received the keys and the power from Christ, in Peter, and, in their
manner, through Peter, who, in the name of all, received that for all, as
bearing the figure and the person of all."
He then shows that this tradition had gone down even to his own times:
"This holy and apostolic doctrine of the Episcopal jurisdiction and power
proceeding immediately from, and instituted by, Christ, the Gallic Church
hath most zealously retained." "Therefore,[161] that very late invention,
that Bishops receive their jurisdiction from the Pope, and are, as it were,
vicars of him, ought to be banished from Christian schools, as unheard of
for twelve centuries."
It is precisely "this very late invention" which is urged against the
Church of England. Unless this be true, her position in itself, supposing
her to be clear of heresy, with which, at present, I have nothing to do, is
impregnable.
Such is the most Catholic interpretation by which Bossuet sets in harmony
with the teaching of all antiquity a few expressions, which are all that I
have been able to find that are even capable of being forced into
accordance with the present Papal system, and which, as soon as they are so
forced, contradict the whole history of Councils, and the whole life of the
most illustrious Fathers.
Now there is no doubt that Bellarmine's doctrine is the true logical
development of the Papal Theory; it alone has consistency and completeness;
it alone is the adequate expression of that prodigious power which was
allowed to enthrone itself in the Church during the middle ages; it would
fain account for it and justify it. Grant but its postulate, that the Pope
is the sole vicar of Christ, and all which it requires must follow. On the
other hand, that school which ranks Bossuet at its head, and which sought
to limit, in some degree, by the Canons the power of the Roman Pontiff, and
maintained that Bishops were, _jure divino_, successors of the Apostles, in
a real, not in a fictitious sense, however well-founded in what it
maintained on the one side, was certainly inconsistent. It gave either too
much or too little to the Roman See;--too much, if its own declarations
about the succession of Bishops and the authority of General Councils be
true, and founded in antiquity, as we believe; too little, if the Pope be
indeed the only Vicar of Christ on earth, and the supreme Ruler of His
Church; for then these maxims put their partisans very nearly into the
position of rebels, and, in truth, brought the Gallican Church to the brink
of a schism, in 1682. However this may be, that school is extinct; the
ultramontane theory alone has now life and vigour in the Roman Church. It
seems to absorb into itself all earnest and self-denying minds, while the
other is left to that treacherous conservatism which would use the Church
of Christ as a system of police, for the security of worldly interests.
What the ultramontane theory is, we see from Bellarmine. It proclaims that
the government of the Church is a monarchy, concentrating in one person all
the powers bestowed by Christ upon the Apostles. In this the student of
history is bound to declare that it stands in point-blank contradiction to
the decrees of General Councils, to the sentiments of the Fathers, and the
whole practice of the Church for the first six hundred years; for much
longer indeed than this, but this is enough. Well may Bossuet ask, "if the
infallible authority of the Roman Pontiff is of force by itself before the
consent of the Church,--to what purpose was it that Bishops should be
summoned from the farthest regions of the earth, at the cost of such
fatigues and expense, and Churches be deprived of their Pastors, if the
whole power resided in the Roman Pontiff? If what he believed or taught was
immediately the supreme and irrevocable law, why did he not himself
pronounce sentence? Or if he pronounced it, why are Bishops called together
and wearied out, to do again what is already done, and to pass a judgment
on the supreme judgment of the Church? Would not this be fruitless? But all
Christians have imbibed with their faith the conviction, that, in important
dissensions, the whole Church ought to be convoked and heard. All therefore
understand that the certain, deliberate, and complete declaration of the
truth is seated not in the Pope alone, but in the Church spread
everywhere."[162] "This too is certain, that when General Councils have
been holden, the sentence of the Roman Pontiff has generally preceded them;
for undoubtedly Celestine, Leo, Agatho, Gregory the Second, Adrian the
First, had pronounced sentence, when the third, fourth, sixth, seventh
Councils were held. What was desired therefore was, not a Council for the
Pontiff about to give judgment, but, after he had given judgment, the force
of a certain and insuperable authority."
