Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom Part 4

[12] Politique, &c., lib. vii. art. 2.

[13] Nagelsbach, Homerische Theologie, 275.

[14] See Bianchi, vol. iii. ch. ii.

[15] ?e??d?d?s?a??? e?te ?e??????, e?te ?e??f??a?e?, e?te, ?? ?e??

?????e?, ?e??f??ta?. Dionys. Halic., 1. 2.

[16] Bianchi, Sect. VI.

[17] Bianchi, p. 23.

CHAPTER II.

RELATION BETWEEN THE CIVIL AND THE SPIRITUAL POWERS AFTER CHRIST.

1.-_The Spiritual Power in its Source and Nature._

Taking as our basis the historical outline of the relation between the Civil and Spiritual Powers which has preceded, let us attempt to have present to our minds the state of this relation at the death of Christ.

The great world-empire had then been ruled in most peaceful security for half a generation by Tiberius. Under him lay a vast variety of nations, professing as strange a variety of G.o.ds and of wors.h.i.+p paid to them, but all, with one exception, accepting a religious supremacy in him as Pontifex Maximus of the Roman religion. The Princeps of the civil power, the Imperator of the civil force, was also Chief Priest of religion, and by that union held in his hands those two Powers, an attack upon either of which const.i.tuted, as Tertullian testifies, the double guilt of majesty violated and sacrilege incurred. Within these limits, and with this condition, it was free to the several nations to practise their ancestral rites as well as to believe in their ancestral G.o.ds, at least within their ancient territorial bounds. There can be no doubt that these nations generally clung to their several rites and beliefs, not only from the force of nurture and habit, but also as remnants of their former independence as nations. As little can we doubt that the great Roman power was employed to maintain and protect them as part of the const.i.tuted order of things and in prevention of _sedition_. This, so far as the Roman dominion extended, was the outcome of that long succession of wars, and changes of rule ensuing on wars, which forms the history of mankind so soon as it leaves the nest of pristine unity at the epoch of the dispersion. It is clear that through the whole of this Gentile world, while amity had not been broken between the Civil and the Spiritual Powers, the priesthood, which represented the latter, had everywhere become the subject of the former. It is no less clear that this subjection was repaid with support. This condition of things was most clearly expressed as well as most powerfully established in the position of the Roman Emperor, who, as he received the tribunitial power, which in union with the consular was distinctive of the imperial dignity, from the Senate, so received also the supreme authority in matters of religion which belonged to the Pontifex Maximus. This authority had indeed been in its origin and its descent from age to age in the Roman city distinct from secular power, but henceforth became practically united with the civil princ.i.p.ate. That undivided supremacy betokened the ultimate const.i.tution of the heathen State, antecedent to the coming of Christ, in what concerns the relation between the two Powers. According to this, the Civil Power prevailed over the Spiritual, and casting off the subjection to religion in which itself had been nurtured, directed all its actions to a temporal end.

Far otherwise was it with that people which Moses, under the divine command, had created according to the pattern which he saw in the Mount.

Chosen by G.o.d to conduct the race of Abraham out of captivity into the promised land, he alone in the history of the Israelitic race united in himself the three powers bestowed by unction of Priest, of Prophet, and of King. These powers he left to the people he was forming, but did not deposit them all in the same hands. His creation of the priesthood in the tribe of Levi, and of the high priesthood in the person of his brother Aaron and his lineal descendants, stands without a parallel in all the history of the world before the coming of Christ as an act of transcendent authority. For instead of the original priesthood of the first-born, which he found existing as it had been transmitted from the earliest time, he selected a particular tribe, which was not that of the first-born, to bear from that time forth the priesthood among the children of Israel; and further, he selected a particular person in that tribe, his brother Aaron, to erect in him the high priesthood, the most characteristic inst.i.tution of the Jewish people. In like manner he took the ancient inst.i.tution of sacrifice, dating, as we have seen, from Paradise itself, and formed it into an elaborate system to be carried out day by day through the whole succeeding history of his people, by priests springing from the person of the first High Priest. At the door of the Tabernacle, in the presence of all the a.s.sembled tribes, Moses invested Aaron with the priestly garments, especially the ephod, bearing attached to it the Rational, which contained the twelve stones indicating the twelve tribes of the holy nation, by which the High Priest, consulting G.o.d, issued the oracle of doctrine and truth. Moses further set the mitre on his head, bearing on its golden plate the inscription, "Holiness to the Lord;" and pouring on his head the oil of unction, he anointed and consecrated him. Thus the whole Jewish priesthood descended from above, being gathered up in one person, from whom all succeeding priests were drawn, and the sous of the first High Priest were to continue the line for ever according to primogeniture.

