Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom Part 10

The next period is distinctly marked by Eusebius as the first succession from the Apostles. St. Paul,[56] he says, preaching to the Gentiles, laid the foundations of Churches from Jerusalem in a circle round to Illyric.u.m; and St. Peter preached to the circ.u.mcision in the five provinces recorded by him in his letter. He continues, "It is not easy to say how many imitators of these were by them judged worthy to exercise the pastoral office in the Churches founded by them, except so far as St.

Paul's own words record them. For he had numberless fellow-workers, fellow-soldiers, as he himself called them, most of whom he has delivered to immortal memory by mention of them in his letters." Thus Timotheus was first Bishop of Ephesus; t.i.tus was set over Crete, and expressly enjoined to appoint bishops in its several cities, for St. Paul draws out what sort of a character the bishop so appointed should be.[57] "Linus, whom he mentions being with him at Rome, has already," says Eusebius, "been named by us as having been first Bishop of the Roman Church after Peter.

But likewise Clement, who was the third appointed Bishop of the Romans, is recorded by St. Paul as his colleague and fellow-labourer."

In a third pa.s.sage Eusebius,[58] after speaking of Ignatius "as the second who received the episcopal succession of St. Peter at Antioch,"

Evodius having been the first, and after quoting at length his letters, proceeds, "There were many others also noted in the times of these men who held the first rank of the apostolic succession. These, as the holy disciples of such men, built up further in every place the foundations of the Churches which had been laid by the Apostles. They spread the preaching further abroad and scattered the saving seeds of the kingdom of heaven far and wide through the breadth of the world. For the most of the disciples at that time, kindled by a more ardent love of the divine word, had first fulfilled the Saviour's exhortation by distributing their substance to the needy. Afterwards, leaving their country, they performed the work of evangelists, filled with a n.o.ble ambition to proclaim Christ to such as had not yet heard the word of faith, and to deliver to them the writing of the sacred Gospels. Thus laying merely the foundations of the faith in new and strange places, and, appointing others to the pastoral office, they left them to cultivate the new plantation, and again went on to other places and nations by G.o.d's grace and co-operation. For a great number of marvellous works of power were still done by them through the Holy Spirit; so that at the first hearing mult.i.tudes of men in a ma.s.s received into their souls readily the wors.h.i.+p of the One Creator. As I cannot record by name all those who received the first succession of the Apostles as pastors and evangelists in the Churches throughout the world, I will mention those only where tradition of apostolical doctrine is carried down to us by actual memorials."

The gradations thus marked in the propagation of the gospel are three: first, that of the Apostles in Judea before their dispersion; secondly, that of the Apostles with their personal fellow-workers throughout the world; thirdly, that of the men called Apostolic, because they had lived in the time of the Apostles without having been their first co-operators, or, to use the Pauline expression, fellow-soldiers. This carries us over the ninety years from the Day of Pentecost to the end of Trajan's reign, during which reign, the time, as Eusebius calls it, of St. Clement of Rome and of St. Ignatius of Antioch, he notes that there was a specially abundant outburst of such teachers.

Eusebius bears witness through the whole of his History to the universality of the episcopal regimen. Likewise he carefully gives the descent of the three great Sees of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. He notes how they took their rise from the person of Peter, who sat at Antioch himself, who sent his son Mark to Alexandria, and whose coming to Rome the historian describes in the words following:-

"Immediately in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, the most benign and man-loving providence of G.o.d conducted to Rome Peter, the great and powerful among the Apostles, who for his virtue was chosen to lead them all against Simon, the plague of mankind.[59] Peter, like a valiant commander of G.o.d's army, clothed in heavenly panoply, carried from the East to the West the precious freight of intellectual light, bearing the proclamation of the heavenly kingdom, to be the sure and saving word of souls." He records the martyrdom of the two Apostles, Peter and Paul, together at Rome under Nero, giving for this fact a fourfold testimony; of historians generally; of their tombs, which were still to be seen at Rome; of the presbyter Cains, who, at the beginning of the third century, appealed to the existence of these tombs, the one at the Vatican, the other on the Ostian Road, as a proof where "the sacred tabernacles of these Apostles had been deposited;" and lastly, to the letter of Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth in the middle of the second century, who spoke of their having both taught the Church of Corinth as well as that of Rome, and of both having suffered martyrdom together. "These particulars I have given," says Eusebius, "that the memory of the fact may be the more confirmed."[60] He gives carefully during two hundred years the descent of the bishops in these three Sees, and the number of years they sat-a tacit witness to the eminent rank of the three great Mother Sees established by Peter in the three chief cities of the Roman Empire; and an honour which he gives besides only to the Church of Jerusalem, since all, he says, have ever borne reverence "to the throne of the Apostle James, the first who received the episcopate of the city of Jerusalem from the Saviour Himself and the Apostles!"