In fact, on this theory, as we have seen above, St. Cyprian, St. Firmilian,
St. Hilary of Arles, the African Bishops in 426, the Fathers of Chalcedon
in 451, in passing their famous 28th Canon, the Fathers of Ephesus in 431,
in passing their 8th, the Fathers of Constantinople in 381, in passing
their 2d and 3d Canons, and in the synodal letter addressed to the Pope and
the Western Bishops, the Fathers of Nicea, in passing their 6th, nay, all
ancient Councils whatever, in all their form and mode of proceeding, were
the most audacious of rebels. But what are we to say about the language of
St. Gregory? Did he then betray those rights of St. Peter, which he held
dearer than his life? When he wrote to Eulogius of Alexandria, "If your
Holiness calls me Universal Pope, you deny that you are yourself what you
admit me to be--universal. But this God forbid:" are we to receive
Thomassin's explanation, that he meant, as Patriarch, he was not universal,
but, as Pope, he was, all the time? or when he says to the same, "in rank
you are my brother, in character my father," was Eulogius at the same time,
as Bellarmine will have it, merely his deputy? "In the beginning, Peter set
up the Patriarch of Alexandria, and of Antioch, who, receiving authority
from the Pontiff (of Rome), presided over almost all Asia and Africa, and
could create Archbishops, who could afterwards create Bishops."[163] And
this, it appears, is the key which is to be applied to the whole history of
the early Church. Those Bishops, Metropolitans, Exarchs, and Patriarchs,
throughout the East, who had such a conviction of the Apostolic authority
residing in themselves as governors of the Church, who showed it in every
Council in which they sat, who expressed it so freely in their writings and
letters: St. Augustin, again, in the West, himself a host, who speaks of a
cause decided by the Roman Pontiff being reheard, of "the wholesome
authority of General Councils," who assents to St. Cyprian's proposition,
that "every Bishop can no more be judged by another, than he himself can
judge another," with the single limitation, "certainly, I imagine, in those
questions which have not yet been thoroughly and completely settled;" who,
in a question of disputed succession, which more than any other required
such a tribunal as the Papal, had it existed, appeals not to the authority
of the Roman See, but to the testimony of the whole Church spread
everywhere, not mentioning that See pre-eminently; or when he does mention
"the See of Peter, in which Anastasius now sits," mentioning likewise "the
See of James, in which John now sits:"--all these were nothing more, at the
same time, than the Pope's delegates, and received through him their
jurisdiction.
Can a claim be true which is driven to shifts such as this for its
maintenance? Or can the truth of Christianity and the unity of the Church
rest upon a falsehood? Is infidelity itself in such "a hopeful
position,"[164] as regards Christianity, that it is really come to this,
that we must either receive a plain and manifest usurpation, or be cast out
of the house and kingdom of God? That we must reject the witness and
history of the first six hundred years of the Church's life on the one
hand, or be plunged into the abyss of infidelity on the other? If it be
true that the Pope is Monarch of the Church, which is the present Papal
theory, the Church of England is in schism. If it be not true, she is at
least clear of that fatal mark. All that is required for her position is
the maintenance of that Nicene Constitution which we have heard St. Leo
solemnly declare was to last to the end of the world, viz. that every
province of the Church be governed by its own Bishops under its own
Metropolitan. And who then but will desire that the successor of St. Peter
should hold St. Peter's place? Will the Patriarch of Constantinople, or the
Archbishop of Moscow, or the Primate of Canterbury, so much as think of
assuming it? Be this our answer when we are accused of not really holding
that article of the Creed "one Catholic and Apostolic Church." Let the
Bishop of Rome require of us that honour and power which he possessed at
the Synod of Chalcedon, _that, and not a totally different one under the
same name_, and we shall be in schism when we do not yield it. At present
we have no farther separated from him than to fall back on the constitution
of the Church of the Martyrs and the Fathers.
But, it may be said, is the Catholic Church unanimous on the one hand, and
the Anglican communion, restricted to one small province, left alone in her
protest on the other? Did not she, whom they would call "the already
decrepit rebel of three hundred years," submit from 596 to 1534 to that
very authority which she now denies? It would be quite beyond my present
limits to trace, as I had first purposed, the Roman Bishop's power from
that point at which it stood when St. Gregory sent our Apostle Augustin
into England, to that point which it had reached in the thirteenth century,
and which it strove to maintain in the sixteenth. I can only now very
briefly point out a few of the steps in that most wonderful rise. The two
centuries, then, which succeeded St. Gregory, were even more favourable to
this growth than those which went before. While the confusion and violence
of secular governments by the breaking in and settlement of the various
northern tribes were greater than ever,--while the ecclesiastical
constitution was all that yet held together the scattered portions of the
shattered Western empire--the single Apostolical See of the West, whose
Bishop was in constant correspondence with the spiritual rulers of these
various countries, whose voice was ever and anon heard striving to win and
soften into mercy and justice those temporal rulers, would be, as it were,
"a light shining in a dark place." The Bishops, everywhere miserably
afflicted by their own sovereigns, found a stay and support in one beyond
