According as the Church of Jerusalem sank, the Church of Rome rose, or,
rather, a phenomenon was evidently manifested in the years which
followed the victory of Titus. It was that the Church of Rome became
more and more the inheritor and the substitute of the Church of
Jerusalem. The spirit of the two churches was the same: what was a
danger at Jerusalem became an advantage at Rome. The taste for tradition
and the hierarchy, and the respect for authority, were in some sort
transplanted from the parvises of the temple to the Occident. James, the
brother of the Lord, had been a sort of pope at Jerusalem. Rome is about
to take up the part of James. We shall have the pope at Rome. Without
Titus, we should have had the pope in Jerusalem, but with this great
difference, that the pope at Jerusalem would have extinguished
Christianity in about one or two hundred years, while the Pope of Rome
has made it the religion of the universe.
Here appears a very important person, who seems to have been the head of
the Roman Church in the early years of the first century, concerning
whom I am happy to find myself in accord with one of your most scholarly
and enlightened critics, Mr. Lightfoot. I speak of Clement Romanus. In
the penumbra in which he remains, enveloped and almost lost in the
luminous dust of a beautiful far-off history, Clement is one of the
grand figures of early Christianity: one would say that it was the head
of an old effaced fresco of Giotto's, recognizable still from his golden
aureola, and some dim features of striking purity and sweetness. One
thing is beyond doubt: it is the high rank which he held in the utterly
spiritual hierarchy of the church of his time, and the unequalled credit
with which he sustained it. His approval made the law. All parties clung
to him, and wished to shield themselves under his authority. It is
probable that he was one of the most energetic agents of the grand work
that was about to be accomplished: I mean the posthumous reconciliation
of Peter and Paul, without which union the work of Christ could only
have perished. His high personality, aggrandized by tradition, was,
after that of Peter, the most holy figure of the primitive Christian
Rome.
Already the idea of a certain primacy in the Church of Rome began to
show itself. The right of advising the other churches and of settling
their differences was accorded to this church. It is believed that like
privileges had been allowed to Peter among the disciples. Now a still
closer bond was established between Peter and Rome. In the time of
Clement, great dissensions divided the Church at Corinth. The Roman
Church, being applied to in these troubles, replied by an epistle,
which has been preserved to us. The epistle is anonymous; but a very
ancient tradition teaches that Clement was the author of it. The Church
at Corinth had changed but little since St. Paul. It had the same proud,
disputant, feeble spirit. It is evident that the principal opposition to
the hierarchy was found in this Greek spirit, always mobile, because it
was always full of life, undisciplined (and for my part I like it), not
knowing how to form a flock from a crowd. The women and the children
were in full revolt. Some superior doctors imagined that they possessed
a profound sense in every thing, and mystic secrets analogous to the
gift of tongues and the discernment of spirits. Those who were honored
with these supernatural gifts scorned the ancients, and aspired to
replace them. Corinth had a respectable presbytery, which, however, did
not receive the highest mysticism. The advanced pretenders cast it in
the shade, and put themselves in its place. Some of the _presbyteri_
were even dismissed. The struggle between the established hierarchy and
personal revelations began, and this struggle fills the history of the
Church; the privileged soul complaining, that, in spite of the favors
with which it is honored, a gross clergy, wanting in spiritual life,
dominates it officially. We see that this was the heresy of individual
mysticism, maintaining the rights of the spirit against authority,
pretending to rise above common mortals and the ordinary clergy by right
of its direct intercourse with divinity.
The Roman Church was always the church of order, of subordination, and
of rule. Its fundamental principle was that humility and submission were
of more value than the most sublime gifts. Its epistle is the first
manifestation in the Christian Church of the principle of authority.
A few years since, there was much surprise when a French archbishop,
then a senator, said in the Tribune, "My clergy is my regiment." Clement
had said this before him. Order and obedience were the supreme laws of
the family and the church. "Let us consider the soldiers who serve under
our sovereigns. With what order, what punctuality, what submission, they
obey their commands: all are not prefects, nor tribunes, nor centurions;
but each one in his rank executes the orders of the emperor and of his
chiefs. The great cannot exist without the small, nor the small without
the great. In every thing there is a mingling of diverse elements, and
by this mingling all advances. Let us take, for example, our bodies. The
head is nothing without the feet; the feet are nothing without the head.
The smallest of our organs are necessary, and serve the whole body: all
conspire, and obey the same principle of subordination for the
preservation of the whole."
The history of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is the history of a triple
abdication; the community of the faithful first placing all its powers
in the hands of the ancients, or _presbyteri_; the presbyteral body at
length delegating its authority to one person who was the _episcopos_;
then the _episcopi_ of the Latin Church recognized as their head one of
themselves, who became the pope. This last progress, if we may call it
so, was not accomplished until our time. The creation of the episcopate,
on the contrary, was the work of the second century. The absorption of
the church by the _presbyteri_ was accomplished before the year 100. In
the Epistle of Clement Romanus it is not yet with the episcopate, but
with the presbytery, that he deals. We find there no trace of a
_presbyteros_ superior to the others, and entitled to dethrone them; but
the author proclaims positively that the presbytery and the clergy are
above the people. The apostles, in establishing churches, chose through
the inspiration of the Spirit the "bishops and the deacons of the future
believers." The power emanating from the apostles has been transmitted
by regular succession. No church has then the right to dethrone its
seniors. The privilege of the rich is nothing in the church.
Accordingly, those who are favored with mystic gifts, instead of
believing themselves above the hierarchy, should be the more submissive.
This involves the great problem, "Who exists in the church? Is it the
people? Is it the clergy? Is it inspiration?" This problem was already
given in the time of St. Paul, who resolved it in the true manner by
mutual charity. One epistle trenches upon the question in the sense of
pure Catholicism. The apostolic title is every thing: the right of the
people is reduced to nothing. We may then safely assert that Catholicism
had its origin at Rome, since the Church of Rome laid down its first
rules. Prescience pertains to spiritual gifts, to science and
distinction: it belongs to the hierarchy, to the powers transmitted
through the medium of the canonical ordination, which attaches itself to
the apostles by an unbroken chain. The free church as Christ conceived
it, and as St. Paul also regarded it, was a Utopia which held nothing
for the future. Evangelical liberty had destroyed it; and it was not
realized, that, with the hierarchy uniformity and death would come in
time.