CHAPTER IX. THE SECOND MAN VERIFIED IN HISTORY.

“Magnum principium, et regni ejus non erit finis. Deus fortis,

dominator, princeps pacis.”

In order to complete the view taken in the preceding chapter of the work

of Christ as the second Adam over against the work of the first Adam, it

is necessary to dwell at greater length upon a point of which only cursory

mention was made therein. It was our object there to bring out the

relation of Christ to the Church, but this cannot be done without fully

exhibiting the relation to the same Church of the Holy Spirit. To the

Incarnation the Fathers in general give the title of the Dispensation of

the Son, and as the equivalent, the result, the complement and crown of

this Dispensation, they put the Giving of the Spirit.(91) This Giving of

the Spirit occupies the whole region of grace, and is coextensive with the

whole action of the Incarnate God upon men whom He has taken to be His

brethren. The Holy Spirit in this Giving is He who represents the

Redeemer, and executes His will, not as an instrument, not as one

subordinate, but as the very mind of Christ between whom and Christ there

can far less enter any notion of division or separation than between a man

and his own spirit. He is that other Paraclete, abiding for ever, who

replaces to the disciples the visible absence of the first Paraclete, the

Redeemer Himself: He is the Power constituting the Kingdom of Christ; the

Godhead inhabiting His Temple; the Soul animating His mystical Body; the

Charity, kindling into a living flame the heart of His Bride; the Creator

and Father of His Race.

This connection between the Dispensation of the Son and the Giving of the

Spirit was delineated by our Lord himself when He first appeared to His

assembled disciples after His resurrection. As they were gazing in wonder

and trembling joy on that Body which had undergone His awful passion, as

He showed them the wounds in His hands and His feet, He told them how His

sufferings were the fulfilment of all that in the Law, the Prophets, and

the Psalms had been written concerning Him. And thereupon it is said, He

opened their mind to the understanding of these Scriptures. It was thus

that the Christ was to suffer, it was thus that He was to rise again on

the third day. Hitherto He has dwelt upon His own dispensation, as the

fulfilment of all prophecy, now He proceeds to its fruit: that in the name

of this Christ repentance and remission of sins should be proclaimed to

all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. “And you,” He says, “are the

witnesses of these things. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father

upon you: but stay you in the city of Jerusalem until you be endued with

power from on high.” Again, at another occasion of equal solemnity, when

He was with His assembled disciples in visible form for the last time, at

the moment preceding His ascension, He uses the same emphatic words,

charging them not to depart from the city, but to await there that promise

of the Father, the baptism in the Holy Ghost, which they were to receive

in common together, which was to be the power in virtue of which they

should be His witnesses for all time unto the ends of the earth: the power

which instead of restoring a local kingdom to Israel, as was in their

thoughts when they questioned Him, was to create an universal kingdom to

Him in the hearts of men. It is then as the result of His passion, and the

token of His resurrection, that the Son sends down upon His disciples the

promise of the Father, that is, the perpetual presence of the Spirit of

the Father and the Son, the Spirit of Truth and Grace, that permanent and

immanent power from on high, who, dwelling for ever in the disciples,

makes the Church.

But these words, so singular and so forcible, which He uses on these two

occasions, at His resurrection and His ascension, are themselves a

reference to the long discourse which He had held with His apostles on the

night of His passion. It is in this discourse, from the moment that Judas

left them to the conclusion of the divine prayer—and if we can make any

distinction in His words, surely these are the most solemn which were ever

put together in human language, since they are the prayer not of a

creature to the Creator, but the prayer of One divine Person to Another—it

is in this discourse that He describes the power from on high with which,

as the promise of the Father, He, the Son, would invest His disciples. It

is here He says that He would ask the Father, who should give them another

Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, to abide with them for ever: whom the

world would not receive, nor see, nor know, but whom they should know,

because He should abide with them and be in them. This other Paraclete,

coequal therefore with Himself, whom the Father should send in His name,

and whom He should send from the Father, the Spirit of holiness as well as

the Spirit of truth, should teach them all things and remind them of all

His teaching. And His coming, though invisible, should profit them more

than His own visible presence. For while He declared Himself to be the

Way, the Truth, and the Life,(92) He revealed to them here that it was by

that very way that the Spirit of truth should lead them by the hand into

all truth. It was in this Truth, that is, in Himself, that they should be

sanctified, and that they should be one, the glory of the Incarnation,

which had been given to Him, passing on to them as the members of His

Body, by the joint possession of the spirit of truth and holiness, whose

presence was the gage that the Father loved them, as He loved Christ, the

Body being identified with the Head. In all this He was describing to them

the work of that other Paraclete, His own Spirit, “who was to sanctify

what He had redeemed, and to guard and maintain possession of what He had

acquired.”(93) This is but a small portion of that abundant revelation,

which our Lord then communicated to His apostles, concerning the Power

from on high with which they were to be invested.

The words of our Lord to His apostles at the three great points of His

passion, His resurrection, and His ascension, stand out beyond the rest in

their appeal to our affections. The last words of a friend are the

dearest, and these are the last words of the Bridegroom, and they are

concerning His Bride. When He was Himself quitting His disciples He dwells

upon the Power which was to create and maintain His Church, upon the gift

of His Spirit, His other self, in which gift lay the formation of His

kingdom. It is thus He expresses to us the point with which we started,

that the Giving of His Spirit is the fulfilment of all that Dispensation

wherein the eternal Word took human flesh.

It is not only then the unanimous voice of the Fathers which sets the

Giving of the Spirit over against the Incarnation of the Son. They are but

carrying on that which our Lord so markedly taught; their tradition was

but the echo of His voice, as their life was the fulfilment of it.

But it was a double malady in man which God the Word became man to cure.

It was the whole nature which was affected with a taint, and the soul

through the whole race touched in both its powers of the intellect(94) and

the will. That false worship which we have seen spreading through the

earth, and that deep corruption of manners which was interlaced with it,

were the symptoms of this malady. The perversion of the truth concerning

the being of God, and all the duties of man which grow out of this being,

was inextricably blended with the disregard of these duties in the actual

conduct of man. It was in vain to set the truth before man’s intellect

without a corresponding power to act upon his will. Therefore the apostle

described the glory of the only-begotten Son, when He dwelt as man among

us, by the double expression that He was “full of grace and truth.” Viewed

as the Head of human nature, its Father and new beginning, He is the

perpetual fountain to it of these two, which no law, not even one divinely

given, could bestow. For the law could make nothing perfect, because it

could not touch the will; and the law gave the shadow, but not the very

truth of things. But when that unspeakable union of the divine nature with

the human had taken effect in the unity of one Person, Truth and Grace had

an everlasting human fountain in the created nature of the Incarnate Word.

Now was the fountain to pour forth a perpetual stream upon the race

assumed. And this it does by the descent of the Spirit. In this descent

upon the assembled Church the Grace and Truth of the divine Head, with

which His Flesh, carried by the Godhead, overstreams, find themselves a

human dwelling in the race. Such an operation belongs only to the Divine

Spirit, for God alone can so act upon the intellect and will of creatures

as to penetrate them with His gifts of Truth and Grace, while He leaves

them their free will, their full individuality, as creatures. This, then,

was the range of that power with which our Lord foretold to His apostles

that they should be invested, and for which He bade them wait. The whole

field of truth as it respects the relation of God to His creatures as

moral beings, and the whole extent of grace, as it touches the human will,

for the performance of every act which a reasonable creature can execute,

made up the extent of that divine indwelling in men which the Spirit of

Christ assumed upon the day of Pentecost. This was the power of the Holy

Ghost which then came down upon men. Through the whole divine discourse

which preceded His passion, our Lord dwells upon this double power,

referring to Himself as the Truth, to His Spirit as the Spirit of the

Truth, to Himself as the Vine, and so that root of grace which should

communicate its sap to the branches, and to His Spirit, who should take of

His and give it to them; uniting both ideas of Truth and Grace in that one

word, “Sanctify them in thy Truth,” that is by incorporation with me, who

am the Truth, in my Spirit, who is the Truth. And so the eternal Word,

having assumed a human Body, when He withdraws His corporal presence,

proceeds to form that other human Body, the dwelling-place of His Spirit,

in which His Truth and Grace are to become visible.