In another place he writes: "Again, when I consider the power of the Word, how the most populous churches were constructed by the rudest and most ign.o.ble disciples of Jesus, not in obscure and unknown places, but founded in the most conspicuous cities, in very imperial Rome itself, in Alexandria and Antioch, for all Egypt and Libya, for Europe, and for Asia,-again I am compelled to search out the reason of this, and to confess that they could not have succeeded in so audacious an attempt except by some divine and superhuman power, and the working together with them of Him who said 'Make disciples all nations in My name.'"[61]

Between St. Clement of Rome and St. Ignatius of Antioch at the end of the first century, and Eusebius at the beginning of the fourth, stands at the end of the second century the witness of Tertullian. In setting forth the legal ground of prescription against the heretics of his day, he gives an account of the original propagation of the divine kingdom, which exactly tallies with all that precedes. "Christ Jesus our Lord ... had chosen twelve disciples to be attached to His side, whom He destined to be the teachers of the nations. Accordingly, after one of these had been struck off, He commanded the eleven others, on His departure to the Father, to go and teach all nations, who were to be baptized into the Father, and into the Son, and into the Holy Ghost. Immediately, therefore, the Apostles, whom this designation indicates as the Sent, having on the authority of a prophecy, which occurs in a psalm of David, chosen Matthias by lot as the twelfth into the place of Judas, obtained the promised power of the Holy Ghost for the gift of miracles and of utterance. And after first bearing witness to the faith in Jesus Christ throughout Judea, and founding Churches, they next went forth into the world, and preached the same doctrine of the same faith to the nations.

They then, in like manner, founded Churches in every city" (that is, an episcopal See in each city, without which, as St. Ignatius told us, there is no Church) "from which all the other Churches, one after another, derived the tradition of the faith and the seeds of doctrine, and are every day deriving them that they may become Churches. Indeed it is on this account only that they are able to deem themselves apostolic, as being the offspring of Apostolic Churches. Every sort of thing must necessarily revert to its original for its cla.s.sification. Therefore the Churches, though they are so many and so great, comprise but the one Primitive Church founded by the Apostles, from which they all spring. In this way all are primitive and all are apostolic, while all together make up a unity; while they have peaceful communion, and t.i.tle of brotherhood, and bond of hospitality, privileges which no other rule directs than the one tradition of the self-same mystery. From this, then, do we prescribe the rule that, since the Lord Jesus Christ sent the Apostles to preach, no other ought to be received as preachers than those whom Christ appointed; for 'no man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.' Nor does the Son seem to have revealed Him to any other than the Apostles, whom He sent forth to preach that, of course, which He revealed to them. Now what this was which they preached-in other words, what it was which Christ revealed to them-can, as I must here likewise prescribe, properly be proved in no other way than by those very Churches which the Apostles founded in person, by declaring the gospel to them directly themselves, both by word of mouth, as the phrase is, and subsequently by their Epistles. If, then, these things are so, it is in the same decree manifest that all doctrine which agrees with the Apostolic Churches-those wombs and original sources of the faith-must be reckoned for truth, as undoubtedly containing that which the said Churches received from the Apostles, the Apostles from Christ, and Christ from G.o.d; whereas all doctrine must be prejudged as false which savours of contrariety to the truth of the Churches and Apostles of Christ and G.o.d."[62]

But the whole work of St. Irenaeus against heresies is based exactly upon the fact which we are here setting forth. His object was to show that the true faith was preserved intact in all the Churches of the world by means of the bishops appointed by the Apostles. Thus he commences his third book: "For the Lord of all gave to His Apostles the power of the gospel, through whom we have learnt the truth, that is, the doctrine of the Son of G.o.d; to whom the Lord said, 'He who heareth you, heareth Me, and who despiseth you, despiseth Me, and Him who sent Me.'" ... "For after our Lord arose from the dead, and they had been clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit coming down upon them from on high, they were completely filled and had perfect knowledge: they went forth into the ends of the world, proclaiming the gospel of good things from G.o.d, and announcing peace from heaven to men, all of them and every one of them possessing equally the gospel of G.o.d." ... "All, therefore, who wish to see the truth may behold in every Church the tradition of the Apostles, which was made known through the whole world; and we can number up those who were appointed by the Apostles bishops in the Churches, and their successors down to our own times, who have neither taught nor known any such delirious imagination as theirs." He is speaking of the heresy of Valentinus. "For had the Apostles known recondite mysteries, which they were in the habit of teaching separately and secretly from the rest to the perfect, they would deliver such especially to those to whom they were intrusting the Churches themselves. For they desired those to be very perfect and blameless in all things whom they were leaving as their successors, handing over to them their own place of teaching. For if these acted faultlessly, the good would be great; whereas if they failed, the calamity would be complete."