The High Priest's office had in it four points peculiar to him beyond the office of the ordinary priest. First, once in the year, on the great day of the atonement, he alone entered into the most holy place, "not without blood, which he offered for his own sins and the sins of the people"

(Heb. ix. 7), inasmuch as he sent into the wilderness one he-goat, charged with the sins of all the people, and sacrificed the other, whose blood he carried into the sanctuary, sprinkling it seven times over against the oracle, to expiate the sanctuary from the uncleanness of the children of Israel (Lev. xvi. 15, 16). He thus once every year represented in his person the whole sacred nation in that most remarkable act of confessing its guilt before G.o.d, and offering an expiation of it, which pointed even more to a future Redeemer. Secondly, he consecrated the whole body of the priests and Levites for their several work. The oil of unction poured upon his head was the palpable sign of priestly power transmitted from him to the priest, in which, again, he was an image of the future High Priest. Thirdly, whenever the civil rulers of the nation required advice in matters concerning the good of the whole people, it was the office of the High Priest to inquire for them by means of the breastplate of light and truth, which he carried upon the ephod. The relation of the Civil to the Spiritual Power was symbolised in the first bearer of the former after Moses, to whom Moses was commanded by G.o.d to communicate "part of his glory." G.o.d said to Moses, "Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and put thy hand upon him, and he shall stand before Eleazar the priest (who had then succeeded his father Aaron in the high priesthood), and all the mult.i.tude, and thou shalt give him precepts in the sight of all, and part of thy glory, that all the congregation of the children of Israel may hear him. If anything be to be done, Eleazar the priest shall consult the Lord for him, he, and all the children of Israel with him, and the rest of the mult.i.tude, shall go out and go in at his word" (Num. xxvii. 18). Thus David afterwards consulted G.o.d by Abiathar, the High Priest in his day. Fourthly, on all questions concerning the decalogue, or commands in the moral law, or the ceremonial law, which embraced the whole field of the divine wors.h.i.+p, or the judicial law, which concerned reciprocal rights and duties between man and man, the High Priest possessed a supreme and decisive jurisdiction, from which there was no appeal.

It is necessary to distinguish between the third of those privileges, the judgment by the breastplate of light and truth, which was an extraordinary gift of G.o.d, bestowed at particular times, and a.n.a.logous in this to inspiration, and the fourth, the supreme jurisdiction and judgment of the High Priest, which belonged to him as an ordinary part of his office, and may be likened to a perpetual divine a.s.sistance inherent in it.[18]

2. Such was the high priesthood in its inst.i.tution, and its operation through the whole of Jewish history down to the final destruction of the Temple corresponds to its inst.i.tution.

The children of Israel were made a nation for a specific purpose, that is, in order that the race of Abraham, by Isaac his chosen son, should maintain upon earth, in the midst of an ever-growing defection, the wors.h.i.+p of the one True G.o.d, and should likewise embody and represent no less that which was bound up in this wors.h.i.+p, the promise of redemption given at the beginning of the world. The reason of its existence, therefore, was to be the bearer of the Messianic idea. To this all its ordinances and sacrifices pointed, and in the execution of all this purpose the High Priest was the chief organ. The Pontificate was the stem of the nation, of which the civil unity was made from the beginning dependent on the spiritual. On Aaron, by G.o.d's command, Moses devolved one "part of his glory;" and when Eleazar had succeeded his father in the office of High Priest, and Moses was about to die, he devolved, by the same divine command, another part of his glory upon Joshua, appointing him to lead the children of Israel into their promised inheritance. To invest him with this solemn charge, the civil leaders.h.i.+p of the nation, he brought him before Eleazar the priest, that, according to his instruction, Joshua and the whole congregation "should go out and go in."

