii. ggi, 992. ^Ibid., 258.
138 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
Bishops of Thessaly, thus sets forth cases of sub-
jection to his See, which had occurred in the pre-
ceding century :
" The care of the Universal Church, laid upon
him, attends the blessed Apostle Peter, by the
Lord's decree ; which indeed, by the witness of the
Gospel, he knows to be founded on himself; nor
can his honour ever be free from anxieties, since it
is certain that the supreme authority (summari
rerum) depends on his deliberation. Which things
carry my mind even to the regions of the East,.
which by the force of our solicitude we in a man-
ner behold. ... As the occasion needs it, we
must prove by instances that the greatest Eastern
Churches, in important matters, which required
greater discussion, have always consulted the
Roman See, and, as often as need arose, asked its
help. Athanasius and Peter, of holy memory,,
Bishops of the Church of Alexandria, asked the help
of this See. When the Church of Antioch had been
in trouble a long time, so that there was continual
passing to and fro for this, first under Meletius,.
afterwards under Flavian, it is notorious that the
Apostolic See was consulted. By whose authority,,
after many things done by our Church, every one
knows that Flavian received the grace of com-
munion, which he had gone without for ever, had
not writings gone from hence respecting it. The
Emperor Theodosius, of merciful memory, con-
sidering the ordination of Nectarius to want ratifi-
cation, because it was not according to our rule"
(on account of his being a layman), " sent aa
TO THE PRIMACY. 1 39
embassy of Councillors and Bishops, and solicited
a letter of communion to be regularly despatched
to him from the Roman See, to confirm his Epis-
copate. A short time since, that is, under my pre-
decessor Innocent, of blessed memory, the Pontiffs
of the Eastern Churches, grieving at their severance
from the Communion of blessed Peter, asked by
their Legates for reconciliation, as your Charity
remembers." ^
This agrees with what the Greek historian Sozo-
men tells us, that " the Bishop of the Romans
having inquired into the accusations against each "
(S, Athanasius, Paul Bishop of Constantinople,
Marcellus of Ancyra, and Asclepas of Gaza),
" when he found them all agreeing with the
doctrine of the Nicene Synod, admitted them to
cofnmunion as agreeing with him. And inasmuch
as the care of all belonged to him on account of the
rank of his See, he restoi^ed to each his Church!' ^
Pope S. Gregory hears an appeal of an Abbot,
John of Constantinople, from the Patriarch John,
reverses his sentence, and compels him to receive
the Abbot back.^
About the year 500, the Bishops of the East,
sufferihg under the schism of Acacius, address
Pope Symmachus for relief, begging him to take
them to his communion. , They say that they
supplicate him not on account of the loss of one
sheep, having just quoted the parable of the Good
Shepherd, but for almost three parts of the world.
^Coustant., 1039. ^ Hist., iii., c. viii.
^ Ep., lib. vi. 24.
I40 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
'' But do thou, as an affectionate father among
children, beholding us perishing by the prevarica-
tion of our Father Acacius, not delay : who art
daily taught by the sacred doctor Peter to feed the
sheep of Christ intrusted to thee throughout the
whole habitable world, gathered together, not by
force, but of their own accord." ^
A few years later, on a like occasion, Pope
Hormisdas (A.D. 514) is addressed by about two
hundred Archimandrites, Presbyters, and Deacons
of Syria.
" To the most holy and blessed Patriarch of the
whole Earth, Hormisdas, holding the See of Peter,
Prince of the Apostles, the entreaty and supplica-
tion of the humble Archimandrites and other
Monks of the province of Second Syria.
" Since Christ our God has appointed you Chief
Pastor^ and Teacher^ and Physician of souls ^ we
beseech you, therefore, most blessed Father, to
arise, and justly condole with the Body torn to pieces^
for ye are the Head of all, and avenge the Faith
despised, the Canons trodden under foot, the
Fathers blasphemed. The flock itself comes for-
ward to recognise its own Shepherd in you its true
Pastor and Doctor, to whom the care of the sheep
is intrusted for their salvation." ^
The following are from a Metropolitan of Cyprus,
and a Patriarch suffering under the Monothelites
(A.D. 643).
" To the most blessed Father of Fathers, Arch-
^ Mansi, viii. 221. ^Ibid., viii. 428.
TO THE PRIMACY. I4I
bishop and Universal Patriarch, Theodore, Sergius,
the humble Bishop, health in the Lord.
" Christ our God hath established thy Apostolic
See, O Sacred Head, as a divinely-fixed immovable
foundation, whereon the faith is brightly inscribed.
For * Thou art Peter,' as the Divine Word truly
pronounced, and on thy foundation the pillars of
the Church are fixed. Into thy hands He put
the keys of the Heavens, and pronounced that thou
shouldst bind and loose in Earth and Heaven with
power." ^
The petition of Stephen, Bishop of Dora, first
member of the Synod of the Patriarch of Jerusalem,
read in the Lateran Council of Pope Martin (a.d.
649).
" Who shall give us the wings of a dove, that
we may fly and report this to your supreme See,
which rules and is set over all, that the wound may
be entirely healed? For this the great Peter, the
Head of the Apostles, has been wont to do with
power from of old, by his Apostolical or Canonical
authority ; since manifestly not only was he alone
beside all thought worthy to be intrusted with the
keys of the kingdom of Heaven, to open and to
shut these, worthily to the believing, but justly
to those unbelieving the Gospel of Grace. Not to
say that he first was set in charge to feed the sheep
of the whole Catholic Church ; for He says : ' Peter,
lovest thou Me? Feed My sheep.' And again,
in a manner special and peculiar to himself, having
^ Mansi, x. 913.
142 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
a stronger faith than all in our Lord, and unchange-
able, to convert and confirm his spiritual partners
and brethren, when tossed by doubt, having had
power and sacerdotal authority providentially com-
mitted to him by the very God for our sakes
Incarnate. Which knowing, Sophronius, of blessed
memory, Patriarch of the holy city of Christ our
God, placed me on Holy Calvary, and there
bound me with indissoluble bonds, saying : ' Thou
shalt give account to our God, who on this sacred
spot was willingly sacrificed in the flesh for us,
at His glorious and dreadful appearing, when He
shall judge the living and the dead, if thou delay
and neglect His Faith endangered : though I, as
thou knowest, cannot do this personally, for the
inroad of the Saracens, which has burst on us for
our sins. Go then with all speed front one end of the
earth to the other ^ till thou come to the Apostolic SeCy
'where the foundations of the true faith are laid.
Not once, not twice, but many times accurately
make known to the holy men there what has been
stirred up among us, and cease not earnestly en-
treating and requesting, till out of their Apostolic
wisdom they bring judgment unto victory.' " ^
V. The relation of the Roman Bishop to Councils
plainly indicates his rank.
Pope Celestine thus instructs the Legates whom
he was sending to the Third General Council :
"When, by God's help, as we believe and hope,
your charity shall have reached the appointed place,
^ Mansi, x. 894.
TO THE PRIMACY. I43
direct all your counsel to our brother and fellow-
Bishop Cyril " (already deputed to be the Pope's
Legate in this matter), " and do whatsoever shall
be advised by him ; and we charge you to take care
that the authority of the Apostolic See be maintained.