Irenaeus sums up all this view in another place, where he says: "True knowledge is the doctrine of the Apostles, and the ancient compacted fabric of the Church through the whole world, and the character of the Body of Christ, according to the succession of bishops, to whom they delivered that Church which is everywhere."[63]

In what has preceded we have traced carefully the transmission of spiritual authority, putting together the various intimations respecting it which are given in the four Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles of St.

Paul, and the Apocalypse. From these intimations a most clear and unambiguous result has been deduced. Then proceeding to historical proofs, we find the third Pope from St. Peter, at the end of the first century, in an official doc.u.ment, summing up in words of great precision what had been the actual course of things in the two generations which lay between the Day of Pentecost and the time at which he was writing. If we compare the Gospels which record the inst.i.tution of the power, and the history which records its actual beginning and exercise, as thus given by St. Clement, we find the most exact agreement. Another saint and martyr, contemporary with St. Clement, and holding by second succession from St.

Peter what became the great patriarchal See of the East, affords the strongest corroboration to him in the doctrinal statements which are found interwoven in the letters addressed by him to various churches as he is carried a prisoner on his way to martyrdom. The first extant historian, writing in 324, on the eve of the a.s.sembling of the first General Council, testifies throughout the ten books of his work the universality of the episcopal regimen, and intimates its organic structure by giving each link in the spiritual descent of the three great Sees of Peter and of the Church of Jerusalem. Intermediate between these three authorities, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, writing seventy years after St. Clement, and Tertullian, writing thirty years after Irenaeus, give very graphic accounts of the Church in their day, which exactly accord both with the Pope and Martyr-bishop preceding and the historian following them. Instead of calling in other witnesses, let us attempt to give a general view of the Episcopate as it is found when emerging from the last great persecution, which terminated the first stadium of its course, and was followed by the peace of the Church, proclaimed by the Emperor Constantine 283 years after the Day of Pentecost. The whole of this period marks a time in which the growth of the Church and the form of her const.i.tution were the result of a power proceeding solely from within, never favoured by the civil power, often actively persecuted, and daily in a thousand ways discouraged.

St. Augustine, writing in the year 398, observes precisely of this time, that is, the year 314, that if the Donatists suspected the judgment of their African colleagues, there were thousands of bishops beyond the sea to whom they might have recourse.[64] In his own time he counted 476 Catholic bishoprics in the African provinces. Throughout the Roman Empire it would seem that, before the peace of the Church, not only every considerable city, but even small towns, possessed their bishop. St.

Hilary says: "Though there be only one Church in the world, yet every city has its own Church;" and St. Cyprian and St. Dionysius of Alexandria a.s.sert this of their own time.[65]

The conduct, then, of St. Peter, of St. Paul, and of all the Apostles in the propagation of the Church, was from the beginning one and uniform, and impressed itself on the succeeding generations.[66] They founded a Christian colony on the solid basis of a complete administration, and establis.h.i.+ng their most fervent disciples as the chiefs of that hierarchic organisation, they left to them the charge of forming new centres of spiritual life in the cities dependent on those first chosen.

Thus St. Peter chose first Antioch, Queen of the East, the head afterwards of fifteen ecclesiastical provinces; then Rome, the head of the whole Empire, of which Pope St. Innocent said, writing in the year 416 to the Bishop of Eugubium, that "it was an acknowledged fact that no one had established Churches" (by which he means a Bishop's See) "in all Italy, the Gauls, the Spains, in Africa, in Sicily, and the intervening islands, except those whom the venerable Apostle Peter or his successors had appointed bishops."[67]

Thirdly, he chose Alexandria, whose bishops became the head of the three provinces, Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis. But no less St. Paul planted in Ephesus the Mother Church of the province of Asia (one-twentieth only of the great country called Asia Minor); in Thessalonica, the metropolis of Thrace; in Corinth, that of Achaia; he and Barnabas, in Salamis, that of Cyprus; while he set a disciple to appoint bishops over the whole island of Crete. These are specimens of the power which was thus established in every city over the whole world traversed by the Apostles and their descendants, a power fixed, not transitory; local, not roving. It was an occupation of each city by the spiritual authority exactly similar in divine things to the military colonies which Rome planted in its provinces for the propagation of its temporal sway. It was a corporate body with a most compact unity, at the head of which, informing and directing every act, stood the bishop, a name of power and jurisdiction.