This relative position of Eleazar and Joshua is continued in the respective religious and civil rulers during several hundred years down to the kings.h.i.+p of Saul. When the Israelites chose themselves a king after the pattern of the nations round them, the word of G.o.d to Samuel respecting their act is, "They have not rejected thee, but me, that I should not reign over them" (1 Kings viii. 7). Nevertheless G.o.d sanctions the erection of a kingdom, leaving unaltered the position of the High Priest. During the time of the kings the high priesthood continues the centre of Jewish wors.h.i.+p; and when the civil unity is broken by the revolt of the ten tribes, they revolt likewise against the wors.h.i.+p which had its seat in Jerusalem and was gathered up in the High Priest. The long-persistent iniquity of the people is punished by the captivity, and when a portion of the nation comes back to take root afresh in its own land, it is in the high priesthood more than ever that its unity is restored and maintained. Thus, through the three periods of Israelitic history, under the judges, under the kings, and after the return from captivity, the High Priest remains the permanent centre of Jewish life, the organ of spiritual, and therein of civil unity. Our Lord recognises this spiritual ruler as at the head of the Great Council, "sitting in the chair of Moses." At His birth Herod inquires of this authority where Christ should be born, and receives the undoubting answer, "In Bethlehem of Juda." Of Him Caiaphas, being then High Priest, uttered the famous prophecy denoting the great act of His mediatorial sacrifice; and the same Caiaphas, sitting as supreme judge of the nation, adjures Him by the living G.o.d to declare if He be the Christ; and our Lord answers the adjuration by the explicit declaration of His divine Sons.h.i.+p, and His authority to be Judge of the living and the dead.

The judges pa.s.s, the kings pa.s.s, the nation goes into captivity; it comes back chastened, and faithful at length to its belief in the divine unity and the promises attached to it; and through all this, up to the time of accomplishment, the High Priest sits in the chair of Moses, and offers expiation on the day of atonement, and the priests emanate from his person, and prophecy speaks from his mouth. He is the ordinary judge of the whole people, the guardian and interpreter of the divine law, whose decision is final and supreme.

3. That people lost its civil independence, which was merged in the great Roman empire, but its spiritual independence, centred in its High Priest, was preserved to it. At no period of its history was this independence more remarkably maintained. Philo, himself a Jew settled in Egypt, says, "Innumerable pilgrims from innumerable cities flock together by sea and land, from East and West, from North and South, on every festival to this Temple (of Jerusalem) as to a common harbour and refuge, seeking peace there in the midst of a life of business or trouble."[19] "The Holy City," he says in another place, "is my country, a metropolis not of the single country of Judea, but of many others, on account of the colonies from time to time thence sent forth." But not only was this city such a metropolis to all Jews in every part of the world, and the High Priest the centre of the wors.h.i.+p which drew them from all parts of the world, but his spiritual authority extended over them in the several cities which they inhabited as well as when they came up to Jerusalem. This was the power borne witness to by St. Paul, when "yet breathing out threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, he went to the High Priest and asked of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any men and women of this way, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem." This was the power which counterworked and persecuted St.

Paul himself wherever he went, through which "five times he received of the Jews forty stripes save one, and was thrice beaten with rods" (2 Cor.

xi. 24). This was the power which, wherever the Apostles went, preaching the Gospel under the cover of a religion which enjoyed legal sanction, and so disobeyed no Roman law, encountered them, and, after endless particular persecutions, succeeded at last with Nero in getting them put beyond the pale of the protection which their character of Jews might afford them, and placed under the ban of the empire as preachers of a new and unsanctioned religion. They were but summing up a long course of previous persecution in this act, which was the master-stroke of Jewish antagonism, by which they fulfilled to the uttermost the divine prediction: "Therefore, behold I send to you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them you will put to death and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city" (Matt. xxiii. 40). And it was followed at once by the destruction of the city, the Temple, and the priesthood, as the prophecy ran, "Behold your house shall be left to you desolate." The position of the High Priest in this last period of Israelitic history, the forty years which elapsed from the day of Pentecost to the destruction of the city and Temple, represents him most vividly as the guardian, judge, and mouthpiece of a religion which, though national, had colonies in all parts of the world, and in which not only the central seat of the wors.h.i.+p and the country of Judea, but the colonies also, in whatever part of the world they might be situated, acknowledged his spiritual jurisdiction.

