Church of England to be in schism would condemn likewise the Eastern and
Russian Church. It is not the Catholic Church against a revolted province,
as our adversaries would have us believe; it is the one Patriarch of the
West, with his Bishops, against the four Patriarchs of the East, with
theirs, and that great and, as yet, unbroken phalanx of the North, which
Constantinople won to the faith of old, and which now promises to beat back
the tide of heresy and infidelity from the beleaguered Sees of the East. On
this point of schism, at least, they bear witness with us. The causes,
adverted to above, which were so influential in exalting the great fabric
of Roman power in the West, did not act upon the East,--nay, acted in the
inverse direction. The See of Constantinople still remains where the
Council of Chalcedon placed it, where the Emperor Justinian recognised it
to be, the second See of the world: and it has ever since refused to admit
that Rome was _first_ in any sense in which itself was not _second_. This
may serve to set in a clear light the vast difference between the
legitimate power of the First See, and the claim to give jurisdiction to
all Bishops. The systems, of which these are expressions, are in truth
antagonistic. Constantinople maintains still that constitution of the whole
Church which St. Gregory accused its Bishops of undermining. The evil which
he foresaw has come from his own successors: "the cause of Almighty God,
the cause of the Universal Church," the privileges and rights of Bishops
and Priests, as against one "Universal Pope," are borne witness to now, as
they have ever been, by the immutable East. Here, at least, are no
sympathies with the heresiarchs of the sixteenth century: the Synod of
Bethlehem has anathematised Luther and Calvin as decidedly as the Council
of Trent. Here was no Henry the Eighth fixing his supremacy on a reluctant
Church by the axe, the gibbet, the stake, and laws of premunire and
forfeiture: no State using that Church as a cat's-paw for three hundred
years, and ready now to offer it up a holocaust to the demon of liberalism.
Here is the ancient Patriarchal system, the thrones of Constantinople,
Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, subsisting still. Here is the same body
of doctrine, the same seven sacraments, the same Real Presence, the same
mighty sacramental and sacerdotal system, which Latitudinarian and
Evangelical, statesman and heretic, dread while they hate, as being indeed
the visible presence of Christ in a fallen world,--the residence of a
spiritual power which controls and torments the worldling, while it
disproves and falsifies the heretic. Here is all that the Roman Catholic
claims as tokens of the truth for himself: but there is one thing more, the
same protest that we make against the monarchical, as distinct from the
patriarchal, power, the same appeal back to early Councils, and the
unambiguous voice of those who cannot be silenced or corrupted, the Fathers
of the Church. In the Fathers of the undivided Church, the East and the
North and the West, so long severed, meet: we are not alone, who have with
us, on the very point which divides us from our Mother Church, the still
unbroken line of successors from St. Athanasius and St. Chrysostom. There
is no break in the descent or in the doctrine of the Eastern Churches.
