Di tutte le sue foglie, sono assisi
Quei che credettero in Cristo venturo
Dall' altra parte, onde sono intercisi
Di vôto i semicircoli, si stanno
Quei ch' a Cristo venuto ebber li visi."
--_Paradiso_, c. 32, 22.
In like manner the Apostle commences his illustration of the life of
faith by the martyrdom of Abel, "who being dead yet speaketh." Thus the
one life pleasing to God from the beginning to the end is identical in
its substance, and shows the oneness of the divine plan, commencing its
execution in the very family of the first man. There the just loses his
life for his justice' sake, and Abel becomes the type of Christ and of
all who follow the Divine Master. So St. John the Baptist, marking the
transition from the old covenant to the new, the precursor of our Lord,
with the triple aureole of virginity, doctorship, and martyrdom, gives up
his life to maintain the sanctity of marriage.
Further, the Passion of our Lord is the source of martyrdom; and union
with Him, especially in the act of His Passion, is the cause of all the
effects which martyrdom produces. As He said, in reference to His coming
Passion, of Himself, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and
die, it remaineth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit;" so
Tertullian said of His people, "The blood of Christians is seed." In
martyrdom lies the perpetuation of faith in Christ. He stands in the
midst of the ages, as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,
working backwards and forwards. The shedding of Abel's blood, the first
blood shed, and the blood of the brother shed by the brother, points to
the shedding of Christ's blood; and so in the interval between Abel and
Christ the blood of all the just ones is shed for the hope of Christ. As
all martyrdom preceding Him was for the hope of Him, so all following is
in remembrance and participation of Him.
There is a strong parallel between miracle and martyrdom as to their
principle, their witness, their power, and their perpetuity.
1. First, as to _principle_. The conception of miracle springs at once
from the doctrine of God the Creator, Orderer, and Maintainer of the
universe, united with the doctrine of the Fall of man and the ignorance
thence superinduced, and requiring to be dissipated by an objective
confirmation of the truth. This confirmation is produced when He suspends
that order of nature which He has impressed on things. "The divine power
can at any time, without prejudice to His providence, do something
beyond the order impressed on natural things by God. This is the very
thing which He sometimes does to manifest His power. For in no manner can
it be better shown that all nature is subject to the divine will than by
this, that sometimes He does something beyond the order of nature; for by
this it is made to appear that the order of things proceeded from God,
not by a necessity of His nature, but by His free-will."[206]
On the other hand, the conception of miracles is incompatible with the
notion of a power evolving itself by a strict necessity in the universe.
This involves at the same time the rejection of the notion of sin as a
violation of the eternal law. For the evolution itself is the only law
admitted, and is incapable of sin, which arises from the misuse of the
liberty of the will. A world evolved by eternal necessity denies any
liberty to the will. In this the Positivist and Materialist of the
present day only take the position which the Stoic took of old. All the
three deny miracle, because they deny creation.
And the principle of martyrdom is the intimate union between Christ and
Christians, whereby the Head and His members form one Body. The community
in suffering rests on this. At the head of persecution is the statement
of our Lord Himself (the narrative of which, it may be remarked, is given
three times in the Acts), "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" Thus a
martyr said to martyrs, "He who once conquered death for us is ever
conquering death in us. You know that you are contending under the eyes
of your present Lord; that by the confession of His name you reach His
own glory. For He is not as if He was only looking at His servants, but
He wrestles Himself, He combats Himself in them; in the contest of our
struggle, Himself both crowns and is crowned."[207]
The martyr Felicitas underwent in prison the sufferings of premature
childbirth. One of the attendants remarked to her, "You who so much show
your suffering now, what will you do when you are thrown before the wild
beasts, which you despised when you refused to sacrifice?" And she
answered, "It is I who suffer now that which I suffer; but then there
will be another in me who will suffer for me, because I also shall be
suffering for Him." On which St. Augustine comments: "It was He who
caused women to suffer with faith and the courage of men who deigned in
His mercy for their sake to be born of a woman.... Eve's penalty was not
absent, but Mary's grace was present. What she owed as a woman was
exacted; what she needed in help was given by the Virgin's Son."[208]
2. As to the _witness_ of miracles, in matter of fact the objective proof
of our Lord's mission as Messias and Son of God was based, both in His
own life and in the propagation of His faith, upon miracles viewed in a
double light--first, as they are in themselves, and secondly, as the
fulfilment of prophecy. "To confirm doctrines which surpass natural
knowledge He showed visibly works which surpass natural power, by the
healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, and, what is more
wonderful, the inspiration of human minds, so that untaught and simple
men, filled with the gift of the Holy Spirit, obtained in an instant the
utmost wisdom and readiness of speech; so that not by the violence of
arms, not by the promise of pleasures, but amid the tyranny of
persecutors, an innumerable multitude, not merely of simple, but of the
wisest men was drawn into the Christian faith. They preached doctrines
surpassing man's understanding; they set a restraint on carnal pleasures;
they taught contempt for everything that is in the world. It would be the
most marvellous of all marvels if the world without miracles had been led
to the belief of doctrines so difficult, the working of deeds so arduous,
the hoping of rewards so exalted, by simple and ignoble men."[209]
The witness of martyrdom is expressed in its very name, that they who
suffered death for the sake of Christ were simply called witnesses. The
analogy with miracles is very strong indeed, the one being the witness of
God attesting the truth of His messengers by visible signs, which suspend
or reverse the order which He has Himself established as a general rule;
the other being the witness of men who suffer all those things from which
the nature of man recoils in order to attest the truth of God.