Thus the transfusion of Truth and Grace from the Incarnate Word to His

mystical Body is the generic character of the Giving of the Spirit.

Two differential marks distinguish this giving from any which preceded the

coming of our Lord.

First, the Spirit should come upon them, but should never depart from

them. “He shall give you another Comforter, to abide with you for ever,

the Spirit of Truth.” This giving was not an intermittent operation,

whether extraordinary, such as had shown itself in Moses and the Prophets,

for their inspiration in writing, or their guidance in particular trials,

nor that ordinary one whereby from the beginning He had enabled all the

good and just to lead a life acceptable to Him. It was a far higher

gift,(95) wherein, as S. Augustine says, by the very presence of His

majesty no longer the mere odour of the balsam, but the substance itself

of the sacred unguent was poured into those vessels, making them His

temple, and conveying that adoption in virtue of which they should not be

left orphans, but have their Father invisibly with them for ever. No

intermittent operation, and no presence less than that of His substance,

would reach the force of the words used by our Lord, “I will ask the

Father, and He shall send you another Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, to

abide with you for ever;” for that word “other” conveys a comparison with

Himself, from whom they had never been separated since He had called them,

in whose continuance with them alone was their strength, their unity,

their joint existence and mission, without whom they could do nothing. All

this to them that “other” Paraclete was to be, in order that the departure

of the Former Paraclete should be expedient for them. For in this

continuity of His presence was involved the further gift that the

Paraclete was to come to them as a Body, and because of this manner of

coming He replaced the Former. Had He come to them only as individuals,

they would have suffered a grievous loss, the loss of the Head who made

them one. But He came to them as the Body of Christ, and by coming made

them that Body, being the Spirit of the Head. That rushing mighty wind

filled the whole house in which they were sitting, and they all were

filled together with the presence; and as a sign that the old confusion

and separation of mankind were in them to be done away, speaking in one

tongue the one truth which was evermore to dwell with them, they were

heard in all the various languages of the nations present at the feast.

“The society by which men are made the one Body of the only Son of God

belongs to the Spirit,”(96) and He came upon all together in one House to

indicate, as He made, that one Body. “The mode of giving,” says S.

Augustine, “was such as never before appeared. Nowhere do we read before

that men congregated together had by receiving the Holy Ghost spoken with

the tongues of all nations.”(97) “Therefore He came upon Pentecost as upon

His birthday.”(98)

It is His presence alone which confers four gifts upon the body which He

vivifies.

It was the will, says S. Augustine,(99) of the Father and the Son that we

should have communion with each other and with Them by means of that which

is common to Them, and by that gift to collect us into one, which, being

one, They both have; that is to say, by the Holy Ghost, who is God, and

the gift of God. For, says S. Thomas,(100) the unity of the Holy Spirit

makes unity in the Church. It is not by similarity, or by juxtaposition,

or by agreement, how much less by concessions and compromises, that unity

exists in the body of Christ, but because the Spirit is one, because all

gifts, however various, all functions, however distinct, are distributed

by this One.

For the same reason truth dwells in this Body, because He is the Spirit of

Truth. Our Lord Himself has defined His great function in this particular,

to lead His disciples by the hand(101) into all truth, to teach all

things, and remind of all things which made up His own teaching. This

function began on the day of Pentecost, and lasts to the day of judgment,

and belongs to the Body of Christ, and to it alone, and belongs to it

because it is animated by the Spirit of Truth. And this animation is like

the Head, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. It is not of any past

time more or less than of the present or the future. It is the

illumination which belongs to that whole last day, through which the Body

of Christ grows, teaches, labours, and suffers, until the mortal day break

into the light of eternity.

His third gift to the Body is that of charity, and for the same reason,

because He is this Himself. He who is not only the Unity of the Father and

the Son, but their mutual Love, coming as the gift of that Divine love

which redeemed the world by the sacrifice of its Maker, and as the Spirit

of that Love, who invested Himself with human flesh, creates in this human

dwelling-place that one charity which bears His name, and is of His

nature, and which in that one body joins the wills of men together as His

Truth joins their intellects. If the Body of Christ has one prevailing

charity, which reaches to all its members, and encompasses the least as

well as the greatest, it is because the heart is divine.

The fourth gift which He bestows upon the Body is sanctification, and it

may be said to be the result of the other three. This, again, is His own

name and nature, and many have thought and said, His personal attribute,

to make holy; and that, as Fathership indicates the First Person, and

Sonship the Second, so the making holy names the Third, the bond of the

most blessed Trinity. But this, at least, may be said to be the final

cause of the body which He animates, the imparting of holiness. In virtue

of this gift, all the means and aids and rules of holiness are stored up

in the Body. And this does not mean that there is not a continual falling

away from the rule and practice of holiness in particular members, but it

means that while these, in spite of the Body’s nurture and solicitude,

fall away from it and perish, the Body lasts for ever, the rules and aids

and means of holiness lasting for ever within it, because it is the Body

of the Spirit of holiness.

Now these four gifts, Unity, Verity, Charity, and Sanctity, can none of

them exist in the Body without the other, and all of them exist together

there, because they have one divine root, that indwelling of the Holy

Spirit which is the fruit of the Incarnation, and whereby the mystical

Body of Christ corresponds to His natural Body. Of this Body the beginning

is Unity, the substance Truth, the bond Charity, the end Sanctity.

Countless heresies and schisms have sought to break up the coinherence of

these gifts, but in vain. The only success which the indwelling Spirit

allows them is to detach from the Body those who are unworthy to remain in

it, and to prolong for a time their maimed existence by some portion of

some of His gifts. Truth, for instance, has such a vitality that many a

heresy will live for ages on that fragment which it has detached from the

mass; unity and charity have such force that even their shadow, that is,

the joint possession of a fragmentary truth, and the good-will thence

proceeding, will prolong for a time a sort of corporate existence.

Holiness has so attractive a power, that zeal and self-denial, which

present the seeming of it, will make the fortune of a sect for a time. But

in the union and the completeness of these four gifts, the great Body of

Christ stands out through all the ages inimitable and unapproachable.

Alone it dares to claim them thus united and complete, for alone it can

present their realisation.

These four gifts, then, dwell in the Body in a higher degree than that in

which they adorn the members of the Body, as in it, by force of the

Spirit’s indwelling, they ever exist together. Let us now see the

qualities which the Spirit imparts to the members of the Body, by virtue

of their incorporation into it.

First of all is the forgiveness of sins. The Spirit takes them out of that

state of alienation in which they are born, and unites them to His Body;

and in so doing He effaces both the birth-sin and every actual sin which

they may have committed. This is that plenary forgiveness of sins, the

pure gift of God unpreceded by any merit on man’s part, which greets the

new-comer out of Adam’s body of sin into the Body of Christ. It is

imparted by and from the Body, and to its members alone.

The second quality is that illumination of the mind, irradiated by the

truth, the whole compass of which exists in the Body. This illumination is

the root of the virtue of faith, by means of which the individual mind

appropriates the divine truth presented to it. The force of the virtue

differs in the individual as the keenness of sight in the natural man, but

the visual power is the same in quality in all. By it the mind of the

believer lays hold in ever varying degree, one more and one less, of that

great harmony of truth which is held in its completeness, its manifold

applications, and all but infinite relations, only by the Body. For the

truth with which we deal is not unlocalised and scattered, the prey, as it

were, of the individual mind, which can hunt it down and take it as a

spoil, but it is a divine gift, orbed in the sphere which was created for

it, the Body of that Word who is the Truth. Hence the first question to

the applicant for baptism: What askest thou of the Church of God? and the

answer is, Faith.