There is the same dogmatic, the same hierarchical fabric, subsisting now as
when St. Gregory addressed Anastasius of Antioch, and Eulogius of
Alexandria. It may suit the purposes of unfair Roman controversialists to
brand them as schismatics, and overcome, by calling them a name, their own
most formidable opponents: but history cannot be so overcome. They have
_never_ admitted the Papal sway, any more than the Fathers who passed the
28th Canon of Chalcedon: they have, indeed, admitted the Roman _Primacy_,
as those same Fathers admitted it; for the very system, for which they are
witnesses, is not complete without the Bishop of Rome stands at the head of
it: the _due_ honour of Rome is involved in the due honour of
Constantinople; and, we may add, the due honour of Canterbury: the same
temper, the same persons, who reject the one, hate the other. What we say
they never have admitted is, that which has really worked the disunion of
the Universal Church, as St. Gregory foretold it would, the doctrine which
is the centre of the present Papal system, which alone makes all its parts
cohere, and justifies all its acts, and triumphs over all appeal to
argument, and all testimonies of antiquity, viz., that, "the Pope is set
over the whole Christian world, and possesses in its completeness and
plenitude that power which Christ left on earth for the good of the
Church."[168] They have never for a moment admitted that the Bishops of the
Universal Church were the Pope's delegates, and received their jurisdiction
from him. _We_ fight, it must be admitted, at some disadvantage with our
opponents. The long subjection which our Church yielded to Rome, the
manifold obligations under which we lie to her, the complete unsettling of
the ecclesiastical and doctrinal system in the sixteenth century, the
horrible vices of those who effected the change, the connection with those
whose doctrine has now worked itself out into Socinianism, infidelity, and
anarchy, the inability we have ever since been under of shaking ourselves
completely clear of them, the thoroughly unsatisfactory position of the
state towards us, as a Church, at present,--all these things are against
us,--all these things tell on the mind which really lives and dwells on
antiquity, and looks to the pure Apostolic Church. Still, though they
weaken, they do not overcome our cause. But from all these objections the
witness of the Eastern Churches is free. They were never subject to Rome,
but to their own Patriarchs; they derived not their Christianity from her:
the Priesthood, and the pure unbloody sacrifice, and the power to bind and
to loose, remain undisputed among them: the Eastern mind cannot conceive a
Church without them. They have received no reformation from those whose
lives were a scandal to all Christian men: they are not mixed up with the
Lutheran or Calvinistic heresy: nor has Erastianism eaten out their life.
Yet, if we are schismatics, so are they, and on the same ground. Moreover
the Roman Church has again and again treated with them as parts of the true
Church. It is only in comparatively modern times, that as the hope of
re-union became fainter, the line of denying their being members of the One
Body has been taken up. I have seen even so late as the time of Clement the
Eighth a letter of that Pope to the Czar, in which he treats him as already
belonging to the Church. Moreover the Eastern Church has put forth the best
and most convincing sign of Catholicity, _life_: to her, _since her
separation from Rome_, and to this particular attention must be claimed, is
due the most remarkable conversion of a great nation to the Faith which has
taken place in the last eight hundred years--Russia with her Bishops, her
clergy, her monasteries, her convents, her Christian people, her ancient
discipline, her completely organised Church system, her whole country won
from Paganism by the preaching of Monks and Missionary Bishops, is a
witness to the Greek Church (which who shall gainsay?) that she is a true
member of the One Body. The Patriarch of Constantinople exercised that
charge which the Council of Chalcedon gave him, and ordained Bishops among
the barbarians, and the Spirit of God blessed their labours, and the whole
North became his spiritual offspring. Rome cannot show, since she has been
divided from the East, a conversion on so large a scale, so complete, so
permanent. And on that great mass she has hitherto made no impression. It
is a complete refutation of her claim to be _by herself_ Catholic, that
there exists out of her communion a Body of Apostolic descent and
government, with the same doctrinal system as her own, with the ascetic
principle as strongly developed, with the same claim to miracles,--with
all, in fact, which characterises a Church; a Body, moreover, so large,
that, supposing the non-existence of the Roman Communion, the promises of
God in Scripture to His Church might be supposed to be fulfilled in that
Body.[169] And this Body, like ourselves, denies that particular Roman
claim, for which Rome would have us and them to be schismatic. And it has
denied it not merely for three hundred years, but from the time that it has
been advanced. Truly all that was deficient on our side seems made up by
the Greek Church. And this living and continuous witness of a thousand
years is to be added to that most decisive and unambiguous voice of the
whole undivided ancient Church.