This privilege was given by Julius Caesar, as to the Roman empire, and continued by Augustus. It is of much moment to understand the history of the first forty years of the Christian Church.

4. So completely had the high priesthood created by Moses, and the whole system of wors.h.i.+p, sacrifices, rites, and ceremonies which it presided over and guarded, fulfilled the purpose for which it was created. It presented in all its parts a type and a prophecy of Christ and His kingdom-a type and a prophecy which through fifteen hundred years of action and suffering had wrought itself out in the heart of a people who, now deprived of their civil, but enjoying a spiritual, independence, lay scattered through the whole world, ready to receive the spiritual kingdom. Through all Gentiledom the sacerdotal authority had become, by its corruption of the high truths of religion, the serf or minion of the Civil Power, but to the Jews the wors.h.i.+p of their G.o.d was in its own nature supreme, and did not admit of interference even from that power which they acknowledged to rule absolutely in temporal dominion. The same scribes and pharisees and people who cried out before the Roman governor, "We have no king but Caesar," were ready a few years afterwards to sacrifice their lives rather than admit into Jerusalem a statue of the Emperor Caligula, which seemed to them an impugnment of their religious law. And the Jewish people during the years of our Lord's teaching and ministry were looking for their Messias, and when they should acknowledge Him, were ready to acknowledge Him not only as Priest and Prophet but as King also. So deeply had the words of Moses sunk in their hearts: "That G.o.d would raise up to them a prophet of their nation and of their brethren like unto him, whom they were to hear" (Deut. xviii. 18); that is, a Prophet bearing, as Moses alone had done, the triple unction, and who was to be supreme in teaching, in priesthood, and in rule. The civil subjection of the people brought out more strikingly by its contrast their spiritual independence, and the banishment, which scattered a number of them into all lands, provided everywhere a seed-plot in which the Gospel might be planted-a little gathering not only of Jews, but of Gentile proselytes, "who feared G.o.d" in every place, and so could more readily receive the doctrine of G.o.d incarnate and crucified upon their belief of G.o.d the Creator. Had the Jews remained in their own land, they would not have had the perception of a spiritual jurisdiction founded upon a divine hierarchy alone, and stretching over the whole earth, disregarding all national divisions and restrictions, and binding Parthians and Medes, Elamites and Mesopotamians, Egyptians and Libyans, Cretes and Arabians, Greeks and Romans into one. The mould into which the Gospel was to be cast had been wrought out even through the obstinacy, the sins, and the punishments of the chosen people, and was now complete to receive and bear the tree for the healing of the nations. The high priesthood had come forth from Moses by express inspiration, and bearing its people through centuries of most various fortune, had imaged out exactly the Christian high priesthood and rule to which it was to yield.[20] A prophecy embodied in a fact which unites a people into an indissoluble organisation, and works through centuries moulding generation after generation, and gathering into one prodigious monument of priesthood, sacrifices, ceremonies, and temple, and the hopes and devotion of a race, this is the ground which our Lord selected for the basis of the spiritual kingdom which He would set up. He had provided Moses as a servant to construct the model of the house which hereafter He would build Himself; He had inspired Moses to create Aaron and draw out of him the levitical priesthood, because Himself would commission Peter, the perpetual fountain of the Christian priesthood, and would make Peter for all nations that which Aaron had been for one.

But, as in all the preceding history, G.o.d left to man the exercise of his free-will. It was not open to the Jews indeed to frustrate the divine purpose, but it was open to them to receive or not receive the Christ when He came. They were ready to receive a glorious but not a suffering Christ. And the High Priest, sitting at the head of the Great Council of the nation, in the chair of Moses and in the dignity of Aaron, instead of accepting, rejected and slew Him with the Roman death of crucifixion, by the hand of the Roman governor, the bearer to the nation of the Roman imperial power. The High Priest slew Him further on the affected charge that He was plotting against the emperor's power; in reality because He acknowledged Himself to be the Christ, the Son of G.o.d.