The third quality is the adoption of Sonship, which flows directly from

incorporation into the Body of Christ, and to which man has no sort of

title in himself or from his own nature, but which comes to him only by

kindred with Him who, on the morning of His resurrection, greeted that

great penitent who bore the figure of the Church with that paschal

salutation of the Second Adam, “Go to my brethren, and say, I ascend to my

Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God.” And the divine

virtue of hope well corresponds to this quality, the effects of which in a

state of trial and conflict are to so great a degree future and unseen. It

seems, moreover, to be as a special link and tie between the virtue which

purifies the intellect, and that which corrects the will and makes it

obedient. Thus through it we pass on to the fourth quality of

Sanctification, which is the completion of the other three and their end,

the harmony of each individual will with the divine will, the work of

charity. That divine virtue is the special fruit of the passion of Christ,

which was to gather up into one what sin had disunited and torn away,

first from its Author, and then from the order by Him created, which was

to heal the animosities thus introduced, and to change the world from a

conflict wherein each sought to better himself at the expense of his

neighbour, into a community cemented together with mutual affection. It

was with reason, therefore, that S. Augustine would not allow the

possession of charity, save in the unity of that one Body which Christ had

created,(102) and without charity there is no sanctification.

The four qualities thus slightly sketched, forgiveness of sins,

illumination of faith, adoption to sonship, and sanctification by charity,

which come to the individual by and with incorporation into the Body, are

not given to him irrevocably, but are conditional upon his perseverance.

They are portions and derivations of that vast treasure of Truth and Grace

which the Body holds in their entireness and for ever, because of the

perpetual indwelling of the Spirit who makes its life, but which He

dispenses as it pleases Him to the members, and which He may withdraw from

them in default of their coöperation. Vast are the losses thereby

incurred, not to the treasure-house which remains inexhaustible, but to

those who fall out of it back into the world, or rather that body of Adam

from which they were taken. But these losses touch not the beauty and the

glory of that Body of Christ, which goes on through the ages, and takes up

its own, fulfils its appointed work, and reaches its intended end.

Thus on the day of Pentecost a new Power, the Spirit of the Incarnate God,

descended not upon single men, but upon an assembly of men, binding it in

a unity, conveying to it a truth, kindling in it a charity, and working

through these a sanctification never before known; which Power,

thenceforth dwelling in that Body, was to collect and draw into itself out

of all nations and ranks of men those who should form the Church, that is,

the Kingdom and Temple, and House, and Body, and Family of Christ. In it

was to work and from it to go forth henceforward to all time the virtue of

Him who had assumed our flesh, not transiently, but for ever; in the Head

and the Body, through the life of His Spirit, Christ should teach and bear

for ever that witness to the truth of which He spoke in the hall of

Pilate, and concerning which He said that “this gospel of the kingdom

should be proclaimed through the whole world, for a witness to all

nations, and then that the end should come.”(103) To the continuance, the

indissolubility, the purity of this power He has pledged His word in such

a way that they who deny it must in doing so deny Him. He has even made

the unity of this Body the special mark to men of the truth of His

mission, beseeching His Father in that last prayer, “Neither pray I for

these alone, but for those also who through their word shall believe in

Me, 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.”

There are three analogies(104) which illustrate this creation of our

Lord—a creation in itself as singular as His assumption of man’s nature.

First, that of the relation between the soul and body. The soul is the

life of the body; the body, as it were, the mansion and home of the soul,

its bearer. Through the body the qualities of the soul become visible and

known; its powers exercise themselves, and personal unity so binds the two

together that we love or hate, admire or despise, the one for the sake of

the other; the grief of the soul acts upon the body, the sickness of the

body depresses the soul. Through the acts of the body we learn the very

existence of the soul, and in these acts it portrays itself. Human nature

has been so made by its Creator that the qualities of soul and body, of

spirit and matter, are imputed in the individual man to each other. Now to

the Body we have been considering the Spirit of Christ is, as it were, the

soul. It is nothing strange, then, if it was His will to create such a

Body, if it be the result of His Incarnation, that the like effects which

exist in the case of every human soul and body should take place here. To

this Body also the power and virtue of its soul are communicated; and,

since Christ by His Spirit animates it, in honouring it He is honoured; in

despising it, He is despised. There is an imparting to it of the qualities

which He has; and thus it is that unity and sanctity, truth and charity

dwell in it as the operation of His mind. Thus every man contains in

himself, in the union of soul and body, an image of that tie by which

Christ and His Church are one.

Secondly, because God has created man for society, He has implanted in him

an irrepressible instinct of communion with his brother men. This instinct

it is which, under circumstances of every possible variety, results in one

end, the State. The human commonwealth, whatever external shape it wear,

whatever division of its powers it make, springs from this. In virtue of

this original formation of man, that he is made to live together, and

gregariously, not separately, the supreme power of government, the power

of life and death, dwells in the community, and obedience to it has a

divine sanction. Thus, the commonwealth has a variety of powers which the

individual has not, and not only so, but it also has powers which do not

arise from the mere aggregation of individuals, rather which belong to it

as a community, as a whole, for instance, sovereignty in all the details

of its exercise. But now the very object for which Christ became Incarnate

was to constitute a divine commonwealth. He is the King: it is the

tenderness of a God Incarnate that He calls and makes His Kingdom His

Body. The powers, then, which belong to the earthly commonwealth belong,

with the changes which the change of subject carries, to the Divine. They

who have so great a reverence for human government, who respect in the

nation an ultimate irresponsible power, ought, if they were consistent,

when they acknowledge Christ as having come in the flesh, to acknowledge

His government in the kingdom which He has set up. All that his country is

to the patriot, the Church is to the Christian, but in so much higher a

degree, as the object for which Christ came is above the needs and cares

of this present life. Has the City of God, then, less claim upon

Christians than the City of Romulus had upon Romans? Thus, in the natural

duty of the citizen, as well as in the compound nature of man, is

contained a reminder of the Christian’s relation to the Church, and a

picture and ensample of the Church’s authority.

Thirdly, there is the analogy presented by the transmission of natural

life(105) through the one flesh of Adam to all his race. As the breath of

natural life, once given to Adam, is continued on to all those sprung from

his body, the power of the Creator never starting anew, but working in and

through the trunk of human nature; so the supernatural life springing from

our Lord, as the gift of His Incarnation, is breathed on the day of

Pentecost into the whole Body of the Church to be communicated from that

Body for ever. Christ is to the one exactly what Adam is to the other. As

the Word of God, creating, joined to the inheritance of the flesh of Adam

from generation to generation the communication of a spirit such as

Adam’s, by which double action we have the unity of race, so the Word of

God, redeeming, when He had taken our flesh as the first-fruits of human

nature, breathed forth from that flesh the communication of His Spirit to

the Body of the Church, by which we belong to the race of the Incarnate

God, and are become His family, and make His house. Thus that which the

body of Adam is naturally, the Body of Christ is spiritually, and the

descent of human nature in its unity a picture of the Holy Spirit’s unity

working through the Body which He has chosen. And this analogy is made the

more striking by the statement so often repeated in the Greek Fathers,

that with the natural life, as first given to Adam, was conjoined the gift

of the Holy Ghost, forfeited afterwards by his sin, and withdrawn from him

and his race, and now restored as the special gift of the Incarnate

God.(106) Thus the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost is a true and real

counterpart of the creation of man in Eden; but they who share it are

become kindred of God through His flesh, and by so sharing it together,

they form that society which failed through Adam’s sin. In the first

creation, the Omnipotent Creator, in His bounty towards His favourite

child, as foreseeing the assumption of that nature by Himself, attached to

the gift of natural life the Spirit of sanctification; in the second,

having assumed that nature, He gave through His own Body, first taken out

of us, then crucified, now risen and exalted, the gift of the Spirit, Who,

with all the endowments springing from Him, as the Inspirer of truth and

charity, of unity and holiness, dwells in that Body for ever.