Of them St. Paul said, "Obey your prelates, and be subject to them." From such words the power of government is a clear inference. If the faithful are obliged to obey the prelates of the Church, these must have authority to command. Thus St. Gregory of n.a.z.ianzum, addressing in the year 373 the governor of his province, used these words: "The law of Christ subjects you to my authority and to my tribunal. For we also have a government, nay, I will add a greater and more perfect government, unless spirit must yield to flesh, and heavenly things to earthly. I know that you will accept my freedom of speech, because you are a sheep of my flock, a sacred sheep of a sacred flock, nurtured by the Great Shepherd."[68]

Elsewhere he calls it "the government which is innocent of blood,"

contrasting it with "the government of the sword and the lash." The Greek Fathers universally, in explaining the dignity of the episcopate, use this word government.[69]

Of the way in which the world was thus evangelised we have an instance recorded by Photius, who says that Caius, a grave and learned priest of the Roman Church, was ordained by Pope Zephyrinus (who sat from 202 to 218), Bishop of the Nations, that is, without designation of any particular diocese, as if anointed and crowned for a kingdom, which by his valour and wisdom he was to obtain for himself. In this way the Roman Pontiffs consecrated a great number of bishops, whom they sent to bring the provinces under the yoke of the faith, as recorded above by St.

Innocent.[70] But it is to be noted that those who were thus sent out during two centuries from the first age were not elected by the people of the several churches which they founded. They came to them by authority from without-the authority of the Apostles and the Apostolic See, mediately or immediately. In the cases just mentioned the mission was immediate: in other cases, where it was derived from some Patriarchal See or from a metropolis, it still descended from that original mission of the Apostles, and the distribution of authority made by Peter at their head.

For the whole of this mission there is one great type and source; our Lord at the head of His Apostles is the prelude to the bishop in the midst of his presbytery. He repeats Himself in every diocese, the first and everlasting Bishop, whose heirs spread throughout the world. All is from above.

But each bishop's chair thus established is a centre of dogmatic truth and of moral force. The government extending thus over the whole Church is a mean between autonomy and centralisation. "The bishop is contained in the Church, and the Church in the bishop:" it is "a flock united to its pastor." This is its local character: a most living authority, and a most careful representation of those governed. What it is in reference to the like authority planted elsewhere, we shall see presently.

The bishop, with his presbyterate and diaconate, fitted to him as the strings to a harp, in the words of St. Ignatius, this was the instrument by which our Lord chose to take hold of the world. "Many nations of barbarians," St. Irenaeus observes, "believing in Christ, follow the order of tradition without pen and paper, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit;"[71] but nowhere as to this point of episcopal regimen did this tradition vary. The Church having traversed the three centuries, a.s.saulted from within by sects innumerable, and from without by a hostile Empire, emerges under this government alone. Nowhere was it without this settled order of the Episcopate. A presbyter not subject to a bishop, a single church or any number of churches not ruled by a bishop, these were unknown things. In the sects, indeed, there were all sorts of disorder and continued changes of government, just as there was incessant fluctuation of doctrine; the true and only Church showed itself precisely in this, that it preserved its doctrine and its government alike unchangeable.

Eusebius observes how "the devices of opponents destroyed each other by their own violence. New heresies continually rose and fell, one giving way to the other, and corrupting themselves in a long series of the most diverse and strange conceptions. But the one Church, proceeding on the same lines, and in an even tenor, kept upon its path, ever increasing in brilliancy, and shedding forth upon every race of Greeks and barbarians the dignity, sincerity, and freedom, the tempered wisdom and purity, of the divine polity and philosophy;" where it is observable that by the words polity and philosophy he blends together the form of life and the truth of doctrine as coinherent with each other.[72]