"If the instructions given to you tend to this, be
present at the Council ; if it comes to a discussion,
you are to judge of their sentences ^ not to enter into a
contest!' ^
To the Council itself the Pope writes, as we have
seen, that he doubts not they will agree to what he
has ordered to be executed.
The Council replies to the Pope : " The zeal of
your Holiness in the cause of piety, and your
solicitude for the true faith, dear and pleasing to
God our Saviour, are worthy of all admiration. P'or
it is your wont, who are so great, to be well ap-
proved in all things, and to make the establishment
of the Churches the object of your zeal." ^
They tell him, further, that they had reserved the
excommunication of the Patriarch John of Antioch
to his judgment.
In like manner S. Leo writes to the Council of
Chalcedon, not doubting that they would accept the
letter in which he had defined the true faith.
Socrates and Sozomen give us the key to this
language. The former speaks of the " Ecclesiastical
Canon ordering that the Churches should not make
Canons contrary to the sentence of the Bishop of
Rome;" and the latter says, Pope Julius wrote to
iCoustant., 1152. ^ Ibid., 1166, 1174.
144 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
the Eusebian Bishops, " that it was an hierarchical
law to declare null and void what was done against
the sentence of the Bishop of the Romans." ^
Thus we have seen Dioscorus condemned for
holding a Council without Pope Leo. And in the
Seventh Council (a.D. 787), a previous one of many
hundred Bishops is declared not to be Universal,
because it had not the presence of the Pope's
Legates, " as the law of Councils requires."
From Constantinople S. Theodore Studites writes,
about 800, to Pope Leo III. :
"If they, arrogating to themselves authority, have
not feared to assemble an heretical Council, who
could not assemble even an orthodox one without your
recognition of it {diS the. custom, from ancient times
holds good), how much more just and even neces-
sary were it that a lawful Council should be called
by your divine Headship ! " ^
A little later, just before the Greek schism. Pope
Nicholas I. wrote to the Emperor Michael :
'' Observe that not the Nicene, nor any Council
whatever, granted any privilege whatever to the
Roman Church, as knowing that in the person of
Peter // had fully received the right of all power, nnd
the regimen of all Chris fs sheep,'' referring to a
letter of Pope Boniface, four hundred years earlier,
which had said the like.^
VI. But this point is closely connected with the
next, the confirmation of Councils. And perhaps
^Socr., Hist., ii. 17; Soz., iii. 10.
^Baronius, Ann., 809, No. 15.
Mansi, xv. 205.
TO THE PRLMACY. I45
nothing shows more conclusively the imperium
over all belonging to the See of S. Peter than this
right.
S. Jerome tells us that at the latter part of the
fourth century the Roman See vi^as perpetually re-
ferred to for its judgment on difficult matters by
Councils both of the East and West. " I wsls
secretary to Damasus, Bishop of the Roman city,
and answered the synodical consultations of the
East and West." ^
S. Innocent, a few years later, says that nothing
was terminated without the consent of that See.
But the strongest exertion of this power is, giving
that ratification to General Councils, without which
they do not express the voice of the Church
Catholic. And this power will be sufficiently
proved, if some Councils, which would otherwise
have been general, were not so, simply from want-
ing this Papal ratification : and others, not of them-
selves general, became so, simply from having it.
Of the former class is the Council of Ariminum
in 359, attended by more than four hundred
Bishops, and whose formulary was signed by the
Biyhops of the East. Yet in the Council held by
Pope Damasus at Rome ten years afterwards, it
was declared that the number of Bishops assembled
there could not carry force, because the agreement
of the Roman Bishop was wanting. And this has
been always held since.^
Yet more remarkable is the case of the second
'^Ep. 123. ^Synodal Letter, Mansi, iii. 458.
10
146 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
Council of Ephesus, regularly called, attended by-
all the East, and by the Legates of S. Leo, but
annulled by his subsequent opposition to it, and
branded as the Robbers' Council.
Of the latter class, a Council held at Constanti-
nople of one hundred and fifty Bishops of the East
alone, which set forth the divinity of the Holy
Spirit, became the second General Council solely
by Pope Damasus accepting its decrees of faith.
A Council held by the influence of Justinian,
against the wishes of Pope Vigilius, and bitterly
opposed by all the West, became the fifth General
Council, because it was subsequently confirmed by
Vigilius.
And the influence of the Popes, it is well known,
alone induced the West to receive the seventh
General Council, where indeed the Papal Legates
were the only Westerns, who sat.
Again, observe that S. Leo annuls the second
Council of Ephesus, but excepts the ordination of
Maximus to Antioch ; and ratifies the Council of
Chalcedon, but excepts the exaltation of the See of
Constantinople.
And the third General Council having left to
Pope Celestine the decision as to the excommuni-
cation of the Patriarch John of Antioch, Xystus,
his successor, writes to S. Cyril :
** As to the Bishop of Antioch, and the rest, who
with him wished to be partisans of Nestorius, and
as to all who govern Churches contrary to the
ecclesiastical discipline, we have already determined
this rule, that if they become wiser, and with their
TO THE PRIMACY. 1 4/
leader reject everything which the holy Council has
rejected with our confirmation, they are to return
into their place as Bishops." ^
A Council at Rome, held in the year 485, writing
to the Clergy of Constantinople, observes with re-
gard to the name of Pope Felix alone being ap-
pended to the decree deposing Acacius : " As often
as the Priests of the Lord are assembled within
Italy for ecclesiastical matters, especially of faith,
the custom is retained that the successor of the
Prelates of the Apostolic See, in the person of all
the Bishops of the whole of Italy, according to the
care over all Churches which belongs to him, should
regulate all things, for he is the head of all : as the
Lord says to blessed Peter : ' Thou art Peter,' etc.
Following zvhich voice, the thi^ee hundred and eighteen
Fathers assembled at Niccea left the confirmation and
ratification of matters to the holy Roman Church, both
of which down to our time all successions by the help
of Christ's grace maintain r ^
If an assertion thus publicly made, by such an
authority, in the absence of anything to contradict
it, is not to be believed, very few facts of history
are more worthy of credit.
Pope Gelasius, writing to the Bishops of Dardania,
in 495, observes: "We trust that no true Christian
is ignorant that the appointment of every Council
which the assent of the Universal Church has ap-
proved ought to be executed by no other See but
the first, which both confirms every Council by its
iCoustant., 1238. - Mansi, vii. 1140.
148 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
authority, and maintains them by its continued
government, in virtue, that is, of its headship, which
blessed Peter received indeed from the Lord's voice^
but the Church, no less following that voice, hath
ever held, and holds'' ^
Ferrandus, a well-known deacon of Carthage,
writing in 533 to two deacons of the Church of
Rome, says :
" It- is only the divine precepts in the canonical
books, and the decrees of the Fathers in General
Councils, which are not to bye refuted, nor rejected,
but maintained and embraced, according to that
command of Holy Scripture : ' Hear, my son, the
law of thy father, and despise not the advice of
thy mother.' For the law of the father is con-
spicuous, as it seems to me, in the canonical books t
the advice of the mother is contained in Universal
Councils. The Bishops, moreover, who meet there,
subscribe their own statutes, that no doubt may be
left by whom the discussion has been held : but,
besides these, no further subscription is required :
for it is held to be sufficient for full confirmation,
if, brought to the knowledge of the whole Church,
they cause no offence nor scandal to the brethren,
and are approved to agree with the Apostolic
faith, being confirmed by the consent of the Apostolic
Seer 2
VH. And now every witness whom I have
hitherto brought confirms likewise the remaining
point, — the necessity of communion with the Pope.