Thus in the union of the soul and body, in the constitution and authority

of the human commonwealth, and in the race’s natural unity, God holds

before us three analogies, which each in some respect, and altogether very

largely, illustrate His finished work, to which all natural productions of

His providence are subordinate, His work of predilection, His work of

unbounded love and sovereign magnificence, the creation of that which is

at once the Body, the Kingdom, and the Family of the Incarnate Word.

From all that has gone before we gather this conclusion, that to become a

Christian was to enter into a spiritual and physical(107) unity with

Christ by incorporation into that Body which He had created as the result

of His becoming man. This it was for the individual to become a Christian.

But Christianity itself was neither a mere system of belief, nor an

outward order representing that belief; but “the great and glorious Body

of Christ,”(108) possessing and exhibiting the whole truth of doctrine,

possessing and distributing all the means of grace, and presenting

together to God those whom it had reconciled with Him, and made one, as

the members of the Son by the indwelling of the Spirit.

Let us now trace the exact correspondence of the historical fact with the

dogmatic statement just given.

The Acts of the Apostles exhibit to us the creation of the divine society

by the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost. When they were

all together, the sound as of a rushing mighty wind was heard, which

filled the whole house wherein they were sitting, and tongues as of fire

were seen, the tongues apportioned severally, but the fire one,(109) which

rested upon each, to kindle in all that eternal flame of charity which was

to draw into one the hearts of men, the fire of which our Lord had spoken

as being that which He was come to light upon the earth. Fire, whose

inward nature it is at once to illuminate and warm, to purify and unite,

was thus appropriately selected as the outward sign, both expressing and

conveying the fourfold office of the Comforter, who came to be “no longer

an occasional visitant, but a perpetual Consoler and eternal

Inhabitant”(110) of this His chosen home. As each in that assembly spoke

in the one tongue of the country, he was heard by those present in the

several tongues of all the nations of the earth represented at that great

feast by the Jews who dwelt in them. And this was the mark, says S.

Augustine,(111) of the Church which was to be through all nations, and

that no one should receive the Holy Spirit, save he who should be jointed

into the framework of its unity; the mark which signified that the

confusion of Babel, dividing the race into nationalities jealous of each

other and perpetual enemies, was to be reversed and overcome by the one

Power whose force to unite should be greater than the force of sin to

sever; who should gather out of all nations the City of God, fed by the

exulting and abounding river of His Spirit, the fountain proper and

peculiar to the Church of Christ: the mark of that one truth,(112) which

conveys and harmonises and works out into all its details the whole

revelation of God, and so is the utterance of one voice, the voice of

Christ; speaking to all nations, not in the broken languages of their

division, but in the Unity of His Person, carried by His Body. We have

then in the one Fire the one inward power; in the one language its outward

expression, in the assembly its receptacle, the House of God. This Body

appears at once as formed and complete. In it sits and prays in her silent

tenderness and unapproachable grandeur, as the Mother of the risen Lord

and Head, and the Mother too of His race, the most beloved, the most

lovable, and the most loving of creatures,(113) whose great function in

the Church for ever is to pray for the members of her Son, and to solicit

the graces of His Spirit, which as the Mother of the sacred race she gains

and distributes to all and each that belong to it, a Second Eve who

corresponds to the Second Adam, as the First Eve in the divine plan

corresponded to the First Adam. In it the Apostles, so long before chosen

and designated by their Lord, and having already received from Him

portions of their supernatural power on the day of His resurrection and

during the forty days of His secret instruction, teach and govern; in it

Peter at their head exercises that primacy, which, imaged out by a new

name imposed at his first calling, promised at his great confession, and

confirmed and conveyed on the sea-shore of the lake of Galilee, is

exhibited with such grandeur, as he stood with the eleven and lifted up

his voice, to describe to the men of Judea and the inhabitants of

Jerusalem the nature of the event which they were witnessing, and the

fulfilment of all the promises made through their prophets concerning that

presence of God in the pouring out of His Spirit among men in the last

days. That first discourse of his at the head of his brethren is the

summary as it were of his perpetual office of teaching and promulgating

the dispensation of the Christ in the midst of the Church. Its immediate

effect was the aggregation of three thousand persons to the Body, who were

told that this was the way in which they should receive remission of sins

and the gift of the Holy Ghost.(114) The subsequent teaching of Peter and

the Apostles, accompanied with miraculous cures, produced further

aggregations among all ranks of the people. And the mode of salvation for

all time is pointedly marked out by the words, “the Lord was adding to the

Church day by day such as should be saved.”

We have only to repeat the process which is thus described as having taken

place at Jerusalem in the first months after the day of Pentecost, by

carrying it through the various cities of the Roman empire, Damascus,

Antioch, Rome, Alexandria, and between these all round the shores of the

Mediterranean, to have a just picture of the mode in which the Divine

Society grew and gathered into itself more and more of those who listened

to the truth which it announced. What is important to dwell upon is that

men uniformly became Christians in one way, by being received into the

Divine Body, through which reception forgiveness of sins and the gift of

the Holy Ghost were conveyed to them. From the whole account contained in

the sacred Scriptures, and from all that remains to us of history, the

great fact is established for us that Christianity came into the world at

its first beginning a society created by the Holy Ghost, and held together

and informed by Him as its soul, who is sent down upon it as the Promise

of the Father from the Incarnate Son.

Further, it was in and by their reception into this society that men

received all the fruits of the Incarnation; it was in it that all the

gifts of the Holy Ghost dwelt, and through it that they were dispensed. By

hearing the truth announced by its ministry penitence was engendered in

the listeners, itself a preventing grace of the Holy Ghost, which gave

inward effect to the outward word. As a working of this penitence they

came, according to the instruction of the teachers, to be baptised. By and

in the act of baptism they were received into the divine society, and made

partakers of the full operation of the Spirit who dwelt in it. They had

the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity infused into them,

each according to the measure of the grace accorded to him, and to help

the exercise of these virtues, that they might be borne as it were with

the wings of a Spirit, the seven-fold gifts of wisdom, understanding,

counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear, were added to the soul.

None of these virtues and gifts were possessed by believers as

individuals; all of them came to men as members of her who was dowered

with the blood of Christ,(115) and whose bridal quality imparted to her

children all which that blood had purchased. In her was stored up that

great, inexhaustible source of abiding life, the Body and Blood of her

Lord and Husband: in her the redeeming Word gave direct from His heart the

vivifying stream. In her was the gift of teaching which illumined the

understanding, and not only drew from without, as we have seen, those who

should be saved from the ignorance of the pagan or the carnalism of the

Jew, but which erected in the world the Chair of Truth,(116) that is, the

rule and standard of right belief, which was the continuance of the

pentecostal gift, the illuminating and kindling fire, and the speaking

tongue of unity, which the Body of Christ possesses for ever. It was by

enjoying these endowments together in her bosom, by the actions of a life

pervaded with these principles, by the joint possession and exercise of

these supernatural powers which at once opened to the intellect a new

field of knowledge and strengthened the will to acts above its inborn

force, that men were Christians. And those who remembered what they had

been as Jews, and what they had been as heathens, had no difficulty in

recognising such a life as the effect of a divine grace, and no temptation

to refer it to anything which belonged to them as individuals, since its

commencement coincided with their entrance into a divine society, its

growth depended on their membership in that Body. Their union with Christ

in this Body was something direct and palpable; to them the several

degrees of that one ministry constituted by Christ were the joints and

articulations of the structure; the teaching thence proceeding as it were

the current of life; by their being parts of the structure they were saved

from the confusion of errors which swept freely round them without,

through the craft of men and the seduction of deceit.(117) “Possessing the

truth in charity,” or “sanctified in the truth,” was the expression of

that divine life in common whereby they were to grow up into one, and be

called by the name of their Lord,(118) because inseparably united to Him

by the nerves and ligaments of one Body.