Thus in less than three centuries the Episcopate was flung as a golden network over the greatest of the world-empires, and far beyond its borders. But let us well understand what this means. It does not mean simply that there were bishops everywhere; that no church existed save under the rule of a bishop; that there were no presbyterian, still more, no independent churches. It is a much greater fact which we have to note; it is that there was "one Episcopate, of which a part was held by each without division of the whole;" "one Episcopate spread abroad in the concordant mult.i.tude of many bishops."[73] The doctrine of St. Cyprian is thus set forth by De Marca: "As there is one body of the Church divided into many members through the whole world, so there is in it one only Episcopate, spread abroad in the harmony of many bishops. If these be considered as a body, they hold the entire Episcopate in common. But a certain portion of the flock has been a.s.signed to each bishop to lead and direct it singly, but in consonance with the charity and communion due to the whole body. For if unity be relinquished, the bishop who departs from the body would dry up as a stream deflecting from its source, and wither as a branch cut off from the trunk and root. This distribution of portions, which have been committed to the various bishops, descended from the apostolic rule. For when the Apostles founded churches, though they conferred on the ordained bishop by the imposition of their hands all the power of order and jurisdiction, yet they a.s.signed to him the place in which he should discharge his office. This has been marked with great clearness in the 20th chapter of the Acts, where we read that the Holy Spirit appointed bishops to govern the Church of G.o.d. But since the Church was to be ruled in unity, it was necessary that some mode of communion between the bishops should be established by the Apostles according to the example given by Christ in establis.h.i.+ng the College of Apostles, which represented the whole body of the Church."[74] And what this rule was De Marca proceeds to state in the words of St. Leo the Great, which, as written in the middle of the fifth century by the highest authority, will serve better to convey a lucid view of the one Episcopate than any more modern statement. In the year 446 St. Leo writes: "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 especially demands concord among bishops. For though these have a common dignity, yet have they not a general 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 among bishops has arisen, and it was provided by a great disposition that all should not claim to themselves all things, but that in every province there should be one whose sentence should be considered 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."[75]

It is thus that the Church appeared when it came out of the fire of persecution and the perpetual conflict with heresies into peace and recognition by the Civil Power. It was not merely that by an innate force-which all the Fathers attribute to the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in it-a uniform episcopal government had been established wherever it extended, but that it was one Episcopate ruling one flock.

Between a bishop viewed as the centre of unity in his own diocese, but unconnected with other bishops, and independent of them, and an Episcopate organically one, ruling one flock through the whole world, there is all the difference which exists between what is human, weak, and perishable and what is divine, strong, and enduring. In the former case the bishop's throne would simply be a seat of rivalry, confusion, and error; in the latter, the union of the body is the test of health, and makes that divine beauty which our Lord in His prayer for His Church at the entrance of His Pa.s.sion contemplated, which He likened even to the divine unity. This was the vision which lay before St. Cyprian's eyes when he cried out, "The Spouse of Christ cannot be adulterated; she is incorrupt and chaste; she has one single home; she guards the sanct.i.ty of one marriage chamber with inviolable modesty. The Lord says, 'I and the Father are one;' and again, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit it is written, 'These three are one.' Can any one believe that the unity which springs from the divine strength, which is bound together by heavenly sacraments, can be broken in the Church and torn asunder by the collision of opposing wills."[76] But St. Cyprian's safeguard against this was the one Episcopate, which he views as centred in the See of Peter, its origin and matrix, and which, two hundred years after him, the great successor of St. Peter describes in act.

The Fathers regarded the establishment of bishops everywhere as a wonderful fulfilment of the Psalmist's vision: "Instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee: thou shalt make them princes over all the earth."[77] And, in truth, the uniform planting in every city and town of a divine government such as we have described, the doing this, moreover, without favour or protection from the civil power, nay, in spite of its jealousy, resistance, and persecution, is a wonder of divine power. But this is only half what was done. This is not yet the One Episcopate, but there is to be added to it that "Sacrament of unity" whereby every one of these bishops belonged to an indivisible whole, and fed a portion of the one "flock of Christ." Bishops, holding each in his own person the fulness of the priesthood, its generative and ruling power, whether the number of their people were small or great, whether their presbyters and deacons were many or few, in these respects equal to each other and complete in themselves, were in a further point of view members of one hierarchy, which could no more be multiplied than the Body of Christ or His Flock. The one Saviour could not have two bodies, nor the one Shepherd two flocks. Hence, what St. Leo calls "the provision of that great disposition that all should not claim to themselves all things, but that in every province there should be one whose sentence should be considered the first among his brethren;" in which words he marks the Metropolitan and his suffragans; "and others again seated in the greater cities should undertake a larger care"-as, for instance, the Bishop of Antioch, when he had fifteen Metropolitans subject to his chair-"through whom the direction of the Universal Church should converge to the one See of Peter, and nothing anywhere disagree from its head." What terser and clearer statement of the actual government of the Church could be given now, though more than fourteen hundred years have pa.s.sed since it was written?

This, then, is the full meaning of the One Episcopate; this is the marvel superadded to the sons of the Church who are made princes over all the earth, that they are not individual governors only of a local republic, but bound together by a manifold subordination, Bishop to Metropolitan, Metropolitan to Patriarch, Patriarch to Pope. There is the twofold beauty of unity and order; the first, "sweet and comely as Jerusalem;" the second, "terrible as an army set in array."