1 Mansi, viii. 51. ^Qallandi, torn. xi. 363.
TO THE PRIMACY. 149
If his Primacy extends over the whole Church, as
its controlling, regulating, maintaining, and uniting
power, which supports its discipline, and gives
voice to its faith ; if this be by direct gift of our
Lord, who conferred upon Peter alone that whole
Episcopate, of which others were to hold a part
in communion with him and in dependence on him,
and as long as this Episcopate endures, the original
condition of its existence endures likewise ; if, as
having that whole and complete in himself of which
others have a part, he is the living source and
spring of mission and jurisdiction ; if the Eastern
Church acknowledged such a Primacy, when the
imperial power was proudest in her, and when the
See of Rome was politically no longer subject to
that imperial power ; if " the Churches may not
make canons contrary to the sentence of the
Bishop of Rome ; " if his See " confirms every
Council by its authority, and maintains them by
its continued government ; " — how can he not be
the centre of unity, so " that whoever dares recede
from the rock of Peter may know that he has no part
in the divine mystery " ? ^ Is it any wonder that
every Saint is penetrated with this idea? that S.
Ambrose cries, "Where Peter is, there is the
Church : " S. Jerome, " Whoso gathereth not with
thee scattereth : " S. Optatus, " He is a schismatic
and a sinner who against that singular chair sets
up another : " S. Augustine, " Come, brethren, live
in the root^ be grafted into the vine — this is the
1 Socrates, Pope Gelasius, and S. Leo, all in the fifth century.
156 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
Rock^ which the proud gates of Hell prevail not
against : " the whole Oriental Church together,
" Those severed from, the communion of the Catholic
Church, that is, not agreeing in all things with the
Apostolic See, shall not have their names recited
at the sacred mysteries : " or, again, " We follow
and obey the Apostolic See ; those who com-
municate with it, we communicate with^those
condemned by it, we condemn : " ^ or, that the
Catholic Church of old, assembled in her most
numerous General Council, confessed the Bishop
of Rome to be the organ of the Holy Spirit dwell-
ing in her, " Leo, most holy and blessed Archbishop
of great and elder Rome, by us and by this holy
Council together with the most blessed Apostle
Peter, who is the Rock and Ground of the Catholic
Church, and the Foundation of the right faith."
Heresy itself, by the voice of one sprung from our
own island, in S. Augustine's time spontaneously
expressed this. The Briton Pelagius laid his con-
fession of faith before Pope Innocent I. in these
words :
'' This is the faith, most blessed Pope, which we
have learnt in the Catholic Church, and which we
always have held and hold. In which if anything
perchance is laid down with somewhat of ignorance,
or want of caution, we desire to be corrected by
you, who hold both the faith and seat of Peter.
But if this our confession is approved by the judgment
of your Apostleship, then whosoever tries to cast a
^ Mennas, Patriarch of Constantinople, at his Council held in 536.
TO THE PRIMACY. 151
blot on me will prove himself ignorant, or spiteful,
or even not a Catliolic, but will not prove me a
heretic." ^
An early Father, Bishop and martyr in Gaul,
but a Greek by birth, and only two steps removed
from S. John, has given us the reason of all this :
*' With this Church (the Roman), on account of its
superiority of headship it is 7iecessary that every
Church should agree, that is, the faithful on every
side, in which the tradition from the Apostles has
ever been preserved by those who are on every
side." 2
May we not, then, sum up the whole belief of
the Church concerning that living power which her
Lord has put at her centre in the words of one who
has been called the last of the Fathers, who, at
least in his day, vv^as loved and honoured by all
who themselves were worthy of love and honour ?
Thus speaks S. Bernard to that monk who had
been his own spiritual child, but was become his
father, as holding the See of Peter : and in him
speaks a countless multitude of Holy Doctors,
Saints, and Martyrs, who have had no other home,
hope, or comfort, but in the Church of God, who
but carried on what they had inherited, a perpetual
living tradition. Thus he interprets S. Augustine :
"This is the Rock against which the proud gates
of Hell prevail not."
" Come, let us inquire yet more diligently who
you are, that is, what person you, for a time, sus-
^ S, August., torn. x. App. 97.
^S. Iren^us, lib. iii. 3.
152 THE CHURCH'S WITNESS
tain in the Church of God. Who are you ? a great
Priest, the Supreme Pontiff. You are chief of the
Bishops, heir of the Apostles, in primacy Abel, in
government Noah, in patriarchate Abraham, in
order Melchizedec, in dignity Aaron, in authority
Moses, in judgment Samuel, in power Peter, in
unction Christ. You are he to whom the keys are
delivered, to whom the sheep are intrusted. Others,
indeed, there are who keep the door of Heaven, and
are shepherds of flocks, but you have inherited both
names above the rest, as in a more glorious, so in a
different way. They have each their several flocks
assigned to them, while to you singly all are in-
trusted as one flock. And not only of the sheep,
but of all the shepherds you are the only Shepherd.
Ask you whence I prove this ? By the word of the
Lord. For to whom I say, not of Bishops, but
even of Apostles, were all the sheep intrusted so
absolutely, and without distinction ? ' Peter, if
thou lovest Me, feed My sheep.' Which sheep?
the people of this or that city, or region, or specified
empire ? My sheep, He saith. To whom is it not
plain that He did not designate some, but assign
all? nothing is excepted where nothing is distin-
guished. And perhaps the rest of his fellow-dis-
ciples were present when, by committing them to
one. He commended unity to all in one flock, and
one shepherd, according to that ' My dove, My
beautiful, My perfect is but one.' Where is unity,
theie is perfection. The other numbers have not
perfection, but division, in receding from unity.
Hence it is that others received each their own
TO THE PRIMACY. 1 53
people, knowing the sacrament. Finally, James,
who seemed to be a pillar of the Church, was con-
tented with Jerusalem alone, yielding up to Peter
the whole. But well was he there placed to raise
up seed to his dead Brother, when that Brother was
slain. For he was called the brother of the Lord.
Moreover, when the brother of the Lord gives way,
what other would intrude himself on the preroga-
tive of Peter ?
" Therefore, according to your canons, others
have been called to a part of your solicitude, but
you to the fulness of power. The power of others
is conferred within certain limits ; yours is extended
even over those who have received power over
others. Can you not, if fitting cause exist, shut
Heaven to a Bishop, depose him from the Episco-
pate, even deliver him to Satan ? Therefore does
your privilege stand to you unshaken, as well in
the keys which are given you, as in the sheep
which are intrusted to you. Hear another thing
which no less confirms to you your prerogative.
The disciples were in the ship, and the Lord ap-
peared on the shore, and, what was cause of greater
delight, in His risen Body. Peter, knowing that it
is the Lord, casts himself into the sea, and thus
■came to Him while the rest arrived in the ship.
What meaneth that? It is a sign of the one only
Priesthood of Peter, by which he received not one
ship only, as the rest each their own, but the world
itself for his government. For the sea is the world,
the ships Churches. Thence it is that, on another
occasion, walking like the Lord on the waters, he
154 THE church's witness TO THE PRIMACY.
marked himself out as the single Vicar of Christ,
who should rule over not one people, but all ; since
the * many waters ' are ' many peoples.' Thus^
while every one of the rest has his own ship, to-
thee the one most great ship is intrusted ; the
Universal Church herself, made out of all Churches,,
diffused through the whole world." ^
^ S. Bernard, De Consid., lib. ii. c. 8.