And this makes manifest to us how Christians, while scattered through

every city of the great Roman empire, formed one Body. It was by virtue of

the unity of spiritual jurisdiction which directed the whole ministry of

that Body. The command of our Lord was, “Go, and make disciples all

nations,” “proclaim the gospel to every creature;” the Body assembled and

empowered at Pentecost was to carry out this command. How did it do so?

The teaching and ruling power was distributed through a ministry wherein

those of a particular order were equal as holding that order: bishops as

bishops were equal, priests as priests. But not the less by the

distribution of the places where the ministry was to be fulfilled,

subordination was maintained through the whole Body. Had it been

otherwise, as each Bishop had the completeness of the priesthood in

himself, his sphere of action, that is, his diocese, would have

constituted a distinct body. But no such thing was ever imagined in the

Church of those first centuries. The Bishops were, on the contrary, joint

possessors of one power, only to be exercised in unity.(119) The unity was

provided for in the Apostolic body by the creation of the Primacy, without

which the Body never acted, the Primate being designated before the Body

was made; the Primate invested with his functions on the sea-shore of the

lake of Galilee before the Ascension, the Body on which he was to exercise

them animated on the day of Pentecost. Spiritual jurisdiction being

nothing else but the grant to exercise all spiritual powers, two

jurisdictions would make two bodies; a thousand would make a thousand; so

that the more the Church grew, the more it would be divided, were it not

that the root of all its powers in their exercise is one. A spiritual

kingdom is absolutely impossible without this unity of jurisdiction; and

in virtue of it the whole Church, from north to south and from east to

west, was and is one Body in its teaching and its rule; that is, in the

administration of all those gifts which were bestowed at the day of

Pentecost, and which have never ceased to be exercised from that day to

this, and which shall never cease to the end of the world. Thus as it is

through the Body that men are made and kept Christians, so the Primacy is

that principle of cohesion and subordination without which the Body cannot

exist.

Let us carry on the history of the divine Body to another point. How was

the Truth transmitted in it?

Peter and his brethren having received through the great forty days from

our Lord the complement of His teaching concerning His kingdom, were

empowered by the descent of the Holy Ghost to commence its propagation.

And for this work they use the same instrument which their Lord had

used—the living spoken word. They labour together for some time; after

several years they divide the world between them; but in both these

periods they found communities and supply them with everything needful for

complete organisation and future increase and progress by their spoken

teaching, which therefore contained the whole deposit of the truth. The

gospel of which S. Paul so repeatedly speaks was that which he

communicated by word of mouth, and S. Peter and all the rest did the same.

Communities were planted by Apostolic zeal over a great part of the Roman

empire before as yet anything was written by their founders. The whole

administration of the sacraments, and the order and matter of the divine

service, were arranged by this personal teaching of the living word. All

that concerned the Person of our Lord, all that He had taught, done, and

suffered, was so communicated. One reason of this is plain. It was not the

bare gospel, but the “gospel of the kingdom,”(120) which was to be

proclaimed to all nations. It was not a naked intellectual truth of which

they were the bearers, but a kingdom which they were to build. They were

not disseminating a sect of philosophy, but founding an empire. They were

a King’s heralds, and every king has a realm. Thus the Kingdom of the Word

was proclaimed by the word spoken through many voices, but as the

outpouring of one Spirit given on the day of Pentecost. This whole body of

their teaching, therefore, was one Tradition; that is, a delivery over of

the truth to them by inspiration of the Spirit, as the Truth who had

become incarnate taught it, and a delivery of this truth from them to the

communities which they set up. The first communication of the Christian

faith to the individual was never made by writing. How, said the Apostle,

should they invoke one whom they did not believe, but how believe in one

of whom they had not heard, and how hear without a preacher, and how

preach except they were sent?(121) It did not occur to him to ask how

should they believe in one of whom they had not read. On the contrary, he

gives in these few words the whole order of the truth’s transmission. He

conceived not heralds without a commission, any more than faith without

trust in the word of the heralds. But here is the great sending, at and

from the day of Pentecost, the root of perpetual mission from which the

heralds derive their commission; they are sent, they proclaim, they are

heard, they are believed, and this faith opens the door for the admission

of subjects into the kingdom, according to the law which they proclaim.

Thus are described to us at some length the acts of that wise

master-builder whose words we have just cited; but though he laboured more

abundantly than all, all acted after the same manner. The Church was

founded by personal teaching, of which the living word was the instrument,

and the whole truth which was thus communicated was termed the

Tradition(122) or Delivery.

We now come to the second step. Before the Apostles were taken to their

reward, the same Spirit, who had instructed them that they were to found

the spiritual kingdom by means of the living word, inspired them to commit

to writing a portion of that great tradition which they had already taught

by mouth.(123) But they never delivered these writings to men not already

Christians. One evangelist expressly says that he drew up a narrative in

order that his disciple might know the certainty of what he had already

been instructed in catechetically, that is, that by that great system of

oral teaching by question and answer, that grounding of the truth in the

memory, intellect, and will, which Christianity had inaugurated, and that

he wrote after the pattern of those who had delivered over the word to us,

having been its original eyewitnesses and servants.(124) A second

evangelist declares that what he was putting into writing was a very small

portion indeed of what his Lord had done.(125) Another very remarkable

thing is that the Apostles are not recorded to have put together what they

had written themselves, or others by their direction, so as to make it one

whole; far less that they ever declared what was so written to contain the

complete tradition of what they had received. But what they did was to

leave these writings in the hands of particular churches, having in every

case addressed them to those who were already instructed as Christians,

and not having left among them any document whatever intended to impart

the Christian faith to those who were ignorant of it. These writings were

in the strictest sense Scriptures of the Church, which sometimes stated,

and always in their form and construction showed that they were adapted to

those who had been taught the Christian faith by word of mouth. Moreover,

it was left to the Church to gather them together, and make them into one

book, which thenceforward should be _the Book_; it was left to the Church

to determine which were to be received as inspired writings, and in

accordance with the teaching already diffused in her, and which were not.

And this collection of the several writings from the particular Churches

to which they were addressed into one mass would seem not to have taken

place until at least three or four generations after the whole order and

institutions of the Church had been established by oral teaching, which

filled as with a flood the whole Christian people. Then, finally, the

authority of the Church alone established the canon of Scripture, and

separated it off from all other writings.

Now as the planting of the Church by oral teaching was a direction of the

Holy Spirit, from whom the whole work of mission proceeded, so all these

particulars concerning the degree in which writing was to be employed, and

the manner in which that writing was to be attested, and the persons to

whom it was to be addressed, were a direction of the same Spirit. That a

spiritual kingdom could not have been established save by oral teaching

Christians may infer with certainty, because, in fact, that method was

pursued. That a portion of the great Tradition should be committed to

writing they may for the same reason infer to have been necessary for the

maintenance of the truth, because it was so done. That these writings were

the property of the Church—her Scriptures—may be inferred with no less

truth, because they were addressed only to her children, and presupposed a

system of instruction already received by those who were to read them.