3. As to the _power_ exercised by miracles over the minds of men, the
victory over idolatry and the whole heathen life, which was the
reflection of that idolatry, could not have been accomplished--all other
powers remaining in the Church--without this one. In fact, a diabolic
spiritual power, termed by our Lord "the strong man armed," being, as the
result of the Fall, in possession of his captive, could only be cast out
by One stronger than he, the Son of God Incarnate. The series of miracles
wrought by His disciples were the arms which He used. His name alone when
invoked by them is attested in numberless instances to have had a
supernatural effect.
As to the power exercised by martyrdom, the whole history is full of that
victory over idolatry and the heathen life which was accomplished by the
suffering of our Lord's disciples in His name and in community with Him.
Over and above the effect which the voluntary endurance of suffering for
conscience' sake has upon the minds of men, martyrdom merited the
propagation of the faith as if our Lord's Passion required to be repeated
in His members for the growth of His Body. Such is the fact expressed by
St. Paul in the words, "I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up
those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh for
His Body, which is the Church." And, again, "As the sufferings of Christ
abound in us, so also by Christ doth our comfort abound." In this
martyrdom threw a light upon the divine government of the world; and as
the reversibility of guilt had formed the history of fallen man, so the
reversibility of merit formed the history of man redeemed. Thus over
against the abyss of judgment lies the abyss of grace, the
treasure-house of the Church, of which the King of martyrs holds the key.
That treasure-house is the communion of saints. The power of martyrdom is
one of its great exhibitions. Its source is the Incarnation of the Son.
Taking the mass of sufferings undergone by the mystical Body of Christ in
the process of its growth, there is nothing in the web of human guilt,
how intricate soever it may be, from the beginning to the end of the
world, which has not its counterpart in the reversibility of merit, all
derived from the Passion of the Incarnate Son.
4. As to the _perpetuity_ of the miraculous power, the same reason exists
through the whole course of the Church's preaching for the signs in her
following them that believe. The promise is most clearly recorded at the
conclusion of St. Mark's Gospel, without limit of time or place. The
performance in this first age, when she had to meet all the tyranny of
rulers and all the rage of unbelievers, is recorded also. The promise
clearly extends to the whole time over which the command relating to it
extends: "Go ye unto the whole world, and preach the gospel to every
creature."
As to the perpetuity of martyrdom, it is clear, to use St. Paul's
expression, that what is wanting of the sufferings of Christ will not be
made up until His Body is completed "in the measure of the stature of the
fulness of Christ."
In all these respects the two great powers of miracle and martyrdom,
united in their origin, seem to run into and complete each other. The
witness of God and the witness of man concur in the formation of the
kingdom of His Son.
It may also be noted that all those who reject God as Creator, Judge, and
Remunerator proclaim as a first principle that a miracle is impossible,
while they have the same dislike to martyrdom as the great adversary is
said to have for holy water.
I have now, then, answered the question which I put above--How came the
Roman Emperor to allow to Christians the liberty to render to God the
things of God, that is, to believe, to worship, and to be governed
according to the law of Christ? It was done by an internal action of the
Holy Spirit, forming by a process of individual conversion in the minds
of an innumerable multitude a certain type of Christian character, an
image in each one of the Founder of the line; and at the same time by an
external action of the same Holy Spirit co-operating in this conversion
"with signs following." Never before were the divine and the human
societies pitted against each other in so absolute a conflict. Perhaps it
is even the only period as yet in the 1850 years of Christian life in
which the Battle of the Standards, of poverty, affliction, and contempt
on the one side, of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the
pride of life on the other, has been completely carried out--completely
in that the representation on each side embraced the whole society. For
if any would not be poor, afflicted, and despised in those times, either
they could not become Christians, or becoming so in times of comparative
peace, they were speedily scattered by the winnowing flail of
persecution. But on the other side, the combative heathenism from
Tiberius to Maxentius was pre-eminently corrupt. It should be added, that
in the 1850 years, never has there been so astonishing a result as the
advance of the Christian Church, from those who met in the upper room on
the Day of Pentecost to those who received from Constantine perfect civil
freedom to believe that doctrine, to exercise that worship, to be
governed by that Episcopate, which formed together the greatest
conceivable contradiction to the heathen world of Augustus. It was the
result of ten generations, sanctified by suffering and multiplied by
martyrdom.