I have, throughout these remarks, considered the Church of Christ to be
what, at the Councils of Nicea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, she so manifestly
appeared, one organic whole; a Body, with One Head, and many members; as
St. Gregory says, Peter, and Paul, and Andrew, and John; a kingdom with One
Sovereign, and rulers, an Apostolic College appointed by that Head, with a
direct commission from Himself. I believe that no other idea about the
Church prevailed up to St. Gregory's time. It follows that all so-called
national churches, unless they be subordinate to the law of this kingdom,
are so many infringements of the great primary law of unity, in that they
set up a member instead of the Body. St. Paul, in the 12th chapter of the
1st Epistle to the Corinthians, has clearly set forth such, and no less, to
be the unity of Christ's Body. Certainly it is a difficulty, that we must
admit this essential law to be at present broken. But I do not think it
fair to argue against a provisional and temporary state, such as that of
the Church of England is confessed to be--which, too, has been forced upon
her--as if it were a normal state, one that we have chosen, a theory of
unity that we put forth over against the ancient theory, or the present
Roman one. Nay, thousands and ten thousands feel, the whole rising mind of
the Church feels, that we are torn "from Faith's ancient home," that we
groan within ourselves, waiting until God in his good time restore a
visible unity to His Church, till the East and the West and the South be
one again in the mind of Christ. Who but must view it as a token of that
future blessing, that public prayers have been offered up in France and
Italy for such a consummation? Let us begin to pray for each other, and we
must end by being one. Let _us_, too, pray that the clouds of error and
prejudice, the intense blind jealousy on one side, the cruel and
disingenuous temper on the other, may be subdued by the Spirit of God, who
in some great and blessed Pentecost shall draw long alienated hearts
together, and mould them into a union closer than has ever been, against an
attack the last and most terrible of the foretold enemy, the tokens of
whose coming are at hand.
But the Roman Catholic, who seems to escape this difficulty, and points to
his communion as one organic whole, falls into another. Grant that it is
one, but it is at the expense of ceasing to be Catholic: it has lost all
the East and the North, and part of the West. Thus, in this choice between
difficulties, it seems the least to suppose that the unity of Christendom
may be for a time suspended, during which the several parts of Christ's
Body retain communion with the one Head, and thence derive life, though
active communion with each other is suspended. A less difficulty, I say,
than to cut off, not merely our own Church, but the seventy millions of the
Eastern Church, having a complete inward identity with the Roman, from the
covenant of salvation, merely because that intercommunion is prevented by a
claim to spiritual monarchy, which was unknown in the best ages of the
Church, and has been resisted ever since it was set up. If this view be
true, we should expect that the several parts, though living, would yet be
languishing, and far from that healthy vigour which they ought to possess;
that the Great Head would give manifold warnings of the injury done to His
Body. Now, it is very remarkable that the circumstances, no less of the
Latin than of the Eastern and the Anglican Church, exactly agree to this
expectation. I need not speak on this point of the second and third; but I
cannot help thinking that they who have suffered themselves to be driven by
fearful scandals out of our bosom, who have brooded over acknowledged but
unrelieved wants, till the duty of patient long-suffering has been
forgotten, close their eyes to the state of France, Spain, and Italy, under
what they have now learnt to call _by itself_ the "Catholic" Church. Yet
are there tokens abroad which men of less spiritual discernment might lay
to heart. Does the "obscene rout" of Ronge and Czerski, bursting forth from
the bosom of the Roman Church, awake no misgiving? Fearful, when viewed by
Scripture and antiquity, as the state of England is, (an argument which is
now being used against our communion with such effect on tender and loving
minds,) he must be bold who would venture to say that the relation of the
French Church to the French nation in the last century, or its relation
even now, greatly as the present French Church is to be admired and
sympathised with, does not offer as much ground for fearful apprehension,
as much reason to dread, lest the terms on which victory is promised to the
Church over the world have been essentially broken. I fear there is no
doubt that two-thirds of the French capital are not _Christian_, in any
sense of the word; and probably the proportion is as great in the larger
towns. How did this state of things arise? How has nearly the whole
intellect of that country become infidel? From the French Revolution, it
will be answered. But how could that great Satanical outburst have ever
taken place, had the Church of Christ, free from corruption, as those who
have left us believe, and throned in the possession of sixteen hundred
years, with its numberless religious houses, its unmarried clergy, and