Let us take, then, what I am about to say as facts which have been hitherto undisputed. There have been, and there are, unbelievers in plenty of the Christian truth and Church, but no one has, I believe, hitherto been found to deny that Christ was put to death by Pontius Pilate at the instigation of the Chief Priest and the Sanhedrim. Let us take this as a fact, and put ourselves in thought at the great Sabbath during which His Body rested in the tomb. It is the Body of one executed with the greatest ignominy, between two thieves, by a most cruel death, under the authority of the Roman governor, upon the charge that He claimed a kings.h.i.+p which interfered with that of the emperor, at the instigation of those who rejected His claim to be their Messias, the Son of G.o.d. His Body, even when dead, ceases not to be under the jurisdiction of the Roman governor, who commits its custody to His chief enemies, those whose instigation has brought about His death. Their seal is set upon His tomb, and their guards watch it. Taking these bare facts, as acknowledged by friend and foe, can any situation of more complete impotence be conceived by human imagination than this? He has come, and taught, and worked miracles, and been rejected by His own. He has been put to death in the name and by the power of the world's lord, who bears the crown of majesty and wields the authority of wors.h.i.+p. The guards of His enemies sit beside His tomb.

Such was the fact on the great Sabbath, the high day of the Jewish Pasch.

What can be conceived more improbable at that moment, and under these circ.u.mstances, than the fact which we have now to record as following in its evolution during so many ages? The sovereign in whose name and by whose power that Body had been put to death held undisputed in his hands the supremacy of Spiritual as well as Civil Power through the great world of Gentilism, represented by the Roman empire. From that Body was to spring, beginning with the morrow, the distinction and independence of the Spiritual over against the Civil Power, which was to dissolve this twofold supremacy throughout the whole range of that empire. And this was to be accomplished by a series of actions arising out of the sole proclamation of envoys taken from the people which had rejected Him-a proclamation derived from the commission which He should give in the Body raised again to life. The distinction, indeed, of the two Powers, so far from being new, has been coeval with the human race itself, as we have seen; but it has been broken down by human sin in all nations but one, and that one, created for its maintenance, made, through all its history, prophetical for its fulfilment when the time of that fulfilment came, has rejected its Bearer; and yet out of its bosom, on the morrow, is to go forth that word of power which in the end shall change the condition of human society, and create it after another order.

It will be well thoroughly to grasp the truth that all which followed depended upon a fact, the supernatural character of which cannot be exaggerated. We are considering the Spiritual Power which arose and diffused itself in the world from the Person of Christ. It took its origin from the Body in which He appeared to His Apostles after His resurrection. Without their belief in that resurrection, as evidenced to all their senses, there was no ground for their conduct. Without the reality of that resurrection there was no source for the Power. It would seem that, whatever else the Christian order of things may be, it must be supernatural and miraculous, since, to exist at all, it presupposes a fact which is a lords.h.i.+p over nature and a miracle in the highest degree.

Without this primary miracle all Christian faith is vain, and in the power which worked it all subsequent miracles are included. That the fact took place, let the results which followed testify, at the beginning of which our exposition stands. The Jews expected a Messias, who, according to the prophecies long enshrined in their nation about Him, was to be Priest, Prophet, and King. They put to death one who claimed to come before them in this triple character. From one dead, so long as he continues dead, no life can spring. But life and multifold life sprung up here; therefore He who was dead had arisen, and all of which we have to speak is the result of His life. The fundamental truth on which we have to dwell is the going forth of a supernatural power from the Person of Christ.

We have seen Adam in Paradise created in the full maturity of intellect and will, and placed at the head of a double order of things, of civil and of spiritual authority. We have now to consider that greater One whom Adam prefigured, and who, coming forth from the tomb, a.s.sumed forthwith that double heads.h.i.+p. When the great act of His pontificate had been accomplished in giving up His Body to death for the sins of the world, and its efficacy acknowledged by His resurrection, He declared to His Apostles "that all power had been given to Him in heaven and upon earth."

This all-power in heaven and on earth, given to the G.o.d-man as the fruit of His incarnation and the reward of His sacrifice, divides itself into two-temporal and spiritual. The first is that by which He disposes of all persons and all events. This power He has not delegated to any one in chief, but keeps it in His own hands. Yet it is a part of this power of which it is said, "By me kings reign, and princes decree justice." The whole civil sovereignty is founded on an apportionment to it of the divine sovereignty for the maintenance of human society. A part of the second or Spiritual Power He delegated to St. Peter in chief, and to the Apostles, with St. Peter at their head. Out of this all-power He set up and sent forth in them a royal priesthood to proclaim and maintain the truth which He had come to declare to the world; that is to say, He took His own priesthood and put it upon them, investing it with a reproductive ordering and maintaining power in His spiritual kingdom. To it He attached the gift of truth, that is, of communicating, unfolding, guarding, the whole body of doctrine which He came upon earth to declare; and in it He placed the jurisdiction which is necessary to the priesthood in order to exert itself in offering the sacrifice and in dispensing the sacraments which He inst.i.tuted, and in guarding the truth with which they are bound up.