155
SECTION VL
S. PETER'S PRIMACY AND THE ROYAL SUPRE-
MACY.
And now, what do we, as English Christians, owe
to the Chair of Peter ? We owe it everything.
If it is "the root and womb of the CathoHc
Church " in general, how much more to us in
particular !
When Augustine, the Monk, came into England
with his band of Missionaries, did he come of him-
self, or was he sent ? Who gave him mission ?
Who gave him spiritual jurisdiction ? Who em-
powered him to be Primate over England, and to
create other Bishops ? A power is wanted for all
this. Whence did he get it?
Not from the Kentish king, for he was not yet
gathered into the fold of Christ himself; how could
he send ?
And had he been a sheep of the fold, how could
he give mission to a shepherd ?
Nor, again, was he monarch of England. How
could he assign all England for a spiritual pro-
vince ?
Augustine derived his mission from S. Peter's
Chair.
156 S. PETER'S PRIMACY
Augustine derived his power to create other
Bishops, and to assign them dioceses, from S.
Peter's Chair.
Augustine derived authority over them, when so
created, from S. Peter's Chair.
Augustine's successors retained the authority
which he had held by commission from S. Peter's
Chair.
That EngHsh Church arose, parcelHng out the
island, and irrigating every plot of it with the life-
giving water of the Gospel.
The fountain-head was in S. Peters Chair.
As a living member, it made part of a living
Body ; and as that Body was ruled and maintained
by a head, so was the member.
The head was S. Peter, living also in his successors.
What part had the civil power in all this ?
It allowed the spiritual power to act ; it added to
its actions civil authority and privileges ; it con-
firmed, by the sanction of temporal laws, those
assignations of spiritual subjects which the spiritual
power had made.
But it never made these by and of itself; it never
claimed to send labourers into the vineyard of the
Lord.
It preserved and maintained the civil jurisdiction
in these mixed causes when it came into contact
with the spiritual ; but it never claimed to originate
this spiritual jurisdiction itself, or to be supreme
Judge, or Judge at all, in matters of faith.^
1 See this learnedly proved in the late pamphlet of Archdeacon
Manning The Appellate Jurisdiction of the Crown, etc.
AND THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 1 5/
Augustine, the Bishop, had one domain ; Ethel-
bert, the King, had another. He was Augustine's
spiritual child, and temporal lord.
For more than nine hundred years this relation-
ship continued ; and as it is founded in first
principles of the Christian Faith, the only marvel
is, that it can be needful to set it forth, as if it were
doubted by any.
But at least the whole ancient Church of Eng-
land was built on it.
Leaving his days of prayer and peace, S. Augus-
tine went forth from that monastery on the Roman
hill, visited and loved by how many English pilgrims,,
for how many hundred years ! He was sent, as yet
a priest only, with mission from the Prince of the
Apostles, that when the shadow of Peter passed
over them, the slaves might become sons, and the
Angli Angeli.
These were the words of S. Gregory: "To Augus-
tine your ruler, whom we make your Abbot, be in
all things humbly obedient, knowing that whatever
you fulfil by his admonition will in all things profit
your souls. The Almighty God protect you with
His grace, and grant me to see the fruit of your
labour in the eternal country. Since if I cannot
labour with you, I may be found with you in the
joy of your reward, for I wish to labour with you.
God preserve you safe, most beloved sons." ^
At the command of S. Gregory, Augustine after-
wards receives consecration as Bishop from Virgi-
^ S. Greg., Kp., vi. 51.
158 S. PETER'S PRIMACY
lius the Primate of Aries. And this alone would
prove how completely distinct is the question of
jurisdiction from that of order. Virgilius had no
authority whatever to send Augustine into England,
but at the command of his spiritual superior he
could confer upon him those powers which spring
from consecration, for the exercise of which S.
Gregory alone gave him mission. To this Bishop
Virgilius S. Gregory had before granted " the pall,"
that is, authority to represent himself over all the
Bishops of Gaul. " Because," he says, '' it is plain
to all whence the Ploly Faith came forth, in the
regions of Gaul, when your Brotherhood asks afresh
for the ancient custom of the Apostolic See, what
does it, but as a good child, recur to the bosom of
its mother?" *' And so we grant your Brother-
hood to represent ourself in the Churches which are
in the kingdom of our most excellent son Chil-
debert, according to ancient custom, which has
God for its author." ^
And so the same power which gave the Bishop
of Aries authority over all the Bishops of France,
committed England and its future Bishops to
Augustine.
Thus, in another letter, S. Gregory empowers
Augustine to constitute two provinces, his own, and
that of York, each with its Bishops ; and he adds
to him personally, " Let your Fraternity have all
the Bishops of Britain subject to you; by authority
of our Lord God."^
1 S. Greg., Ep., lib., v. 53. • '^Ep., lib. xi. 65.
AND THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 1 59
In answer to a question of S. Augustine, he says,
. in another place : " We give you no authority over
the Bishops of Gaul; but we commit to your Frater-
nity the care of all British Bishops." ^
Thus the Anglican hierarchy sprung up under S.
Gregory's hand : her Primacies were instituted by
him, and maintained by him. Every successor of
S. Augustine received afresh from every successor
of Gregory the continuance of the original mission
and jurisdiction.
Thus Boniface V. writes to Justus, the fourth
Archbishop, A.D. 622 : " Moreover we send to your
Fraternity the pall, granting also to you to celebrate
the ordination of Bishops^ when need requires.'"^
Pope Honorius sends, at the request of King
Edwin, palls to the two Archbishops of Canterbury
and York, with permission that when one dies the
survivor should consecrate another. " He may fill
up his place with another Bishop by this our
authority, which, as well out of regard to your
affection as on account of the great space between
us, we are induced to concede!' ^
The same Pope writes to the Archbishop Hono-
rius, A.D. 626 :
" You ask that the authority of your See should be
confirmed by the privilege of our authority. There-
fore, according to the old custom which your Church
has kept from the times of Augustine, your pre-
decessor, of holy memory, by the authority of
blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, we grant to
^Ep.^ lib. xi. 64. 2 Mansi, torn, x, 550.
3 76iJ., X. 580.
l60 S. PETER'S PRIMACY
you, Honorius, and to your successors for ever,
the Primacy of all the Churches of Britain. There-
fore we have ordered all the Churches and regions
of England to be subjected to yoiw jurisdiction^ and
in the City of Canterbury let the Metropolitical
place and honour of the Archiepiscopate, and the
head of all the Churches of the English people, be
kept for the future." ^ And he prays that God
would confirm with perpetual stability the Arch-
bishop, " following the rule of your Master and
Head, S. Gregory."