great episcopate, been discharging its functions, I do not say aright, but
with any moderate efficiency? Surely the acts of the States General were as
bad as those of Henry the Eighth; yet its members were Catholics, in full
communion with the Roman See. Surely the ecclesiastical legislation of
Napoleon was as uncatholic as that of a House of Commons; yet it was
sanctioned by Concordat with the Pope. But if manifold corruptions did not
unchurch the Gallican communion in the last century,--if the mass of a
great nation, which the Church once completely possessed, but has now
surrendered to active unbelief, does not invalidate her claim to be a pure
communion at present, why are such things alleged as so fatal a mark
against us? God forbid that one should mention such things without the
deepest sorrow; but when our troubles, and difficulties, and relations with
the state, and the alienated hearts of our people, and the absence of
external discipline and inward guidance, and the misery of our divisions,
are alleged to prove that we are out of the pale of the Church, these
things ought to be weighed on the other side. There ought not to be
different measures on different sides of the Channel. I forbear to speak of
the state of Spain, Portugal, and much of Italy; but I imagine that the
worst deeds of the Reformation were at least paralleled by what the Church
has had to endure there from the hands of her own children. I believe that
our own most sad corruptions have, too, their counterpart among Churches in
communion with the Apostolic See.
But to conclude. As our defence against the charge of Schism rests upon the
witness of the ancient Church, thus fully corroborated by the Eastern
Communion, so our whole safety lies in maintaining the clear indubitable
doctrine of that Church. I have avoided the whole question of _doctrine_ in
these remarks, both as leading me into a wider field than that which I am
obliged to traverse so cursorily at present, and as distinct from the
question of Schism, though very closely connected with it. No one can deny
that it is not sufficient for our safety to repel one single charge: but
this charge was the most pressing, the most specious, and one which
requires to be disposed of before the mind can with equanimity enter upon
any other. My conclusion is, that upon the strictest Church principles,--in
other words, upon those principles which all Christendom, in its undivided
state, recognised for six hundred years, which may be seen in the Canons
and Decrees of Ecumenical Councils, our present position is tenable at
least till the convocation of a really Ecumenical Council. The Church of
England has never rejected the communion of the Western, and still less
that of the Eastern Church: neither has the Eastern Church pronounced
against her. She has only exercised the right of being governed by her own
Bishops and Metropolitans. There is, indeed, much peril of her being forced
from this, her true position,--a peril lately pointed out by the author of
"The real Danger of the Church of England." I need say little where he has
said so much, in language so well-timed, so moderate, and from a position
which cannot be misrepresented. I will only add, that I cannot conceive any
course which would so thoroughly quench the awakened hopes of the Church's
most faithful children, as that her rulers, which I am loth even to
imagine, at a crisis like the present, should seek support, not in the rock
of the ancient Church, in which Andrewes, Laud, and Ken, took refuge of
old,--not in the unbroken tradition of the East and West, by which, if at
all, the Church of Christ must be restored,--not in that great system which
first subdued and then impregnated with fresh life the old Roman Empire,
delaying a fall which nothing could avert, and which lastly built up out of
these misshapen ruins all the Christian polities of Europe,--not in that
time-honoured and universal fabric of doctrine to which our own Prayer-book
bears witness, but in the wild, inconsistent, treacherous sympathies of a
Protestantism, which the history of three hundred years in many various
countries has proved to be dead to the heart's core. Farewell, indeed, to
any true defence of the Church of England, any hope of her being built up
once more to an Apostolical beauty and glory, of recovering her lost
discipline and intercommunion with Christendom, if she is by any act of her
rulers, or any decree of her own, to be mixed up with the followers of
Luther, Calvin, or Zuingle: with those who have neither love, nor unity,
nor dogmatic truth, nor sacraments, nor a visible Church among themselves:
who, never consistent but in the depth of error, and the secret instinct of
heresy, deny regeneration in Baptism, and the gift of the Holy Spirit in
Confirmation and Orders, and the power of the keys in absolution, and the
Lord's Body in the Eucharist. That is the way of death: who is so mad as to
enter on it? When Protestantism lies throughout Europe and America a great
disjointed mass, in all the putridity of dissolution,
"Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, _cui lumen ademptum_,"
judicially blinded, so that it cannot perceive Christ dwelling in his
Church, while she grows to the measure of the stature of the perfect man,
and making her members and ministers His organs--who would think of joining
to it a living Church? Have we gone through so much experience in vain?