And, finally, that they were to be understood in their right sense only by

the aid of the Spirit who dictated them, is, their being given in this

manner once admitted, an inference of just reasoning. It is plain, when

once these things are stated, that these writings were not intended to

stand alone, as ordinary books, and to be understood by themselves. Not

only were they part of a great body of teaching, but a portion of a great

institution, to which they incessantly alluded and bore witness. They

would speak very differently to those without and to those within the

kingdom of which they were documents. They would remind the instructed at

every turn of doctrines which they had been taught, corroborating these

and themselves explained by them. Some of them indeed were letters, and we

all know how different is the meaning of letters to those who know the

writer and his allusions, and to those who do not. A word of reference in

these documents to a great practice of Christian life would kindle into a

flame the affection of those who possessed that practice, while it would

pass as a dead letter to those who had it not.(126) Such word, therefore,

would be absolute proof of the practice to the former, while it would seem

vague and indeterminate and no proof at all to the latter.

From what has been said we may determine the relation of the Church to the

Scriptures. She having been planted everywhere by the personal oral

teaching of the apostles and their disciples, being in full possession of

her worship and her sacraments, filled by that word which they had spoken

to her, and ruled by that Spirit in whom they had spoken, accepted these

writings which they left as conformable to that teaching which they had

delivered by word of mouth, esteemed them, moreover, as sacred, because

proceeding from the dictation of the one Spirit, and finally put them

together and severed them off from all other books, as forming, in

conjunction with that unwritten word in possession of which she passed

this judgment upon them, her own canon or rule of faith. Thenceforth they

were to be for all ages a necessary portion of the divine Tradition which

was her inheritance from the Incarnate Word, distributed by His Spirit.

They were to be in her and of her. To her belonged, first, the

understanding of them; secondly, the interpreting them to her children,

out of the fund of that whole Tradition lodged in her, and by virtue of

that indwelling Spirit, who, as He had created, maintained her; as part

and parcel, moreover, of that whole kingdom, of that body of worship and

sacraments, which she is.

And this brings us to a further point of the utmost importance. For the

Truth, which is the subject matter of all this divine Tradition or

Delivery from the Incarnate Word, in order to be efficacious and

permanent, approached men in the shape of a society invested with

grace.(127) It was not proposed as a theory which is presented simply to

the reason, and accepted or rejected by it. True, it was addressed to the

reason, but only when illuminated by faith could the reason accept it.

Here, again, it showed itself manifestly as “the gospel _of the kingdom_.”

It was the good tidings proclaimed, not simply and nakedly to man’s

intellect, but as the gift and at the same time the law of that kingdom

which accompanied its publication by the bestowal of power to accept it,

and to make it the rule of conduct. There were many whom the word, though

proclaimed to them as to others, did not help, because it was not mixed

with faith in those who heard it. S. Paul preached to many when the heart

of one Lydia was opened to receive what he announced.(128) Thus with the

first hearing of the message coincided the beginning of grace to accept

it. But so likewise the Church supplied a storehouse of grace for the

continuance of the truth in those who had once received it. Truth and

grace, as they come together in her, so they remain together inseparable.

Wisdom, understanding, counsel, and knowledge, which perfect the

intellect, are linked in her with fortitude, piety, and fear, which

perfect the will. And this which is true of the individual is true of the

mass. In the Body, as well as in each single member of it, and the more

because the Body is an incomparably grander creation, it is the sanctified

intellect which must receive, harmonise, and develope the truth. If the

sevenfold fountain of the Spirit’s gifts is one in the individual, much

more is it one in that Body out of whose plenitude the individual

receives. Thus wherever the Apostles preached the word, if faith made it

fruitful, they bestowed the sacraments.

We shall see, if we observe it closely, that it is a triple cord through

which the Holy Spirit conveys His life perpetually to the Body; and in His

life is the Truth.

First, there is the succession of men. As the Word Incarnate taught, so

men bear on His teaching. Personal labours, intercourse from mouth to

mouth, the action of men on men, the suffering of men for men, this was

from the beginning, this is to be for ever, the mode of spreading His

kingdom. It is not a paper kingdom, it cannot be printed off and

disseminated by the post. But from His own Person it passed to Peter and

the Apostles, and from them to a perpetual succession of men, whose

special work it is to continue on this line by a chain never to be broken.

These are the messengers, or heralds, or stewards, or ministers, or

teachers, or shepherds. They are all and each of these according to the

manifoldness of the gift which they carry. Through the unbrokenness of

this line the continuity of the gift is secured. Through it the Redeemer,

King, and Head touches, as it were, each point of time and space, and with

a personal ministry lays hold of each individual through the vast extent

of His kingdom in time and space. And the gift is as living and as near to

Him now as it was when S. Paul spoke of it as communicated by the

imposition of his hands to his disciple; nay, as it was when He himself

breathed on His Apostles together assembled, and said, “Receive the Holy

Ghost;” and will be equally living and direct from Him to the last who

shall receive it to the end of time. And all this because these men who

are taken up into this succession are the nerves of His mystical Body,

through which runs the supply to all the members. This is the

indestructible framework which He has wrought for carrying on to men His

own teaching, until the whole mass grow up to that fulness of the perfect

stature which He has foreseen and determined.

The second succession is that of the Truth itself committed to these men.

For that plenitude of teaching which the Apostles delivered orally to the

Church has never ceased to rest in her, and out of it she dispenses to all

the ages her divine message. But part of this teaching by the further

ordering of the Spirit of Truth has been incorporated in writing. And no

one can doubt that this incorporation has given a firmness and stability

to the teaching which we do not see how it could otherwise have possessed.

Thus the great Tradition of the Truth poured out upon the Church has been

partly written and partly unwritten; not as if there were two teachings

separable from each other, but one and the same which runs in a perpetual

blending. Through the written teaching we receive the very words

consecrated by our Lord’s use: we have the priceless privilege of knowing

how he spoke; of catching the accents of His voice, and the look of His

eyes, and the gestures of His body, portrayed in that narrative. The words

of Him who spake as never man spake live and sound for ever in our ears;

and we recognise in the structure of His sentences, which convey in a

clause principles of endless application, forces on which a universe can

be built, the Father’s Word, and the world’s Creator, and the Church’s

Head. Parable and apophthegm and answer, metaphor and plain speech, when

used by Him, are all impregnated with this power. And now that we possess

this peculiar language of the Word Incarnate, embodied and fixed for ever

to our senses as well as our affections, it seems as if we could not have

done without it. Then the mode in which His own Apostles apply and

illustrate His doctrines, and exhibit to us the formation of the society

which He came to institute, possesses a value only subordinate to His own

words. The written word, it has been said,(129) gives to the whole Church

through all times a sense of the truth and consistency of her teaching

like that which the sense of personal identity gives to the individual

respecting his own being. And again, what memory is to the single man,

such is the whole tradition of the Truth in the bosom of the Church. But

it is through the unwritten teaching deposited in her by the Apostles that

she possesses the key to the true understanding of that which is written.

The one in her practice has never been severed from the other. So dear has

the written word been to her that almost the blackest epithet in language,

“traitor,” is derived from the name which she gave to those who, under

fear of persecution, surrendered to the heathen her sacred books. With

these in her hand, or rather in her heart, she has directed and carried

out that great system of instruction which the Apostles laid down and

established by their acts. For to her what they did was as sacred as what

they said, or what they wrote; and numberless acts of theirs constituted

her teaching originally, and have prolonged and continued it on since.

For, besides the succession of men and the succession of doctrine, there

is in her likewise the succession of institutions. As chief of these, but

involving a number of subordinate rites, the Apostles with their first

oral teaching delivered likewise to the Church sacraments, instituted, not

by them, but by their Lord Himself, which at once embodied the truth

taught by them, and conveyed the grace by which that truth was to find a

home in men’s heart and mind. No sooner was the first teaching of Peter at

the head of the Apostles uttered, and the gift of forgiveness of sins and

of adoption disclosed, than three thousand persons received the double

gift by the baptism which followed. Thus they established in the Church

seven great rites, encompassing the whole of human life. The regenerating

power which was the beginning of the whole change that they sought to work

in man was stored up in one; the confirming and developing it in a second;

the feeding and increasing it in a third; the removal of obstacles to it

in a fourth; the supporting and restoring the human nature so elevated,

when under pressure of sickness and in fear of death, in a fifth; the

blessing and consecrating the union of the species in a sixth; and,

finally, the conferring that distinctive power which transmitted through

all ages her Lord’s gift to the Church in a seventh. This is that great

and marvellous sacramental system by which the Church, dowered, as we have

said, in her quality of Bride with her Lord’s blood, applies that blood to

His members, according to their needs. This is the perpetual consecration

of matter to a supernatural end, of which the highest example is found in

the Body of the Head Himself, and so it is an enfolding of human nature

with the Incarnation, and a transforming it into the image of its Head.