So in the year O57 Pope Vitalian writes to our
Archbishop Theodore :
" We learn your desire for the confirmation of
the diocese subject to you, because in all things you
desire to shine by our privilege of Apostolical
authority. Wherefore we have thought good at
present to commend to your most wise Holiness all
the Churches in the island of Britain. But now,
by the authority of blessed Peter, Prince of the
Apostles, to whom power was given by our Lord
to bind and to loose in Heaven and in earth, we,
however unworthy, holding the place of that same
blessed Peter, who bears the keys of the kingdom
of Heaven, grant to you, Theodore, and your suc-
cessors, all that from old time was allowed, for
ever to retain unimpaired, in that your Metro-
political See, in the City of Canterbury." ^
Yet these powers might be withdrawn or changed
by him who gave them ; for we find, in the year
1 Mansi, torn. x. 580, 583. ^Ibid., torn. xi. 24.
AND THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. l6l
795, Kenulph, King of Mercia, writing to solicit
Pope Leo III. to restore to Canterbury that part
of its province which his predecessor Hadrian, at
the request of King Ofifa, had erected into an
Archiepiscopal province for Lichfield. And this
prayer is granted by the Pope. At the same
time all the Bishops of England petition the Pope
that the favour of one Archbishop consecrating the
successor of the other, which had been interrupted
by the troubles of the times, might be restored ;
and that the pall might be granted without going to
Rome for it. ^
At a Council held at Rome in 680, Pope Agatho
had ordered that each Archbishop in England,
" who for the time is honoured with the pall by
this Apostolic See," ^ may promote and ordain the
Bishops subject to him. In the same Council,
Wilfred is restored to the See of York.
In the year 1072, a contest arose by reason of
Thomas, Archbishop of York, denying the Primacy
of Canterbury over his See. A Council was held
in Winton, by order of Pope Alexander, to
terminate this, and Archbishop Lanfranc com-
municates to the Pope the result, that clear proof
of his Primacy over all England had been adduced.
" As the greatest strength and foundation of the
whole cause," he says, " there were produced
the grants and writings of your predecessors,
Gregory, Boniface, Honorius, Vitalian, Sergius,
Gregory, and the last Leo, which from time to time,
iMansi, xiii. 960, gSg. "^ Ibid., torn. xi. 180-183.
1 62 S. PETER'S PRIMACY
from various causes, were given or transmitted
to the Prelates of the Church of Canterbury and
the Kings of England." ^
As the Archbishop's Primacy extended over all
England, and comprehended the ordaining of
Bishops and celebrating of Councils, to prove that
it was granted to him and maintained by the
authority of the Pope, is to prove that mission and
jurisdiction to govern the whole Church of England
proceeded perpetually from S. Peter's Chair.
Thus, whoever might nominate and whoever
might elect Bishops, the power which constituted
a particular person to govern a particular diocese
was derived mediately or immediately from the
See of Peter : that is, this See was the perpetual
fountain-head of mission and spiritual jurisdiction.
The Primacies which it had created, it likewise main-
tained ; and that which was originally a com-
munication of S. Peter's authority (for from him
alone it comes that one Bishop is superior to
another), would subsist throughout by union with
S. Peter.
He who is the source of spiritual jurisdiction is
necessarily the Supreme Judge of doctrine.
But that which the See of Peter was, ages before
the very foundation of the See of Canterbury,
in the whole Church, it seems hardly necessary to
prove, that it was always in a province of the Church.
Could any province of the Church determine a
point concerning the faith by and of itself, the
^ Mansi, xx. 23.
AND THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 1 63
least evil to which that must lead would be the
dismemberment of that province from the rest of
the Body. For what can insure unity of faith
without submission to a common head ? This even
our Lord did not attempt, even in a body of twelve.
How can there possibly exist "one Episcopate,
of which a part is held by each without division of
the whole," unless there be one law for that whole
Episcopate, maintained by one authority within
it : as the very Saint who sets forth this idea of
the Episcopate observes, " Unity is preserved in
the source " ?
But, as a matter of fact, for more than nine
hundred years the See of S. Peter was in this
nation the Supreme Ecclesiastical Judge, and
matters of faith could be carried before it, as the
court of appeal in last resource.
And, as a matter of fact, for nine hundred and
sixty years sixty-nine Archbishops sat in the seat
of S. Augustine at Canterbury, by the authority
of him who sent S. Augustine.
But by whose authority did the seventieth sit?
who gave to Dr. Parker not his orders, not his
episcopal character, but mission, to execute the
powers which belong to that character in the
determinate See of Canterbury, and authority to
execute the powers of a Primate in the province
of Canterbury ?
To this no answer can be given but one — Queen
Elizabeth gave, or at least attempted to give, that
mission and that authority.
Let us simply state historical facts.
1 64 S. PETER'S PRIMACY
Queen Elizabeth at her accession found the
ancient relation, which for nine hundred and sixty
years had subsisted between the See of S. Peter
and the Church of England, restored by the act
of her sister, after its disturbance by her father and
brother. This relation consisted mainly in two
points — that the Pope instituted all Bishops, and
was the Supreme Ecclesiastical Judge.
Queen Elizabeth caused an Act of Parliament
to be passed, depriving the Pope of these two
powers. And this Act was passed in spite of the
remonstrances of the Episcopate, the Convocation,
and the two Universities.
But she did not stop there. Who was to possess
these two powers ? Somewhere they must be.
She coveted them for her Crown : she took and
annexed them to that Crown.
She made herself Supreme Ecclesiastical Judge
by causing the appeals, which had ever been made
from the Court of the Archbishop to the Pope, to
be made to the Crown. More need not be said
on this head, as all the Courts of the kingdom have
just affirmed this power to exist in the Crown ; and
as her Majesty, in exercise of her authority as
Supreme Ecclesiastical Judge, has just reversed the
sentence of the Archbishop's Court, and decreed
that the Clergy of the Church have it wholly at
their option to preach and teach that infants are
regenerated by God in Holy Baptism, or that such
a doctrine is "a. soul-destroying heresy:" nay, as
the perfection of liberty, the same clergyman can
now at the font, in the words of the Baptismal
AND THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 165
Service, declare his belief in the former doctrine,
and in the pulpit proceed to enforce the latter !
She took to herself, likewise, the power of insti-
tilting Bishops, which is of originating mission and
jurisdiction ; for every Bishop of the Anglican
Church has been from that time instituted by order
and commission from the Crown, and by that alone.
Now it has been well said, that " Sovereigns who
covet spiritual authority have never dared to seize
it upon the altar with their own hands : they know
well that in this there is an absurdity even greater
than the sacrilege. Incapable as they are of being
directly recognised as the source and regulators of
religion, they seek to make themselves its masters
by the intermediacy of some sacerdotal body en-
slaved to their wishes : and there, Pontiffs without
mission, usurpers of the truth itself; they dole out to
their people the measure of it which they think
sufficient to check revolt ; they make of the Blood
of Jesus Christ an instrument of moral servitude and
of political schemes, until the day when they are
taught by terrible catastrophes that the greatest
crime which sovereignty can commit against itself
and against society is the meddling touch which
profanes religion." ^
Dr. Parker was instituted by four Bishops with-
out a diocese, who had no power whatever of their
own to give mission to the See of Canterbury : they
professed to act under Queen Elizabeth's com-
mission.
^ Le Pere Lacordaire.
1 66 S. PETER'S PRIMACY
But to show how the fountain of this mission
and spiritual jurisdiction was made to reside in the
Crown, we need only refer to the law which enacted,
that in case an Archbishop should refuse within a
certain time to institute a Bishop at the command
of the Crown — a case which in three hundred years
has never occurred^ though Dr. Hoadley and Dr.