Have we seen it develop into Socinianism at Geneva, and utter unbelief in
Germany, and a host of sects in England and America, whose name is Legion,
and who seem to be agreed in nothing else but in the denial of sacramental
grace, and visible unity; and all this at the last hour, in the very
turning point of our destiny, to seek alliance with those who have no other
point of union but common resistance to the tabernacle of God among men? A
persuasion that nothing short of the very existence of the Church of
England is at stake, that one step into the wrong will fix her character
and her prospects for ever, compels one to say that certain acts and
tendencies of late have struck dismay into those who desire above all
things to love and respect their spiritual mother. If the Jerusalem
Bishopric, promoted, (at the instance of a foreign minister, not in
communion with our Church,[170] and who has recorded in the strongest terms
his objection to _her_ apostolical episcopacy,) by two Bishops on their
private responsibility, without any authority from the Church of which they
are indeed most honoured, but only individual rulers, be the commencement
of a course of amalgamation with the Lutheran or Calvinistic heresy, who
that values the authority of the ancient undivided Church, will not feel
his allegiance to our own branch fearfully shaken? The time for silence is
past. There is such a thing as "propter vitam vivendi perdere causas." It
must be said publicly that such a course will lead infallibly to a schism,
which will bury the Church of England in its ruins. If she is to become a
mere lurking-place for omnigenous latitudinarianism; if first principles of
the faith, such as baptismal regeneration, and priestly absolution, may be
indifferently held or denied within her pale,--though, if not God's very
truths, they are most fearful blasphemies,--the sooner she is swept away
the better. There is no mean between her being "a wall daubed with
untempered mortar," or the city of the living God. I speak as one who has
every thing commonly valuable to man depending on this decision; moreover,
as a Priest in that communion, whose constitution, violently suspended by
an enemy for one hundred and thirty years, yet requires that every one of
her acts, which bind her as a whole, should be assented to by her
Priesthood in representation, as well as by her Episcopacy. If the grace of
the sacraments may be publicly denied by ministers of the Church, nay, by a
Bishop ex cathedra, with impunity, in direct violation of the most solemn
forms to which they have sworn obedience, while the assertion of Christ's
Real Presence in the Eucharist draws down censure on the most devoted head,
the communion which endures such iniquity requires the constant
uninterrupted intercession of her worthier children, that she be not
finally forsaken of God, and perish at the first attack of antichrist.
* * * * *
R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.
* * * * *
NOTES
[1] Bellarmin. de Rom. Pont. Lib. iv. 25; iv. 24; i. 9.
[2] De Maistre, du Pape. Liv. i. ch. i.
[3] S. Cyprian de Unit. Ecc. 12.
[4] "Development," &c. p. 22.
[5] Thomassin, Part i. lib. i. ch. 4. De l'ancienne discipline de l'Eglise.
[6] St. Cypr. de Unit. 4. Oxford Tr.
[7] Quoted by Thomassin, _ut sup._
[8] Ibid.
[9] S. Aug. Tom. v. 706, B.
[10] S. Chrys. Tom. ii. 594, B.
[11] St. Jerome, tom. ii. 279, Vallarsi.
[12] Development, p. 279.
[13] The words in italics are left out by Mr. N.