But such, likewise, is the summary of the whole written and unwritten

teaching of the Church; such also, in few and brief words, the perpetual

work of the succession of men whom we have described.

Thus the three successions, of men, of doctrines, and of institutions, are

woven by the Holy Spirit together as three strands of a rope which cannot

be broken: in the union of these three His perpetual presence dwells; and

this is the spinal cord whereby He joins the Body with the Head.

Let us take instances wherein the force of this union is seen.

The first gift He bestowed upon men when the gospel of the kingdom

approached them was the forgiveness of sins. This is a power belonging to

God alone, as sin is an offence against His majesty. The conferring of

this power upon the Apostles by our Lord Himself is explicitly recorded.

But then two sacraments exhibit the application of this power, first that

of baptism, where it is given plenarily; secondly that of penance, where

it is given under restriction. And further, an order of men is instituted

for this perpetual application. Here, then, we see the force of the triple

cord carrying on through all ages this great truth of the forgiveness of

sins in and by the Church of God. The very definite mention of the grant

of this power in the written tradition is not left exposed by itself to

the action of unbelieving reason. It has a double bulwark in the two

institutions which assert its perpetual exercise as a matter of history,

and in the order of men established to carry it out.

Take again the doctrine of the Real Presence, upon which infidelity falls

as being a proof charge of human credulity,(130) on which faith and love

rest as the sovereign gift of God. The recorded words of our Lord Himself

express it distinctly and emphatically; further words of His in the sixth

chapter of S. John allude to it with equal force, and S. Paul repeatedly

refers to it. But this is not enough for the solicitude with which the

Holy Spirit has guarded it against all attack. As the great central rite

of Christian worship it is presented day after day, in myriads of

churches, from age to age, to the eyes and hearts of men. The act in which

Christians assemble, in which they offer up at once their repentance and

their requests, their thanksgivings and their praises, to Him who has

formed them into one Body, lives upon this truth. And further, the order

of men which is the backbone of the Church, the great Christian

priesthood, made by our Lord in instituting the rite and conferring the

gift, exists for its continuance. Against such a truth, defended with such

bulwarks, both infidelity and heresy dash themselves with impotent rage in

vain.

Thirdly, we have in the epistles of S. Paul a mention of the bishop’s

office and the duties belonging to it. The mention is incidental, and the

words not so determinate as in the former instances given. Those who are

outside the Body, in their attack upon the necessity of episcopacy,

thought that they could cut through these words so as to make it doubtful

whether the office of bishop, as distinguished from that of priest, was of

original institution. But then history disclosed the fact that when the

last apostle was taken from the earth not a church existed which was not

under episcopal jurisdiction, and through the whole world, by the

institution of bishops, was fulfilled the prediction,—Instead of thy

fathers thou shalt have children, whom thou mayest make princes in all

lands. Thus, while the written record was interpreted, the unwritten

teaching of the Church found a plain and unanswerable proof in her

invariable practice. All through her long history she is seen to be

governed by bishops; and the words of S. Paul, flanked by the institution

and the practice, are more than sufficient to maintain the truth.

Once more let us take the primacy of S. Peter’s see in the Church. This,

as is well known, rests in the written word mainly on three great passages

of S. Matthew, S. Luke, and S. John. These, indeed, are so specific and

definite that they convey the dignity intended as clearly as the passages

above referred to convey the forgiveness of sins or the Real Presence. But

over and above these, what an overwhelming proof in the unbroken

succession of those who exercised the primacy from the beginning, and are

referred to from age to age by the doctors, fathers, and historians of the

Church. Beside the charter of institution stands the long record of the

work wrought in virtue of it, the witness of the Church to it in councils,

the obedience to it in fact. As the priesthood exists in attestation of

the Real Presence, so the primacy stands beside our Lord’s words, first

promising and then conferring it, like the comment of eighteen hundred

years, uniform and consistent.

What we have here applied in the case of the forgiveness of sins, the Real

Presence, episcopacy, and the primacy of the Church, might be carried out

in the case of many more doctrines forming a part of the great deposit.

But it may be well to cite one instance of a truth not contained in the

written word at all, which through the unwritten teaching of the Church

has passed into universal practice. This is not the abolition only of the

Jewish Sabbath, constituted as it was by the most express divine command,

for to that abolition there is a passing reference in an epistle of S.

Paul, but the further substitution of the day of the resurrection, the

first day of the week for the seventh, with a modified observance. This

rests solely upon the deposit of the Church’s unwritten teaching,

corroborated by universal practice from the apostolic times.

Viewing, then, the transmission of the Truth as a whole, and the creation

of the mystical Body of Christ as its home, and the Holy Spirit as the

perpetual Indweller who fills that treasure-house of Truth and Grace, we

may consider its maintenance as secured by the triple succession or

tradition of men, of doctrine, and of institutions which are inseparably

joined together in that its home. But there are some words of our Lord so

distinctly and translucently expressing all this statement respecting the

mode in which His Truth was first and is ever to be transmitted, and the

conditions to which His perpetual presence is attached, that we cannot

forbear to adduce them.

His parting instructions to His Apostles on the Mountain of Galilee given

by S. Matthew run thus: “Jesus approached them and said unto them, All

power has been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore, and

make disciples 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 behold I am with you all days even to

the end of the world.” We shall here note six things. First, there is the

root and foundation of all mission, the power bestowed upon Christ as man,

in virtue of the Incarnation: “all power has been given to Me in heaven

and on earth;” secondly, there is the derivation of this power from Christ

to His Apostles, in virtue of which sent by Him, as He by His Father, they

were to go forth: “Go ye therefore;” thirdly, there is the creation of the

perpetual teaching power, the authority by which truth was to be imparted:

“make disciples all nations.” He placed it in them as in one Body, here

fulfilling what S. Augustine afterwards expressed, that He “seated the

doctrine of Verity in the Chair of Unity.” They, invested with one Spirit,

His own Spirit of Truth, should go forth and make disciples all nations to

one Body of Truth. It is the creation of a power new as the Incarnation,

as it unique, because springing from it, founded and continued in it. He

Himself is the one Teacher whose voice they express: He who came on earth

for three and thirty years speaks for evermore in those whom He sends as

one Body, which calls no man teacher, because it is the Body of Christ,

_the_ Teacher: so that this function of magisterial teaching is the great

distinctive office of His Church, coming from above, and invested with the

authority of the God-man, by which it draws to it disciples, whose consent

is not the ground but the result of its authority. Fourthly, there is the

creation of the sacraments, as containing the grace which is needed for

the reception of this Truth, and they are summed up in the first, which is

the beginning of the new life, illumination, and perfection, and which is

given in the covenant name of God, as the Christian God, and is the mark

of the triune Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, impressed on his own

people of acquisition. Thus Grace is for ever associated with Truth as the

means whereby alone on earth Truth shall prevail and be received, and that

only as the teaching of that Body whose Head is full of Grace and Truth.