Hampden have been among the persons instituted —
the Crown might issue a commission to any other
Bishops of the province to institute, thus overruling
the special authority of the Archbishop as Arch-
bishop.
Moreover, the letters patent of every Colonial
Bishop declare in the most express words that
Episcopal jurisdiction to govern such and such a
diocese, which the letters patent erect, is granted
by the Crown.
And not only does the Crown grant this juris-
diction, but it can recall it after it has been once
granted.
Take the latest exercise of this power.i
" The Queen has been pleased, by letters patent
under the great seal of the United Kingdom, to
reconstitute the Bishopric of Quebec, and to direct
that the same shall comprise the district of Quebec,
Three Rivers, and Gaspe only, and be called the
Bishopric of Quebec : and Her Majesty has been
pleased to name and appoint the Right Rev. Father
in God, George Jehoshaphat Mountain, Doctor of
Divinity, heretofor-e Bishop of Montreal^ to be Bishop
^ London Gazette.
AND THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 167
of the said See of Quebec. Her Majesty has also
been pleased to constitute so much of the ancient
diocese of Quebec as comprises the district of Mon-
treal to be a Bishop's See and Diocese, to be called
the Bishopric of Montreal, and to name and appoint
the Rev. Francis Fulford, Doctor of Divinity, to be
ordained and consecrated Bishop of the said See of
Montreal." 1
All that the Archbishop has to do in such a
matter is to give Episcopal consecration to a person
so designated, on pain of having his goods confis-
cated, and his person imprisoned : but he does not
give the diocese or the mission.
Her Majesty likewise — in the exercise of Papal
authority — has created sundry Metropolitans, as of
Calcutta, to whom she has subjected all India ; and
Sydney, to whom she has subjected not only
Australia, but Van Diemen's Land and New
Zealand.
^ Since this was written, a judgment of the Privy Council, ac-
cepted and ratified by the Crown, in the case of Dr. Colenso, has
decided that the grant of spiritual jurisdiction from the Crown to
Bishops in colonies which possess a parliamentary constitution
is invalid in law. They become, therefore, Bishops without
dioceses. It is stated in the papers that Dr. Selwyn and the other
Anglican Bishops in New Zealand have in consequence petitioned
the Queen to be allowed to return their letters -patent, which pro-
fessed to give them jurisdiction. The papers do not state whence
Dr. Selwyn and his brethren propose to get it for the future. It
would seem as if the question of spiritual jurisdiction were not at -
all considered in the Anglican Church ; yet absolution given by a
true priest without jurisdiction is invalid ; and this fact alone,
without going into the question whether her priests are true
priests and her Bishops true Bishops, annuls all absolutions in
the Church of England.
1 68 s. i'eter's primacy
Now here let me observe two things.
First, that the power to nominate for election, or
to elect one to be a Bishop, is quite distinct from
the power to institute or confirm, which latter is the
deliverance of the spiritual power of government.
The former privileges may be and are exercised by
the civil power ; but the latter authority must be
derived from a spiritual source.
Secondly, the civil power may, if it so choose,
give the sanction of civil law to the assignations of
dioceses made by the spiritual power ; and attach
a certain civil validity to the spiritual acts of
Bishops instituted by spiritual power. But here
the case is quite different. The diocese is made
and erected, divided and altered, solely by the civil
power. The spiritual jurisdiction actually possessed
by a Bishop over his flock is taken away, as
concerns a part of that flock, and conferred
upon another. The Bishop is purely passive
under this. And so particular Bishops, already
supposed to be under the See of Canterbury, are
without permission of that See subjected to an inter-
mediate Metropolitan.
Now the whole principle of the Anglican Refor-
mation consists in these two things, — that the civil
power is made the origin of Mission and Spiritual
Jurisdiction, and the Supreme Ecclesiastical Judge.
Those who ask for these things to be altered ask
that the Reformation would be pleased to undo all
that it did amiss, and so restore itself to Catholic
Unity. Would that they may be heard ! — but there
are few signs of it.
AND THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 1 69
And the whole of what I have written in the
preceding five sections shows that the Papal author-
ity consists in exactly these two points. And thus
it was that Queen Elizabeth took and transferred the
Papal Supremacy to herself. And thus it is that
authority to administer the Sacraments of our Lord
Jesus Christ in this or that place or district, the keys
of the kingdom of Heaven, the power to bind and
loose, are pretended to be given by an earthly
Sovereign. Can there be found in the history of
eighteen hundred years a heresy more directly anti-
christian than this ? It strikes at the very heart of
the Church of God.
From the beginning the crime of being a creature
and a slave of the State has been alleged against
the Anglican P^stablishment. Is this charge true ?
and, if so, in what does it consist ?
It is not because a communion is established ;
because its Bishops are nominated by the Crown
and sit in Parliament ; because their acts have a
civil validity ; because its Clergy are civil officers,
— that it c?n be justly called a creature or a slave
of the State. All this may be innocently, may be
rightly, may be most happily. But a communion
is the creature and the slave of the civil power when
the origin of its mission and spiritual jurisdiction,
and the supreme judgment upon its doctrine, are
vested in the civil power.
But to return to Queen Elizabeth. Armed with
this civil law, which extinguished the supreme
jurisdiction of S. Peter's See, and its institution of
Bishops, and transferred both these powers to the
I/O S. PETER'S PRIMACY
Crown, imposing an oath for their maintenance,
she ordered this oath to be administered to the
existing Bishops. The Primacy was vacant, and
sixteen members of the Episcopate alone survived.
Of these, fifteen refused to sever that link between
their Sees and the See of Rome, which had subsisted
for nine hundred and sixty years, from the very
foundation of the Church ; refused beside to ac-
knowledge the transference of the two above-named
spiritual powers to the Crown. In virtue of that
law they were deposed.
One Bishop, Kitchen of Llandafif, had the heart
to accept these conditions, and continued on in his
See, surrendering to courtiers the greater part of its
endowments.
But even he took no part in the confirmation or
consecration of the new Primate.
And so the ancient Episcopate, which derived its
succession from S. Augustine, and its mission from
S. Peter, became extinct in banishment, in captivity,,
and in duress. The Episcopate which for well-nigh
a thousand years had formed, and civilised, and
blessed England in a thousand ways, and by which
it was a member of the great Christian Body, was
swept away.
And a new Episcopate, deriving its mission from
Queen Elizabeth, and perpetually dependent for its
jurisdiction on the Crown of England, and owning
in that Crown its Supreme Ecclesiastical Judge,
arose. This is its origin, this the principle on
which it is built, the subjection of the spiritual
power to the civil in spiritual things, in faith, and
AND THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. I71
in discipline. Humanam conati sunt facere Eccle-
siani. They attempted, and they have succeeded.
For myself, now that after long years of pain and
distress, of thought, of inquiry, and of prayer, since
by the mercy of God the light has broken upon me,
let me say as much as this, — for not to say it would
be to conceal the strongest conviction, neither
formed in a hurry, nor reached without great suffer-
ing,— let those who can put their trust in such a
Church and such an Episcopate, those who can
feel their souls safe in such a system, work in it,
think for it, write for it, pray for it, and trust their
souls to it. But the duty which I owe to Almighty
God, and the regard which I have for my salvation,
compel me to declare my belief, by word and act,
that it is an imposture, all the more dangerous to
the souls of men, to the affectionate, to the
obedient, to those who believe that there is '' one
Body and one Spirit," because it pretends to be a
member of the Catholic Body, with which it has
broken the essential relation, and to possess spiritual
powers which it has indeed forfeited.