[14] Thomassin, Part i. liv. i. ch. iii.
[15] Of a passage in this letter, De Maistre says (Du Pape, liv. i. ch. 6):
"Resuming the order of the most marked testimonies which present themselves
to me on the general question, I find, first, St. Cyprian declare, in the
middle of the third century, that heresies and schisms only existed in the
Church because all eyes were not turned towards the Priest of God, towards
the Pontiff who judges in the Church _in the place of Jesus Christ_." A
pretty strong testimony, indeed, and one which would go far to convince me
of the fact. Pity it is, that when one refers to the original, one finds
that St. Cyprian is actually speaking of himself, and of the consequences
of any where setting up in a see a schismatical Bishop against the true
one. After this, who will trust De Maistre's facts without testing them?
The truth is, he had taken the quotation at second hand, and never looked
to see to whom it was applied. It suited the Pope so admirably that it must
have been meant for him. But I recommend no one to change their faith upon
the authority of quotations which they do not test.
[16] Epist. 67. De Marciano Arelatensi.
[17] S. Cyp. Ep. 29.
[18] Ep. 73.
[19] Ep. 74.
[20] De Unit. Ecc. Oxf. Tr.
[21] Op. St. Cypr. p. 329. ed. Baluz.
[22] Tom. ix. p. 110.
[23] S. Cyp. Ep. 75.
[24] Liv. VII. sec. 32.
[25] Tom. ix. 97. G.
[26] Tom. ii. 96. F.
[27] Tom. ii. 299. C.
[28] Fleury, liv. vii. 23.
[29] Ep. 68. S. Cypriani.
[30] Liv. i. ch. 2, sect. 5.
[31] Liv. i. ch. 3, sect. 8.
[32] Fleury, Liv. xii. xxix. Conc. Sard. Can. 3, 4, 7.
[33] Thomassin, Part I. liv. i. ch. 40. sect. 2.
[34] Idem, ut supra.
[35] St. Aug. Tom. V. 1097. B.
[36] Tom. IV. 1215. E.
[37] Tom. V. 240. F.
[38] Tom. V. 1194. E.
[39] Tom. V. 1195. E.
[40] Tom. III. Part ii. 800. G.
[41] He allows that Peter _may_ be called the rock. Tom. i. 32, E.
[42] Fleury 23, 30. Oxf. Tr.
[43] St. Aug. Tom. II. 618. B.
[44] St. Aug. Tom. ii. 635. F.
[45] Tom. ii. 639. B.
[46] Quoted by Fleury, 23, 32. Oxford Tr.
[47] Fleury, Liv. 24, 35. Oxf. Tr. See the original: Codex Eccl. Afric.
138.
[48] Chillingworth, quoted by Mr. Newman, "Developement," p. 4.
[49] Tom. ix. 372. F.
[50] Tom. ix. 340. A.
[51] Tom. v. 1199. D. 1202. F.
[52] Def. Cleri. Gall. Pars ii. lib. xii. ch. 5.
[53] Def. Cleri. Gall. Pars ii. lib. xii. ch. 7.
[54] Ibid. lib. xiii. ch. 19.
[55] St. Chrys. Tom. ix. 757. A.
[56] Lacordaire, Sur le Saint Siege.
[57] St. Aug. Tom. x. 412. B. quoted in Fleury, Oxf. Tr. 3. 93.
[58] Def. Clerc. Gall. Pars ii. lib. xii. c. 10.
[59] Fleury, 25-47. Oxf. Trans.
[60] Ut sup. ch. 14.
[61] Du Pape, Liv. i. ch. 2.
[62] Id. Liv. i. ch. 4.
[63] Hammond's Translation.
[64] Tillemont, tom. xv. p. 72.
[65] Tillemont, tom. xv. p. 81.
[66] Tillemont, tom. xv. p. 83.
[67] Tillemont, tom. xv. p. 89.
[68] St. Leo. Ep. 40.