And it may be said that if there be any one feeling which shows itself on all occasions in the writings of the Fathers, any one conviction which sways all their arguments, it is the feeling that the flock of Christ is one and indivisible; that the Episcopate which rules it throughout the earth is one and indivisible also; and both because the Great Shepherd is one, and the Father who sent Him is one; as we have heard St. Cyprian in unsurpa.s.sable words declaring sixteen hundred years ago.

We see, then, the two forces of the Primacy and the Episcopate coexist at the end of this first great stadium of the Church's course, as they coexisted on the Day of Pentecost. It is precisely when setting forth the testimony given to the one Christian faith against all heresy by the churches as established throughout the world, especially those which had Apostles for founders, that Irenaeus, a hundred years after St. Peter's death, dwelt upon this bond of the one Episcopate, "that necessity by which, on account of its superior princ.i.p.ate, every Church, that is the faithful everywhere, were bound to agree with the Roman Church."

The two great Fathers, one the glory of the East, as the other of the West, Chrysostom and Augustine, born within a few years of each in the middle of the fourth century, and thus placed at a period sufficiently near, and yet not too near to contemplate the whole course of the Church during her conflict with the Roman Empire, both speak in numberless pa.s.sages and in enthusiastic words of the wonder of the Catholic Church spread in all lands. The wonder was increased by the existence of heresies and schisms, which seemed by force of contrast the better to delineate the form of the one Spouse of Christ. St. Epiphanius and St.

Augustine himself had recorded a number of these when that notable sentence of the great Father, "The judgment of the whole world is a safe one," which has pa.s.sed into a proverb, was p.r.o.nounced against the Donatists. What was the marvel which especially convinced their minds and touched their hearts? The Roman Empire, as they still saw it and lived in it, was, in fact, a vast confederation of many peoples, lands, and religions: the only unity which it possessed, amid endless varieties and contradictions, was that unity of civil government which Roman discipline, energy, and valour had so long maintained; which, the one of African the other of h.e.l.lenic race, equally felt and appreciated. This is the greatness especially of the imperial period. Now, springing up in the midst of this endless variety, this most profuse and party-coloured polytheism, this antagonism and rivalry of countless races, and no less in the light of a proud, refined, and most ancient, if also most corrupt, civilisation, they saw the establishment of one uniform government, bearing in its bosom one uniform religion, carried on through ten generations of men, and accomplished after manifold persecutions. They saw the religion and the government start together from the Person of one who claimed to be the Son of G.o.d, while He certainly died, as a malefactor would be condemned to die, upon the cross. They saw the religion and the government carried on in the second degree by twelve men, poor, illiterate, and powerless. And before their own time their fathers had told them how the chief of this mighty empire had bowed his head before the religion and the government springing from One who hung upon the cross, and in His name taught by the Fisherman and the Tentmaker. Was it not the One Episcopate with its one doctrine planted in all these lands, and imposing a uniform rule of life on men and women of every degree, attested by its hosts of martyrs, the purity of its virgins, the patience of its people, which seemed to them a miracle, the force of which they were never tired of proclaiming? That stately fabric in which doctrine and government permeate each other, "that unity coming from the strength of G.o.d, and seated in heavenly sacraments," was it not this to which St. Augustine appealed in combating a heresy in the errors of which he had long been himself ensnared?-an appeal couched in words the force of which is vastly greater when they can be applied with equal truth in the nineteenth as in the fourth century. "I am held in the bosom of the Catholic Church by the agreement of peoples and nations; by the authority which took its rise in miracles, was nurtured in hope, reached its growth in charity, is confirmed by antiquity. I am held by the succession of bishops, down to the actual episcopate, from the very See of the Apostle Peter, to whom after His resurrection the Lord 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 possessed; so that though all heretics would like to be called Catholics, yet if a stranger ask where the Catholic Church is, no heretic would venture to show him his own church or house."[78]

These words were written before the end of the fourth century, and exhibit the aspect in which the Church of Christ presented itself to St.