1/2
SECTION VII.
THE EFFECTS OF S. PETER'S PRIMACY AND OF
THE ROYAL SUPREMACY.
The Primacy which our Lord set up for ever in
His Church in the person of S. Peter and his suc-
cessors was so set up to maintain unity of faith and
communion.
That Primacy was finally abolished in the Angli-
can Establishment by Queen Elizabeth, and two of
the chief powers belonging to it attached to her
throne, powers which cannot be separated; — that is,
to be the Source of Spiritual Jurisdiction, and the
Supreme Judge of doctrine. Have the two effects
intended by the Primacy of divine institution, —
unity of faith and of communion, — followed in the
system set up under the Royal Supremacy of
human institution ?
Has the Anglican Church one faith? Has she
communion with the Church Catholic throughout
the world ?
As to faith, the revelation of our Lord has been
of late well divided into three great branches, which
indeed are sufficiently indicated by the arrangement
of the Apostles' Creed, viz., the doctrine of the
EFFECTS OF S. PETER'S PRIMACY. 1 73
Holy Trinity ; the doctrine of the Incarnation ;
the doctrine of the Church.
It was this latter which was assaulted at the time
the Anglican Reformation was set up ; and of
course to this latter we must mainly look to see the
unity of the New Church. Has the Anglican com-
munion any one consistent faith concerning the
Catholic Church, and the sacramental system,
which is in fact the applying of the Incarnation to
the mystical Body of Christ and the souls which
belong to it ? Who will venture to say that it has^
as a whole ? I speak not of this or that party,
Evangelical, Latitudinarian, or High Church, or the
Oxford movement, within it ; but does the Angli-
can Church, as a zvhole, deliver to men any belief
as to where the Catholic Church at this moment is ;
whether the Roman is part of it or not ; whether the
Greek is part of it or not ; whether Presbyterianism
in Scotland is a branch of it or not ; whether it is
infallible or not ; whether, if General Councils may
err, the whole Church may err, and teach falsehood
for God's truth ? Each individual in the Anglican
Church will have his own answer, or none, upon
these questions. Yet all repeat : '' I believe one
Holy Catholic Church." How can they believe
what they do not know anything about ?
Or again, as to the benefits of Holy Baptism ;
are not the two great sections of the Establishment
at daggers drawn about these — full of misconcep-
tions even as to their own meaning ?
Or only conceive that a late trial had turned
upon the nature of the Holy Eucharist, instead
174 EFFECTS OF S. PETER'S PRIMACY
of Baptism. The mind revolts at the thought of
the blasphemies which would have been uttered,
and the unbelief in that holy mystery which would
have been shown.^
Now, not to mention the effects conveyed by
Confirmation, and Orders, and Sacramental Ab-
solution, there is not a rural deanery in England
whose members could meet together without all
or either of the above questions being an apple of
discord, if flung among them.
But there is one point which runs right into the
heart of him who is charged with the care of souls,
and day by day leaves its sting there. The
Anglican Church abolished at the Reformation that
discipline of penance which existed all over the
world. What has she substituted for it? Are her
children to sin and sin on, for months and years
together, and i^estore themselves when they please
to the communion of the Church ? sin on, to the
very bed of death, in trust upon God's indulgence ?
Or what living bond of connection is there between
the pastor and his flock in health ? How can he
ever come to close quarters with the secret sins of
the individual conscience ? How to deal with sins
1 Since this was written, a trial respecting the Anglican doctrine
of the Eucharist was about to take place ; but the maintainer of
a sort of Real Presence pleaded that the time limited by the Act
for trial had elapsed, and was very glad to escape from a decision
by aid of this technical objection. Truly a heroic position for one
who fancied that he was asserting a doctrine which is indeed the
dearest privilege of the true Church, but which it seems he was
content to hold as his individual opinion, denied by as many as
list of ministers and laymen in the Anglican Church.
AND OF THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. 1 75
committed after Baptism is a question of the
utmost daily moment to the clergy. How is it
ruled for them in Anglicanism ?
They have each to teach souls the way to
Heaven ; to teach young children, as well as to
remind adults, of the privileges and duties of
baptised persons ; and how to be restored if they
sin. They have all to attend death-beds, and
sinners laden with guilt : are they to hear their
confessions, or tell them to confess to God alone?
to give them absolution, or to instruct them that
God alone forgives sins, and not by His ministers?
These several parties will answer these questions
in different ways. In the meantime the sinner
dies !
Do Anglican Bishops authorise auricular con-
fession, or no ? or, if they are asked the question,
put it off with an ambiguity ? ^
Is the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession
taught or not by the Anglican Church, or is it " an
open question " ? A Bishop lately denied it in
strong terms, preaching on a solemn public occasion
at S. Paul's Cathedral, I think before the great
Missionary power of the Church ; the consequence
was, that he was not asked to print his sermon.
Yet one would think this doctrine of some im-
portance to the being of a Church.
Is it not universally felt that the Prayer-book
looks one way, and the Articles another? The
remains of the Catholic spirit in the former consort
^ These are facts which have come to the writer's knowledge.
176 EFF1<:CTS OF S. PETER'S PRIMACY
ill with the flagrant virus of the Reformation in the
latter. It is a great contest which is to interpret
the other : but the Privy Council seems to have
turned the scale in favour of the Articles.
Thus it appears that the whole body of doctrine
which was attacked at the Reformation remains in
the Anglican system in a state of uttermost con-
fusion. All that it has of good is that which it de-
rived unaltered from the Roman Church : where it
attempted to change, it set up nobody knows what,
but something so indefinite, so ambiguous, so
chameleon-like, in a word, so dishonesty that Evan-
gelical and Anglo-Catholic claim it each for them-
selves. That is, a compromise was made of the
whole sacramental system : and a royal decree now
comes forth that the clergy may teach contra-
dictories about it.
And is this indeed God's truth ? — did our Lord
set up a Church for this, that men might be tossed
about with every wind of doctrine ? But I go no
further in a subject on which one might write a
volume. I only wish to show the necessary result
of a fatal principle.
And as to unity of communion with the rest of
the Church, what has the Royal Supremacy done ?
— not merely severed it, as a fact, but made it
impossible.
Other communions are unhappily schismatical,
as being de facto disjoined from the Head : but
they are not built upon, and do not consecrate, the
schismatical principle. Greeks or Armenians might
once more accept S. Peter's Primacy to-morrow.
AND OF THE ROYAL SUPREMACV, 177
The very Monophysites have the hierarchical
principle in perfection, and still look up to S.
Mark's chair, even in its degradation, as the centre
of unity ; and they may one day remember that S.
Mark was sent by S. Peter. But Anglicanism is
founded on the very principle of denying S. Peter's
Primacy, a principle of isolation and severance,
which terminates the unity of the Church with each
individual Bishop, or rather makes all alike subject,
as Bishops, to the civil power. Were this carried
out, there would be as many Christianities as there
are Christian nations. But enough of divisions
which sadden the inmost heart, and lead it to the
conclusion that there is no Church upon Earth ;
for this every consistent Anglican must believe.