[69] St. Leo. Ep. 10. Edit. Ball.
[70] Ib. Ep. 65.
[71] Ep. 10.
[72] St. Leo. Ep. 14, cap. i. xi.
[73] S. Leon. Ep 6, cap. 2.
[74] St. Jerome, Ep. 146. Vallarsi.
[75] Theodoret, Ep. in Epist. S. Leonis, 52.
[76] Mansi, 6, 817, quoted by Gieseler, tom. i. part ii. p. 192.
[77] Isidorus, Hisp. Etymol. 7, 12, quoted by Gieseler, ut sup. p. 406.
[78] Gieseler, tom. i. part ii. pp. 191, 192.
[79] Gieseler, tom. i. part ii. p. 205.
[80] Theodoret. Hist. Eccl. lib. v. ch. 9.
[81] Observe this Council so called by the Greeks before it was received by
the West.
[82] It must be remembered that Diocese, in the language of this time,
means the several provinces comprehended in a Patriarchate. It was the
civil term.
[83] S. Bas. M. Ep. 239.
[84] Gieseler, tom. i. part ii. p. 202.
[85] Sozomen, Hist. iii. ch. 8.
[86] Ibid. Hist. iii. ch. 10.
[87] Socrates, Hist. ii. ch. 17.
[88] Bossuet, Sermon sur l'Unite de l'Eglise.
[89] Bossuet, Def. Cleri Gall. Pars ii. lib. xii. ch, 15, 16, 17.
[90] S. Leon. Ep. 120.
[91] Ib. c. 4.
[92] S. Leon. Ep. 102.
[93] Ch. 18, ibid.
[94] Fleury, Liv. xxviii. 29. Oxf. Tr.
[95] Theod. lib. v. ch. 28, quoted by Tillemont.
[96] Tillemont, tom. xv. p. 711.
[97] The sittings are variously counted.
[98] Fleury, liv. xxviii. xxx. Oxf. Tr.
[99] Tillemont, tom. xv. p. 707.
[100] S. Leon. Ep. 104, cap. 3.
[101] S. Leon. Ep. 105.
[102] Ep. 106, cap. 4.
[103] Ep. 105, cap. 2.
[104] Ep. 106, cap. 2-5.
[105] Ep. 107.
[106] Ep. 105, cap. 3.
[107] Tillemont, tom. xv. p. 731.
[108] S. Leon. Ep. 107.
[109] S. Greg. Ep. lib. iii. 10.
[110] On Development, p. 307.
[111] Fleury, liv. xxxii. 54.
[112] Gieseler, vol. i. part. ii. p. 192.
[113] Nov. i. 1-7, quoted by Gieseler.
[114] Fleury, liv. xxxiii. 4, 5, 6.
[115] Nov. vi. Epilogus.
[116] Nov. cxxiii. c. 3.
[117] Ad Valerianum, Mansi, ix. 732.
[118] Contra litt. Petiliani, ii. 51, all quoted by Gieseler.
[119] Bossuet, Def. Cleri Gall. pars ii. lib. xii. cap. 19.
[120] Fleury, liv. xxxiii. 52.
[121] Bossuet, _ut sup._
[122] Du Pape, liv. i. ch. 3.
[123] Fleury, Liv. xxxiii. 52.
[124] Sozomen, lib. iii. ch. 11.
[125] Tom. i. part ii. 410.
[126] Def. Cleri Gall. pars ii. lib. xii. cap. 29.
[127] Id. cap. 31.
[128] Du Pape, liv. iii. ch. 7.
[129] S. Greg. Ep. lib. ii. 52.
[130] Lib. ix. 59, Gieseler.
[131] Lib. xi. 37, Gieseler.
[132] Gieseler, tom. i. part ii. 401.
[133] Liv. xxxiv. 60.
[134] Liv. xxxv. 19.
[135] Ep. S. Greg. lib. v. 43.