Augustine. That which he has summed up in a few sentences was drawn out at somewhat, greater length by St. Chrysostom about ten years before, when the worn-out religion of paganism was falling to the ground, and the judgment of Theodosius in levelling heathen temples only expressed the victory of the Christian society. His words[79] portray so graphically the several features of that "divine and invincible power" to which he attributed the growth and expansion of the Church as he beheld it 350 years after the Day of Pentecost, that I will quote them here notwithstanding their length.[80] He begins with saying: "If a heathen says to me, How can I know that Christ is G.o.d? for this is the first thing to be established; the rest all follows from it; I will not make my proof from heaven, or such things. For if I say to him, He made the heaven, the earth, and the sea; he will not receive it. If I say, He raised the dead, He healed the blind, He cast out devils; that too he will not accept. If I say, He promised a kingdom and blessings unspeakable; if I talk to him of the resurrection, not only will he not receive it, he will laugh at it. How, then, can we approach him, especially if he be an ordinary man? How but by those things which both of us admit without contradiction, of which there is no doubt. What, then, does he admit Christ to have done which he will not dispute? This, that He founded the race of Christians. He will not deny that Christ Himself established the Churches throughout the world." Afterwards he thus comments on the marvellous fulfilment of our Lord's prophecy on this subject: "Twelve disciples followed Him; of the Church no one had then conceived so much as the name, for the synagogue was still flouris.h.i.+ng.

When, then, almost the whole world was under the dominion of impiety, what was His prophecy? 'Upon this Rock I will build My Church, and the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail against it.' Weigh as you please this word, and you will see the splendour of its truth. For the wonder is, not that He built it throughout all the world, but made it impregnable, and that though a.s.saulted by such conflicts. For 'the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail against it' are dangers which drag down to h.e.l.l. Now, compare the distinctness of the prediction with the force of the result; behold words which have their evidence in facts, and an irresistible power producing its effects with ease. They are but few words: 'I will build My Church.'

Do not run over them simply, but draw them out in your thoughts. Form a conception how vast a thing it is to fill the whole world with so many Churches in a short time; to change so many nations; to persuade mult.i.tudes; to break up hereditary customs; to extirpate rooted habits; to scatter like dust the tyranny of pleasure, the strength of vice; to sweep away like smoke _altars of blood_, and temples and idols and mysteries, and profane festivals, and the impure odours of victims, and everywhere to raise _unb.l.o.o.d.y altars_[81] in the country of Romans, Persians, Scythians, Moors, and Indians, beyond the limits of our own world. For even the British Islands, lying in the ocean beyond our own sea, have felt the power of this word; for there too churches and altars have been erected. The word then uttered by Him has been planted in all men's souls, is current in all their mouths. The world, which was overgrown with thorns, has been cleared of them, is become pure arable soil, has received into it the seeds of piety. It would be a proof of exceeding greatness, an evidence of divine power, if n.o.body offered resistance, in the midst of peace and in the absence of opponents, for so vast a portion of the earth to be changed in a ma.s.s from a long inveterate bad habit, and to a.s.sume another habit far more difficult. It was not merely custom which offered resistance, but pleasure which held possession, two tyrannous things. For men were persuaded to reject what they had inherited from a long succession of ancestors, from philosophers, and from orators; and not only so, but what was most difficult, to receive a new habit of life, in which the hardest point of all was, that it carried with it much endurance. For it led away from luxury to fasting, from the love of money to poverty, from impurity to temperance, from anger to meekness, from enviousness to kindliness, from the broad and wide way to the narrow and straight and rugged way; and this too the very men who had been nurtured in the former. For it did not take men of another world and another habit of life, but the very men who, through their utter corruption, were softer than mire in their old habit of life; on these it enjoined to tread the narrow and straight way, in all its roughness and sharpness, and they listened. How many? Not two, or ten, or twenty, or a hundred, but the vast majority of a world-wide population. And by whom did the persuasion come? By eleven men without literature, without station, ineloquent, ign.o.ble, poor, who had no country, nor abundance of resources, nor bodily strength, nor distinguished reputation, nor renown of ancestors, nor strength of words, nor skill in rhetoric, nor eminence of knowledge; fishermen, tentmakers, foreigners. For they had not even the same language as those they persuaded, but that strange and outlandish Hebrew tongue. Through them He built this Church, which stretches from one end of the earth to the other.

"Nor was this the sole wonder, but there was a further one. These few, poor, private men, undistinguished, untaught, and unvalued, foreigners and despised, had the remodelling of the whole world placed in their hands, and were bidden to change it into a far more difficult condition of things. Yet this was not to be done in peace, but amid wars of all kind surrounding them. War was in every nation and every city; nay, they felt its blast in every house. For this doctrine entering in, and severing often the child from the father, the daughter-in-law from the mother-in-law, brother from brother and servant from master, subject from ruler, husband from wife and wife from husband, and the parent from his offspring, since conversions did not take place in a ma.s.s, produced daily enmities, perpetual conflicts, a thousand deaths to its bearers, from whom men turned as common enemies. All persecuted them-emperors, rulers, private persons, freemen, slaves, cities and their peoples; nor them alone, but, hardest of all, their neophytes, while they were yet under instruction. War was waged equally upon the taught and the teachers, since the doctrine was opposed to imperial commands, to the common habit, to inherited manners. They were bidden to abstain from idols, to despise the altars of blood, which their fathers and all their ancestors had served, to quit impure beliefs, to ridicule festivals and reject initiations-things to them the most formidable and tremendous, and for which they would rather have given up their life than choose what the others said to them, to believe, that is, on the Son of Mary, on One who stood before the procurator's tribunal, who was spit upon, who suffered unnumbered horrors, who endured an accursed death, who was buried, who rose again. But the strange thing of all was this: the sufferings were manifest to all, the scourging, the blows on the cheek, the spittings on the face, the strokes from the palms of the hand, the cross, the long mockery, the being put to scorn by all, the burial granted by favour.

