Peter’s Rock
In
Mohammed’s Flood
From St. Gregory The Great to St. Leo III.
Being the Seventh Volume of
The Formation of Christendom
By
Thomas W. Allies, K.C.S.G.
London: Burns & Oats, Ld.
New York: Catholic Publication Society Co.
1890
PROLOGUE TO THE SEVEN VOLUMES OF THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM.
This work being from the beginning one in idea, I place here together the
titles of the fifty-six chapters composing it. For each of these was
intended to be complete in itself, so far as its special subject reached;
but each was likewise to form a distinct link in a chain. The Church of
God comes before the thoughtful mind as the vast mass of a kingdom. Its
greatest deeds are but parts of something immeasurably greater. The most
striking evidence of its doctrines and of its works is cumulative. Those
who do not wish to let it so come before them often confine their interest
in very narrow bounds of time and space. Thus I have known one, who
thought himself a bishop, accept Wycliffe as the answer of a child to his
question, Who first preached the Gospel in England? And not only this.
They also seize upon a particular incident, or person, and so invest with
extraordinary importance facts which they suppose, and which so conceived
are convenient for their purpose, but in historical truth are anything but
undisputed. In this tone of mind, or shortness of vision, that which is
gigantic becomes puny, that which is unending becomes transient. The
sequel and coherence of nations, the mighty roll of the ages spoken of by
St. Augustine, are lost sight of. Again, in English-speaking countries
alone more than two hundred sects call themselves Christian. Their
enjoyment of perfect civil freedom and equality veils to them the horror
of doctrinal anarchy, in virtue of which alone they exist. By this anarchy
the very conception of unity as the corollary of truth is lost to the
popular mind. But through the eight centuries of which I have treated, the
loss of unity was the one conclusive test of falsehood, and the Christian
Faith stood out to its possessors with the fixed solidity of a mountain
range whose summit pierced the heaven.
It has been my purpose to exhibit the profound unity of the Christian
Faith together with the infinite variety of its effects on individual
character, on human society, on the action of nations towards each other,
on universal as well as national legislation. Like the figure of the great
Mother of God bearing her Divine Son in her arms, and so including the
Incarnation and all its works, the Faith stands before us in history,
“veste deaurata, circumdata varietate”. And as the personal unity appears
in the symbol of the Divine Love to man expressed in her Maternity, so it
appears also in the figure of the Church through the ages in which that
Divine Love executes His work. A divided creed means a marred gospel and
an incredulous world.
I offer this work as a single stone, though costing the labour of thirty
years, if perchance it may be accepted in the structure of that Cathedral
of human thought and action wherein our Crucified God is the central
figure, around which all has grown.
Be it allowed me to quote here words of the present Sovereign Pontiff
addressed on the 18th August, 1883, to the Cardinals de Luca, Pitra, and
Hergenröther:—
“It is the voice of all history that God with the most careful
providence directs the various and never-ending movements of human
affairs. Even against man’s intention he makes them serve the
advancement of His Church. History says further that the Roman
Pontificate has ever escaped victorious from its contests and the
violence employed against it, while its assaulters have failed in
the hope which they cherished, and have wrought their own
destruction. Not less openly does history attest the divine
provision made concerning the city of Rome from its very
beginning. This was to give for ever a home and seat to the
successors of St. Peter, from which as a centre, being free from
all control of a superior, they might guide the whole Christian
commonwealth. And no one has ventured to resist this counsel of
the divine Providence without sooner or later perceiving the
vanity of his efforts.
“It cannot be expedient, nor is it wise counsel, to fight with a
power for whose perpetuity God has pledged Himself, while history
attests the performance of the pledge. Since Catholics throughout
the whole world pay it religious veneration, it is their interest
to defend it with all their power. Nay even the rulers of secular
governments must acknowledge this, and lay it to heart, especially
in times so dangerous, when the very foundations on which human
society rests appear well nigh to shake and totter.”
CONTENTS TO THE SEVEN VOLUMES OF THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM.
VOLUME I.
_INAUGURAL LECTURE ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY, 1854.—THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
AND THE INDIVIDUAL._
CHAPTER I.
The Consummation of the Old World.