That power, then, which He designated in the keys given to Peter, in the Rock which He set in his person, in the pastoral charge which He laid upon him over His sheep, and in which He sent forth His Apostles to make disciples all nations, to baptize them in the sacred Name, to teach them to observe all which He had commanded, and in the exercise of which He promised to remain with them to the end of the world, is one and indivisible in itself, and triple in its range and direction-a priesthood proclaiming the truth and ruling in the sphere which belongs to its priesthood and its teachings. As Adam is created one and complete, and his race springs from him, so this kingdom of Christ springs complete from Him in its regimen, which is not the result of history, but formed in His Person before its history begins, as He is at once Priest, Teacher, and King. Thus this Power comes from above, not from below; proceeds from emanation; is not gathered gradually by accretion; is an effect of positive inst.i.tution, derived from the Head; not the effect of a need or the working out of a natural capacity in the body.

The root of that Power is the act for the accomplishment of which our Lord Himself took our flesh upon Him-the act of His high priesthood, by which, having taken our flesh, He took also the sins of the world upon Himself, and offered Himself for them on the cross. It is as Redeemer that He is Priest, the sacrifice of His body being the offering which He made. It is in the perpetual service and offering of that body that the priesthood which He created for others exists and provides the perpetual bread of life, which is the food of sanctification, for His people. In the priesthood, therefore, we have to deal with the whole range of subject which embraces grace on the part of G.o.d and wors.h.i.+p on the part of man. It is most fitting that all spiritual power should grow upon this stock. All priesthoods in the world from the beginning had been connected, as we have seen, with the sense and acknowledgment of guilt; and with the rite of sacrifice. In the Aaronic priesthood this has been specially noted. Thus it bore a perpetual prophetical witness to the act which Christ accomplished. All future priesthood dated from the accomplishment of that act, and took its force from it. Thus it was truly the central act of human history. Had not the Son of G.o.d a.s.sumed our nature, He could not have been a Priest. His priesthood, therefore, carried in it the two great divine acts-His incarnation and His satisfaction, which make up the economy of human salvation. The first direction, then, of the power which He delegated is that of the Priest.

The second is that of the Teacher. A princ.i.p.al part of His ministry while on earth certainly was to teach. He was the Prophet that was to come into the world, and all that He taught bore reference to the two acts just dwelt upon, that He came forth from G.o.d and was going to G.o.d. Not a sentence of His teaching but presupposes His Incarnation and His Pa.s.sion.

That whole body of truth, therefore, which He did not write down Himself, but committed to the living ministry of His Apostles, proceeds, as it were, out of His Pontificate, and rests upon it. It is the truth of the Word made flesh, and of G.o.d sacrificed for His creatures. The gift of teaching, as the illuminating power in His Church, corresponds to the virtue of faith in the taught, and implies the possession of truth in the teacher. As the priesthood has a perpetual sacrifice stored up within it, and a perpetual gift of grace accompanying it, so the teaching has a perpetual gift of truth. The fountain of truth, therefore, in this Power, can be no more discoloured and polluted than the fountain of grace in the priesthood can be turned into sin. By virtue of it Christ remains for ever the one Teacher and Master whom all His people have to follow.

Theology is an outcome of this Power. The issuing of doctrinal decrees is grounded upon it, and the censure of writings and of all false opinions on whatever subject which may impair Christian doctrine.

The third direction of the one Power is that of ruling and ordering, not to be separated from the former two, since it consists, in fact, in the free, legitimate, and ordered use of them, and has, therefore, been termed Jurisdiction, inasmuch as it is government in the whole domain of grace and truth. In every government there is a power which administers, a power which legislates, a power which judges, and all these in the sovereign degree; that is, in a degree not liable to revision and reversal in the respective subject-matter. If we apply these three acts to the full domain of grace and truth, which is the domain of the Incarnate Son (John i. 14), set up in the world, we express that royalty which is the third attribute of the priesthood. It comprehends supreme pastors.h.i.+p in all its range; legislation in the kingdom of truth; and judgment, whether external or internal, in the spiritual tribunal.