Not so the facts of His Resurrection; for when He rose again He appeared to them alone. And yet when they told these things they persuaded men, and so they built up the Church.

"But how did they do this? By the power of Him who commanded it. He Himself levelled the way for them; He made the difficulties easy. For had not a divine power given success here, there would not even have been a beginning, not even the first step. How otherwise was it? He who said, 'Let there be a firmament,' and produced it in fact; 'Let the dry land appear,' and it came; 'Let the sun s.h.i.+ne,' and it shone; He who did all things with a word planted also these Churches, and the saying, 'I will build my Church,' produced all these effects. For such are the words of G.o.d, creative words, of creations wonderful and strange....

"Thus, then, they build the universal Church. Yet no workman who was driven about and hindered could with stone and mortar build a single wall; but these men erected so vast a number of churches through the inhabited world while they were being beaten and imprisoned, pursued and put to flight, banned and scourged, slaughtered, burned, and drowned, together with their disciples. They built not with stones, but souls, in the fulness of free choice. How can one compare a mason's work with that of changing by persuasion a soul wherein demons had so long revelled, so that from a state of madness it should reach the height of a sound mind.

Yet such was the strength of men who went about all the world naked and discalced, and with a single coat; for they had fighting with them the irresistible power of Him who said, 'Upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail against it.' Count up the number of tyrants who were ranged in battle against it from that time, what persecutions they raised, in what position the faith stood all that first time when it was newly planted and men's minds were tender.

Heathens were the emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caius, Nero, Vespasian, t.i.tus, and all those who succeeded them down to the time of the blessed Constantine. All these fought against the Church, some with more, some with less violence; all of them, however, fought. If some of them seemed to be quiet, the very fact that those who reigned were conspicuous for impiety was a cause of warfare against the Church, because those around them flattered and served them therein. Yet all these snares and attacks were scattered like spiders' webs, smoke, or dust. For the effect of their plotting was to produce a great host of martyrs, to unfold the immortal treasures of the Church, to disclose its pillars and towers.

They, not only by their life but by their death, were the a.s.surance of a great help to all who came after them.

"Here is the strength of the prediction: the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail against it. From that which has been trust concerning that which is to be, and that no one shall overcome the martyrs."

In reflecting on the history thus sketched out, the thought occurs how completely the ideal of Pope St. Clement, St. Ignatius, St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, St. Epiphanius, and St. Leo, nay, not their ideal only, but that spiritual kingdom which they described as they saw before their eyes, would have been overthrown, if there were subst.i.tuted for it a number of bishops scattered through the world in a variety of temporal kingdoms, some holding one part and some another part of an original revelation, with a mult.i.tude of discrepancies, and all deriving their authority to exercise their mandate from the several temporal powers to which they were civilly subject. The wonder which these Fathers one and all testify in gazing upon a divine Church would have pa.s.sed into disgust and derision for an inst.i.tution over which "the gates of h.e.l.l" had prevailed by destroying its spiritual independence together with its doctrinal unity.

Let us proceed to examine how these two were both maintained, penetrating the divine work so far as to reach that intimate union which made one substance of outward regimen and inward belief by the force of an indissoluble life; for if the Episcopate had been a mere government, it would have had neither such unity nor such vitality, nor have been capable of supporting the Church's fabric.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] Contra Haereses, 3, 3.

[42] For the date of the epistle, as at the end of the century, see the arguments in the Prolegomena, pp. 22, 23, of Funk's "Opera Patrum Apostolicorum."

[43] St. Clement to the Corinthians, 37 and following sections, in which I follow generally Dr. Lightfoot's translation, with a few changes.

[44] ? ?esp?t??.

[45] p??sf???? ?a? ?e?t?????a?, sacrificial terms, belonging to the Holy Eucharist.

[46] t?? ?e?t?????a? a?t??.