Fifthly, there is marked the manner of the teaching, the nature of the

magisterial office created as that of a living body of men: “teaching them

to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” The fund from

which this teaching is drawn is that whole communication of truth from the

Incarnate Word Himself, given to them by word of mouth, of which we have

spoken above as the great Tradition or Delivery; and out of which a part

is incorporated in the written word, while the whole dwells ever in the

Body created to receive it, from which it is to be imparted by perpetual

oral teaching. The teaching, therefore, rests upon the perpetual presence

of the Body representing Christ, and as in the days of His flesh He

teaches through it, and has fixed part of His tradition in it by writing,

not to the exclusion of the rest, but as the charter of a sovereign, the

title-deeds of an empire, to be perpetually applied, interpreted, and

developed in that whole system of institutions, by that whole race of

teachers, in the life of that one Body, which He was creating. And lastly,

to this perpetual living line of teachers, to this perpetual living

doctrine, to this perpetual living framework of grace, He has promised His

own presence without fail to the end. In this triple succession He is

seen, lives, and rules, and this is His Kingdom, His Temple, His Body, His

Bride, His Family, to whom He says, Behold, I am with you all days, even

to the end of the world.

From these words of our Lord, as from the whole previous argument, we

gather that while the Truth which Christ imparted to His Apostles was one

and complete, its development in its various relations was designedly left

as the proper work of such a Body as He created. He Himself spoke as God

in human flesh, uttering, that is, creative words, which gathered up in a

sentence a germ of truth capable of a long series of applications, and

requiring them in order to be understood. And the aptitude to make these

applications, so that the truth proclaimed by Him and committed to His

Apostles should penetrate through and leaven the whole human society, He

gave to His mystical Body. Let us take an instance of this. The Pharisees

approached Him one day to entangle Him by their words, and proposed to Him

a dilemma from which they thought that He could not escape save by ruining

His influence with one great party, or by encountering the danger of being

charged with seditious teaching by another. They put to Him the question

whether it was lawful to give tribute to Cæsar or not. Whereupon He asked

them to show Him the tribute-money, and pointing to the image of the

emperor upon it, uttered those famous words, “Render therefore to Cæsar

the things which are Cæsar’s, and to God the things which are God’s.” Now

these words were laid up in the treasury of His Church, and by them she

has had to determine the relation between the civil and the spiritual

powers in the society created by Him who spake them. Here is a vast

development from a small seed: but it is a seed cast by the world’s

Creator and the Body’s Head. And His teaching is full of such seeds, as

the history of His Church is one great process of developing and

harmonising and conveying to man the truth thus cast into the fallows of

her soil. It is not new truth, for He gave the germ, and no power in man

could have developed it without the germ, any more than it could produce

the oak without the acorn. It is the same truth, as He taught it, but with

that process passed upon it which He intended when He gave it in such a

form, and when He made a living Body, to be called by His name, to

propagate His teaching, to collect His members into one, and to fill the

earth with the knowledge which He brought.

Such a work, therefore, the root and authorisation of which we have been

attempting to delineate in this chapter, stretches over the whole field

which Truth and Grace occupy, and over all the relations of men which are

summed up in what they are to believe and what they are to do. These

ramifications are all but endless. But to all these extends that giving of

the Holy Ghost in His fourfold character of the Spirit of Unity, Verity,

Charity, and Sanctity, which is the result of the Incarnation, and which

makes the Church. What we have said here has a special relation to Truth,

and to Christian morals as resting upon Christian dogma. But it is

impossible to separate Truth from Grace, in their actual operation as

powers: faith and charity in the Christian are linked together, as the

intellect and the will are one soul. What we have said is but an

introduction to a sketch of the great evolution of dogmatic truth through

eighteen centuries: but in recording its rise, the secret of its growth,

and the source of its strength, it was impossible not to bring out the

great fact that Christianity was nothing less than a divine life produced

in the world over against the existing heathenism, and laying hold of the

whole soul of man, in which, as we have just said, intellect and will are

inseparable. It did not consist in anything which individuals believed,

however true; but in a society of which Truth and Grace were the joint

spring, and it was produced in the midst of a world which had to a great

extent forfeited both Truth and Grace, while both returned to it as the

gift of Christ assuming man’s nature. This error and distraction of

heathenism, and this great unity of Christian life grounded in faith and

charity which rose up against it, were profoundly felt by all the Fathers,

being eye-witnesses of the old world and the new. Their writings express

it again and again, with the vividness which only eye-witnesses, who are

likewise actors and sufferers, feel. In nothing, perhaps, do they so

differ from modern writers as in the energy with which they appreciate the

supernatural character of the Christian, and the wonderful being and

endowment of that Christian Body which impressed this character on its

members. One cause, we may suppose, of this was the sight of heathenism

before them with all its impurities and its impotence to produce good. So

they were not even tempted to that naturalism which is the besetting sin

of our age and these countries. It would have seemed to them not only an

ingratitude but an absurdity to refer to the inborn force of humanity a

change equally of the intellect and of the will which they saw to belong

only to the power of Christ revealed in His Church. We will cite one such

passage as a conclusion to this discussion, and because it represents the

whole train of thought which we have been drawing out.(131)

“Of this sacrament, this sacrifice, this priest, this God, before, having

been made of a woman, He entered on His mission, all sacred and mystical,

angelic and miraculous appearances to our fathers, as well as their own

deeds, were resemblances, in order that every creature might in a manner

by its acts speak of that One destined to come, in whom should be the

salvation of all that were to be restored from death. For as we had

started away from the one true supreme God by the injustice of impiety,

and fallen out of harmony with Him, and become unstable as water, and

wasted ourselves on a multitude of vanities, rent in pieces, and hanging

in tatters to every piece, need was there that by the will and command of

a compassionating God this multitude of objects itself should utter a cry

in unison, calling for One to come; and that thus called upon this One

should come, and that the multitude should attest together that the One

had come: and so we, discharged from the burden of this multitude, should

come to One; and dead in our soul by many sins, and from our sin doomed to

death in the flesh, should love that One, who, being without sin, died for

us in the flesh: and believing on Him when risen, and with Him rising

again in the Spirit through faith, should be justified, being in the One

Just made one: and should not despair of rising again in our very flesh,

beholding our Head being One going before His many members; in whom now,

cleansed by faith, and hereafter restored by vision, and reconciled by the

Mediator to God, we might inhere in the One, enjoy the One, and continue

One for ever.

“Thus the Son of God, Himself at once the Word of God and Son of man,

Mediator of God and men, equal to the Father by the unity of the godhead,

and partaker of us through the assumption of the manhood, interceding with

the Father for us through that which was man, yet not concealing that as

God He was One with the Father, thus speaks: ‘Neither pray I for these

alone, but for those also who shall believe through their word on Me; that

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. And

the glory which Thou gavest Me, I have given them, that they may be One as

we also are One.’ He said not, that I and they may be One thing, although

in that He is the Head of the Church, and the Church His Body, He might

say, I and they not One thing, but One person, because the Head and the

Body is One Christ. But marking His Godhead as consubstantial with the

Father (whence in another place He says, I and the Father are One thing),

He wills that His own should be One thing in their own kind, that is, in

the consubstantial parity of the same nature, but in Him, because in

themselves they could not, as severed from each other by diversity of

pleasures, desires, and impurities of sin. From these they are cleansed

through the Mediator, so as to be One Thing in Him, not merely by the same

nature in which all from mortal men become equal to the angels, but

likewise by the same will breathing in perfect harmony together into the

same beatitude, welded, as it were, by the fire of charity into One

Spirit. For this is the force of His words, That they may be One, as We

also are One: that as the Father and the Son are One not only in equality

of substance, but also in will, so these also between whom and God the Son

is Mediator, may be One Thing not merely by being of the same nature, but

also by the same society of affection. And the very point that He is

Mediator, by whom we are reconciled to God, He indicates in the words, ‘I

in them and Thou in Me, that they may be consummated into One.’ Thus as

through the mediator of death we had receded from our Creator, stained and

alienated, so through the Mediator of life we might be purified and

reconciled, wherein consist our true peace and stable union with Him.”