This was the Power, one and indivisible in itself, triple in its direction, which Christ took from His own Person as part of the all-power given to Him, and delegated to the Ruler of His Church, that in the exercise of it He might fulfil all prophecy concerning Himself, and be at once Priest, Prophet, and King: and out of this He made and makes His people.

In the transmission of that Power to the persons to whom He gave it He observed two principles: that of unity, and that of hierarchical subordination. To maintain the first, He made the Primacy; to maintain the second, the College of Apostles. For the whole of this triple power, the keys of the kingdom of heaven in the priesthood, the guardians.h.i.+p of faith in the office of teacher, and the supreme pastors.h.i.+p of rule He promised to one and bestowed on one, Peter. Thus He made Peter the Primate, and by the centering this triple authority in his sole person set him as the Rock on which the Church is built. At the same time He a.s.sociated with Peter the eleven, to exercise this same authority in conjunction with Him. Thus at the very founding of the Church we find the two forces which are to continue throughout, and from the union of which the whole hierarchy with its graduated subordination springs. From the Apostolic College descends the Episcopate, the everliving source of which is in Peter the head, by union with whom it is "one Episcopate, of which a part is held by each without division of the whole." Only on this condition is the Episcopate one, without which, in all places and in all time, it would be a principle of rivalry and division, using the triple power of priesthood, teaching, and rule against itself. With this condition we have exactly realised the image of the Rock on which the Church is founded, and against which the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail, in the establishment of the Episcopate, as one indivisible power, having its fountain and fulness in one person, a part of whose solicitude is shared by a body of bishops spread through the whole world, speaking with one voice the faith of Peter, because they are united with the person of Peter.

All that we have hitherto said as to the emanation of power from the Person of Christ is comprehended by St. Peter when he calls our Lord, "the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls," and by St. Paul when he calls Him "a High Priest over the house of G.o.d," "the Apostle and High Priest of our confession," "called of G.o.d High Priest after the order of Melchisedek." And by Himself when He bade His disciples to have no other Master, that is, Teacher, "for one is your Master, Christ;" and when, treating on the eve of His pa.s.sion this very subject, He said to His Apostles, "I dispose to you, as my Father disposed to me, a kingdom;" and after His resurrection, saying to them collectively, "As my Father sent me, even so send I you;" and "Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world;" and when He said to Peter on the sh.o.r.e of the Lake of Galilee, after He had drawn in the unbroken net full of great fishes, "Lovest thou me more than these? Feed my sheep."[21] For is He not in priesthood, teaching, and government the prolific Father of the age to come? He remains not solitary in His triple dignity, but is the Adam of His race, and rules in it from His resurrection by those whom He appoints.

It may further be observed that in the supernatural regimen thus established by our Lord, viewed as the one indivisible power which const.i.tutes it, there is an image traced upon His spiritual kingdom of the ever-blessed Trinity, its royalty representing G.o.d the Father as the source: its priesthood, wherein lies the whole economy of human redemption, G.o.d the Son, who carries it out; its teaching, G.o.d the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, whose ever-abiding presence guides its subjects, as by the hand, into all truth. The regimen is the generative power in His kingdom; and this image, wrought indelibly upon its society in all lands and times, is as distinctly Christ's work upon the Christian commonwealth as the image traced upon individual man in the soul's triple const.i.tution of memory, understanding, and will, when it has been sanctified by His grace, is His work upon the individual.

That in the Episcopate there should be a triple power: of priesthood, comprehending the whole divine wors.h.i.+p, and the imparting of grace through the sacraments; of teaching, which contains the communication of the whole divine truth; and of ruling, that is, over the whole region of action comprised by the priesthood and the teaching, the prototype of which exists in the eternal relations of the Blessed Trinity, while itself is that one undivided power which represents the divine unity, seems to shadow out the very citadel in which the Divine Wisdom set up His kingdom.

Who could have imagined beforehand such a const.i.tution of government?