the reach of the feudal lord's violence. The benefit they thus derived from
the Roman Patriarch was so great, that they would be disposed to overlook
the gradual change which was ensuing in the relation between themselves and
him, the deference which was deepening into subjection. Or, if here and
there, what Leo would have called "a presumptuous spirit," such as Hincmar
of Rheims, or our own Grossetete, in after times, set himself against the
stream, it would all be in vain. However good his cause might be, if he did
not yield, he would be beaten down like St. Hilary of Arles. Moreover, as
the great heresy of Mahomet invaded and hemmed in three of the Patriarchal
Sees of the East, their counterpoise to the originally great influence of
the Roman See was removed. Political separation from the East, and the
difficulty of communication, would of themselves greatly tend to this
result. To this must be added the great increase of power which the house
of Charlemagne, for their own political purposes, bestowed on the Roman
See; it was worth while building up a popedom for an imperial crown. De
Maistre says, "The Popes reign since the ninth century at least."[165] But
it is a somewhat naive confession, "The French had the singular honour, one
of which they have not been at all sufficiently proud, of having set up,
humanly, the Catholic Church in the world, by raising its august head to
the rank indispensably due to his divine functions; and without which he
would only have been a Patriarch of Constantinople, miserable puppet of
Christian sultans, and Musulman autocrats." Just, too, when it was most
difficult to detect imposture, and to refer to the acts of ancient
Councils, that singular counterfeit of the false decretals made its
appearance, which so wonderfully helped the Roman Patriarchs in
consolidating the manifold structure of their authority. This, indeed,
assailed the Bishops of the West by their most reverential feelings, and
added to the force of a great present authority, almost always beneficially
exercised, the weight of what seemed an Apostolical tradition. Besides
these causes, the Popes found in the several monastic orders throughout
Europe the most unceasing and energetic pioneers of their power. From the
very first there appears to have existed a desire to exchange the present
superintendence of the local Bishop for the distant authority of the Pope.
The great orders, indeed, were themselves so many suspensions of the
Episcopal system. With reason do the statues of their founders adorn the
nave of St. Peter's, not only as witnesses of the Church's exuberant life,
but as those whose hands, more than any others, have helped to rear that
colossal central power, of which that fane is the visible symbol. Thus the
Papal structure was so gradually built upon the Patriarchal, that no one
age could accurately mark where the one ended and the other began, but all
may see the finished work. It requires no microscopic eye to distinguish
the authority of St. Leo or St. Gregory from that of St. Innocent the
Third. The poet spake of a phantom what is true of a great reality:--
"Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo,
Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubila condit."
That power, for which the heroic and saintly Hildebrand died in exile,[166]
if exile there could be to him who received the heathen for his
inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for his possession; for
which our own St. Anselm, forced against his will to the Primacy, stood
unquailing in the path of the Red King, most furious, if not the worst, of
that savage race, whose demon wrath seemed to justify the fable of their
origin; for which St. Bernard, the last of the Fathers in age, but equal to
the first in glory, wrote and laboured, and wore himself out with vigils,
and wrought miracles; for which our own St. Thomas shed that noble blood,
which sanctifies yet our primatial Church, an earnest of restoration and
freedom to come; that power, for which St. Francis, the spouse of holy
poverty, so long neglected since her First Husband ascended up on high, and
St. Dominic--
l' amoroso drudo
Della fede Cristiana, il santo atleta,
Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nemici crudo;[167]
and one greater yet, the warrior saint, Ignatius, raised their myriads of
every age and of both sexes, armed in that triple mail of poverty,
chastity, and obedience, "of whom the world was not worthy;"--that power,
to which have borne witness so many saintly Bishops, poor in the midst of
poverty, and humble in the exercise of more than royal power,--so many
scholars, marvellously learned,--so many, prodigal of labour and blood, who
are now counted among the noble army of martyrs,--so many holy women, who
have hidden themselves under the robe of the first of all saints, and
followed the Virgin of virgins in their degree;--that power is, indeed, the
most wondrous creation which history can record, and one to which I am not
ashamed to confess that I should bow with unmingled reverence, had not
truth a yet stronger claim upon me, and did not the voice of the early
Church, its Fathers, Councils, and Martyrs, sound distinctly in my ears
another language. Still, human and divine, ambition and Providence, are so
mingled there, that I would not utter a word more than truth requires. I
should even be compelled to give up the strongest individual conviction,
acknowledging the weakness and liability to err of any private judgment;
acknowledging, moreover, that a single province of the Church, if opposed
to all the rest, is certain to be in error, were it not that, besides the
voice of antiquity, we have witnesses the most legitimate, the most
time-honoured, the most unswerving in their testimony,--witnesses who take
away from our opponents their proudest claim,--nay, a claim which, if real,
would be irresistible,--that of being, by themselves, the Catholic Church.