Is he not told that the Roman Church, the
Greek Church, and the Anglican, which neither
teach one creed, nor are united in one government,
make up yet one Church ; that is, spiritual bodies,
which excommunicate each other, make up that
"one Body and one Spirit," which has "one Lord
and one Faith"? When the individual conscience
asks : What am I to believe as a matter of divine
faith^ on points where these authorities disagree,
what answer can be given? Accordingly, the result,
to every thinking mind, of Anglicanism is, that
there is at present no divine teacher upon Earth
at all, whom we are bound to believe and obey.
That is naked infidelity. Let me entreat those to
consider this, who seem to have made up their
minds to substitute what they call "loyalty" to
the Anglican Church for maintenance of the
12
17^ EFFECTS OF S. PETER'S PRIMACY
Catholic Faith, in whose name they once said <^reat
things.
Now turn to the other side.
Has the Divine Primacy effected the purpose
for which it was instituted ? Has it maintained
unity of faith and of communion ?
As to faith, go where you will, and within the
bosom of that communion which is built on the
rock of S. Peter's Chair, you will find no variance
of belief on that threefold cord of doctrine men-
tioned above. Neither Clergy nor Laity differ
as to the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity, the
Incarnation, and the Church, nor as to all the
consequences derived from them. The Parish Priest
pursues his daily task in no doubt as to the in-
struction of the young, the" recovery of the wander-
ing, the consolation of the dying. Councils of
Bishops meet in all directions, and send the result
of their consultations and prayers to the common
Shepherd of all, without contest, without variation
of belief, from one end of the earth to the other.
The Host comes forth in procession, and every
heart is lifted up to the Author of Salvation, every
head bowed in worship ; one solemn feeling of the
Real Presence fills a great church, and inspires
its congregation. Moreover, Saints live and grow
on it ; societies of men and women are inspired
by it unto all the labours of self-denying charity.
Take as symbols within the one communion the
bare table and the deserted shrine ; but comfort,
respectability, order, the powers of the world that
is.
AND OF THE RO^'AL SUPREMACV. 1 79
Within the other, a people hushed in adoration,
a cloud of incense, and the Present God ; but
poverty, continence, religious communities, the
powers of the world to come.
Within the one, among the Clergy themselves, dis-
putes, divisions, indifferences, disbelief of all dogma.
Within the other, a system, acknowledged by all
the faithful, encompassing and supporting them
from the cradle to the grave.
And as to communion, throughout all regions
of the world, how far more justly now than when S.
x\ugustine wrote, may the Catholic say : *' I am
held in the Catholic Church by the consent of
nations and of races, by authority begun in miracles,
nurtured in hope, attaining its growth in charity,
established in antiquity : I am held by the succession
of Bishops down to the present Episcopate from the
very See of Peter the Apostle, to whom the Lord,
after His resurrection, intrusted His sheep to be fed.
Lastly, I am held by the very name of Catholic,
which, not without reason, among so many heresies,
that Church alone has to such a degree taken
possession of, that, though all heretics wish to be
called Catholics, yet, 'if any stranger ask: Where
is the Catholic Church? no heretic will dare to
show you his own Church.'^
Would not this seem to be a prophecy uttered
fourteen hundred years ago ? and yet as true is what
follows :
" Those, therefore, so many and so great most
dear bonds of the Christian name with reason hold
a believer in the Catholic Church, even if, through
l80 EFFECTS OF S. I'ETER'S PRIMACY
the slowness of our natural ability or the demerit of
our life, the truth should not as yet have shown
itself most fully revealed. But amongst j/ok , where
there is none of these things to invite and hold me,
t/ie promise of the truth alone makes a great noise ;
and indeed if this be so plain that it cannot be
doubted, it is to be preferred to all those things by
which I am held in the Catholic Church : but if it
is only promised and not shown, no one shall move
me from that faith which binds my spirit by folds
so many and so strong to the Christian religion."
And now 1 have given the Scriptural authority
for S. Peter's Primacy, carried on in his successors ;
Where is the Scriptural authority for the Primacy
of Queen Victoria ?
I have given the Patristic authority, and that of
Councils, for S. Peter's Primacy ;
What Fathers and what Councils acknowledge a
temporal supremacy of the State over the faith and
discipline of the Church ?
Let them be produced ; let us compare the one
with the other.
Is there little in Holy Scripture for S. Peter's
Primacy ? Hozu much is there for the Apostolate
and Episcopate itself? But the words of God are
few, only they create and they maintain. Set the
weight of the world on those words which He ad-
dressed to Peter, and they will bear it.
But for the Royal Supremacy you have nothing
to bring from Scripture ; not one word, unless you
like, '' Render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."
AND OF THE ROYAL SUPREMACY. l8l
And as for tradition, King Henry and Queen
Elizabeth set themselves against the current of
fifteen hundred years ; they tore up what had
been the root of their own Church for well-nigh
a thousand. They severed themselves from S.
Peter's See, arrd they sowed throughout their realm
divisions never-ending,^spiritual severance, isola-
tion, and indifference ; they destroyed that religious
unity which, of all others, is the most precious in-
heritance of a land. This they were allowed to
do, and yet at this moment more Bishops^ and well-
nigh as many people, subject to S. Peter, own
their temporal sovereignty, as compose that com-
munion which acknowledges their spiritual supre-
macy, which is itself rent to pieces, and has the
denial even of the doctrine of Baptism imposed on
it by that supremacy! It was a fearful vision of
schism and of heresy which the poet saw :
" A rundlet that hath lost
In middle or side stave, gapes not so wide
As one I mark'd, torn from the chin throughout
Down to the hinder passage, 'twixt the legs
Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay
Open to view, and wretched ventricle."
— Dante, Hell, c. xxviii.
Am I to believe that this hideous phantom is the
teacher sent to me by Almighty God? Is this the
dispenser of His Sacraments? the pillar and ground
of the truth ?
Whither, then, shall I turn, but to thee, O
Glorious Roman Church, to whom God has given,
1 82 EFFECTS OF S. PETER'S I'RIMACV.
in its fulness, the double gift of ruling and of teach-
ing ? Thine alone are the keys of Peter, and the
sharp sword of Paul. On thee alone, with their
blood, have they poured out their whole doctrine.
Too late have I found thee, who shouldst have
fostered my childhood, and set thy gentle and awful
seal on my youth ; who shouldst have brought me
up in the serene regions of truth, apart from doubt
and the long agony of uncertain years. Yet before
I understood thee, I could admire ; before I ac-
knowledged thy claims, I could see that undaunted
spirit which would resign everything save the
inheritance of Christ ; that superhuman wisdom, by
the gift of which, while " earthly states have had
single conquerors or legislators, a Charlemagne here,
a Philip Auguste there ; in Rome alone the spiritual
ruler has dwelt for ages, smiting the waters of the
flood again and again with the mantle of Elijah,
and making himself a path through them on the
dry land." ^ But now I see that the God of Elijah
is with thee. O too long sought, and too late found,
yet be it given me to pass under thy prctecticn the
short remains of this troubled life, tc wander no
more from the fold, but to find the Chair of the
Chief Shepherd to be indeed "the s:hadow of a
Great Rock in a weary land " !
^ Church of England cleared from Schism, p. 39^.
ALLIES, T.W. BQT
See of S. Peter. 365
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