Who, placing himself at the time of Christ and contemplating as a fact the actual relations of the Two Powers then in existence _before him_, could ever have devised such a kingdom? Is not this in very deed the kingdom of grace and truth? Have we not here visible to the eye of faith the Priest, the Prophet, and the King, who has set up Altar, Chair, and Throne together in the midst of the nations?

2.-_The Spiritual Power a Complete Society._

That man, who was originally made after the image and likeness of G.o.d, is sent into this life in order that he may in a future life attain the end of his being, that is, the enjoyment of G.o.d, is the primary fundamental truth which is presupposed in that whole work of Christ just described.

The supernatural society exists for a supernatural end. The total denial of this end would be the complete and perfect heathenism of which the original heathenism was but a shadow; for that state of man in which the whole of his public and private life was encircled by the ties and consecrated by the rites of religion, even though those rites were prost.i.tuted by being offered to false G.o.ds, was not a denial of this end.

In such a state man acknowledged a power beyond himself-beyond visible nature: his mind, his heart, his imagination were filled with the sense of that power. This is true of the great ma.s.s of the heathen before the coming of Christ, and is true in a large degree of those nations remaining still outside the Christian faith in their traditional religion, which descends in however fragmentary, however perverted a form, from the religion of Noah, and the primal and universal covenant for all his family struck with him. It is only the apostasy of a few from the Christian faith itself which has readied that final and absolute impiety-the greatest which the human mind can reach-of entirely denying this end of man.

Now, in considering the relation between the Civil and the Spiritual Power in all its bearings, we a.s.sume as a postulate this supernatural end of man. As it is the kernel of our belief, so it is the absolute basis of our argument. It cannot be put in a terser form than that in which our Lord stated it to those about Him when He asked the question, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Those only who have come to such a negation of reason as to suppose that they have no souls can disregard it. And as it is of absolute necessity, so it is all that is required for a full consideration of the subject.

"There is then a certain good beyond the natural society of man in this his condition of mortal life, which is that ultimate beat.i.tude which is looked for after death in the enjoyment of G.o.d. And so the Christian, who has acquired a right to that beat.i.tude by the blood of Christ, and has received the earnest of the Holy Spirit in order to attain it, requires, beyond the aid which temporal government gives him for the concerns of this life, a spiritual care which is given to the faithful by the ministers of Christ's Church. Now, as to the ultimate end which they are to seek, the same must be said of the whole ma.s.s of men as of one man.

If, then, the one man's end lay in any good existing in himself, the ultimate end of government for the ma.s.s of men would be similarly that it should reach such good and secure its possession. But all the goods of this present life offer no such end, whether it be health, or riches, or knowledge, or even virtue. For the virtuous life, whether of the individual or the ma.s.s, is subordinate to a further end, which is the future enjoyment of G.o.d. If that end could be obtained by a power of human nature, it would belong to the office of temporal government to direct men to it, since that is supreme in things purely human. But since man does not attain the end of enjoying G.o.d by any merely human power but by divine power, according to St. Paul's word, that 'the grace of G.o.d is eternal life,' it requires not a human but a divine government to lead men to that end. And so it is that such a government belongs to a King who is not only man but also G.o.d, that is, to our Lord Jesus Christ, who has introduced men to the glory of heaven by making them sons of G.o.d.

This, then, is the kingdom which has been delivered to Him, and which shall not be broken up, on account of which He is named in Scripture, not Priest only, but King. Hence a royal priesthood is derived from Him; and, what is more, all the faithful of Christ, so far forth as they are His members, are called kings and priests. Therefore the ministry of this kingdom, in order that spiritual things might be distinguished from temporal, has been entrusted not to the kings of the earth but to priests, and in the highest degree to the priest who is over all, the successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff, to whom all kings of the Christian people are to be subject as to our Lord Jesus Christ himself; for this is in accordance with the principle that those to whom belongs the care of antecedent ends should be subject to him who has the care of the final end, and be directed by his rule."[22]

What we have just said amounts to this, that the whole life of man, whether single or in society, while he lives upon earth, is subject to the life which he hopes for in heaven as its supreme purpose and end; and that being so subject, as there is a society to aid him in attaining the goods of his natural life, so much more is there a society to aid him in attaining that supernatural good to which the natural goods are subordinate. We have next to compare the regimens of these two societies with each other in regard to their completeness.