[136] Lib. ix. 68.
[137] Lib. v. 19.
[138] Lib. vii. 33.
[139] Lib. v. Ep. 20.
[140] Lib. vii. 27.
[141] I cannot but consider St. Gregory's words to contain one of the most
remarkable prophecies to be found in history; for this assuming the title
and exercising the power of universal Pope has actually led not only to the
concentration of all executive power in the Roman See, but to the
conviction, among its warmest partisans, that the whole existence of the
Church depends on the single See of Rome. Take the following from De
Maistre: "Christianity rests entirely upon the Sovereign
Pontiff."--"Without the Sovereign Pontiff the whole edifice of Christianity
is undermined, and only waits, for a complete falling in, the development
of certain circumstances which shall be put in their full light."--"What
remains incontestable is, that if the Bishops, assembled without the Pope,
may call themselves the Church, and claim any other power but that of
certifying the person of the Pope in those infinitely rare moments when it
might be doubtful, unity exists no longer, and the visible Church
disappears."--"The Sovereign Pontiff is the necessary, only, and exclusive
foundation of Christianity. To him belong the promises, with him disappears
unity, that is, the Church."--"The supremacy of the Pope being the capital
dogma without which Christianity cannot subsist, all the Churches, which
reject this dogma, the importance of which they conceal from themselves,
are agreed even without knowing it: all the rest is but accessory, and
thence comes their affinity, of which they know not the cause."--Du Pape,
Discours Preliminaire; Liv. i. ch. 13; Liv. iv. ch. 5. Could we have any
stronger witness to the antagonism between the Papal and Patriarchal or
Episcopal System? Or can any words be spoken more opposed in tone than
these to the writings of Fathers and decrees of ancient Councils? Or are
they who say such things wise defenders of the Church or promoters of
unity?
[142] Lib. viii. 30.
[143] Part i. liv. i. ch. 11.
[144] Mansi, vi. 1006. 1012, quoted by Gieseler.
[145] Lib. v. 18.
[146] Proph. Office, p. 221. Development, p. 10.
[147] Sect. 13. March 28, 681, translated in Landon's Councils.
[148] Bossuet, Def. Cler. Gall. pars ii. lib. xii. cap. 34.
[149] Bellarmin de Pont. Rom. lib. iv. cap. 24, 25.
[150] Bellarmin de Pont. Rom. lib. i. cap. 9.
[151] Def. Cleri. Gall. pars ii. lib. xiii. cap. 11.
[152] Bossuet is very moderate. St. Chrysostom says, (on Acts, Hom. 33,)
"James was Bishop in Jerusalem, and so speaks last;" and presently, "There
was no pride in the Church, but much good order. And see, after Peter, Paul
speaketh, and no one rebukes him: James waits and starts not out of his
place, for _he was entrusted with the government_." What would St.
Chrysostom say to Bellarmine's doctrine?
[153] Ep. S. Innoc.; in Op. S. Aug. tom. ii. 618; see above, p. 59.
[154] Ibid, quoted above, p. 60.
[155] St. Leo. Serm. in Anniver. Assumpt. quoted above.
[156] Ep. 10.
[157] Optat. l. ix. contra Parmen.
[158] Greg. Nyss. T. 2. 746.
[159] Caesar. Arel. Epist. ad Symm.
[160] Quoted above, p. 58.
[161] Cap. xiv. lib. xiii. pars 2.
[162] Bossuet, Def. &c. Pars ii. lib. xiii. cap. 20.
[163] De Rom. Pont. lib. iv. cap. 26.
[164] Developement, p. 28.
[165] Du Pape, liv. ii. ch. 6; and Discourse Preliminaire.
[166] See the account of his death in Bowden's Life.
[167] Dante, Paradiso, xii. 55.
[168] Bellarmine, quoted above.
[169] I owe this observation to a friend who has had great opportunities of
judging about the state of the Russian Church.