There is another point of view also in which this period should be
regarded. What did these champions of conscience do for that very civil
order of things to which in their character of Christians they had so
often to refuse obedience, and to say simply, in the words of their first
leader, "We ought to obey God rather than men"?
They conferred upon all future generations of men an inestimable benefit,
for they established the doctrine that the individual man has rights
which the collective society of men may not violate. They overthrew the
autocracy of the State, which had crushed out the heart of humanity.
During those ages, after the conversion of the original Roman
commonwealth into the Cæsarean empire, there was no guarantee of civil
liberty. From the city which only refused fire and water to its guiltiest
citizens, the Empire had grown into a power wherein a charge of majestas
justified the application of every torment to the accused; and the charge
of majestas was ever at hand in the case of a Christian. If Augustus,
though he slaughtered without mercy when his interests were concerned,
studied to give his rule the aspect of moderation, the emperors his
successors became more and more uncontrolled. Not only had they
legislative power, but the imprisonment and the execution of any
obnoxious person was entirely in their hands. In this long period of 284
years, Christians without number suffered loss of goods, confinement in
loathsome dungeons, separation from their families, and finally death
itself under torment and insult, because they would worship Christ as
God, because they would not swear by the genius of the Emperor, because
they would not burn a few grains of incense on the altar of an idol,
because one who had dedicated herself to God would not marry, because a
soldier would not carry out an impious command, for any of the
innumerable reasons for which they were offensive to the world, which the
world called "their hatred of the human race," that being the phrase of
the day for the Kulturkampf.
Thus they suffered and they died, and in so suffering and dying they
constructed a new basis of civil liberty. For this it was which the
Church's creation of the Spiritual Power betokened. It meant the
establishment of the Christian conscience not merely in the individual,
but in the great world-wide corporation of the Church, which thus formed
an impregnable citadel of defence against civil absolution, by cutting
off from it the triple domain of the Church's priesthood, teaching, and
jurisdiction. What heathenism had destroyed by corrupting the worship of
the one true God into a multitude of false gods, the Church restored by
setting up the worship of the Blessed Trinity; and the priesthood, which
unutterable degradations had humbled in the dust of human passions and
vices, the Church took from the Body of her Lord, dyed red in blood, and
invested with the imperishable sanctity of the Priest after the order of
Melchisedek; and that kingship which Nero and Domitian, Elagabalus and
Galerius, had stained with unspeakable crimes, it renewed in the example
of those princes over all the earth who ruled not as the kings of the
Gentiles, but as Fathers in God. Christian monarchy is the Church's work,
and the Christian State became possible because the Christian people in
times of authority which was cruel, and of majesty which was selfish, had
shown the example of rulers who governed for their people's sake,
governed by the authority of One who created the government of His people
when He said by the Lake of Galilee to the disciple who should be the
type and mould and origin of the episcopate for ever, "If thou lovest Me,
feed My sheep."
This was a purifying and ennobling of civil society wrought by the Church
over and above its spiritual end. The kingdom of heaven, whilst it
limited, also invigorated the earthly kingdom, showing that Christians
alone are freemen, by exercising the highest of all freedoms in belief,
in worship, and in obedience to spiritual government, and in the conduct
which is their united result.
Retracing the ground we have traversed, we find that the Church, between
the Day of Pentecost and the Edict of Toleration, passed unscathed and
victorious through five great trials, which were calculated to test to
the utmost the power vested in her. Two of these conflicts--that with
Judaism and that with heresy--were internal, and three--the conflict with
idolatry, that with Greek and Oriental philosophy, and that with the
civil power of the Roman Empire--were external. Moreover, while one of
these conflicts--that with the enmity of the unbelieving Jews, and the
spirit which urged the obligation of the ceremonial law upon the
Christian Church--raged chiefly in the first forty years, and was greatly
assuaged in its influence by the destruction of the city and temple of
Jerusalem, the remaining four contests lasted continuously, and acted
with collective force against the Church during the whole period. For as
to heresy, it was rife from the time of the Apostles themselves. Those
who became Christians, whether Jews or Gentiles, were all themselves
exposed to the danger of intellectual and moral seduction: we find,
indeed, that some of the most distinguished converts yielded to it, such
as Tatian and Tertullian. Those especially who in middle age had passed
over from heathen customs and a youth perhaps spent in the study of
Hellenic literature and philosophy into the Christian confession, would
naturally remain all their lives liable to the danger of false teaching,
if they were not guarded from it by the utmost purity of life, and not
only sincerity but humility of mind. Certainly no period of the Church's
history shows a greater number of sects than this.
Another enemy which the Church had from the beginning, and which
continued in the utmost force through the whole time, was idolatry, and
that whole contexture of life of which it was first the prolific source,
then the vigilant nurse and the constant support. Every part of Gentile
life was flavoured by the spirit of the false worship--the passions of
the young, the ambitions of middle life, the avarice of age. Its power
was all around the Church, to corrupt morals, to pervert belief, to
sensualise worship. As we have seen above, Christian writers dwell upon
the fact that vast numbers of those who became Christians had previously
been stained with heathen vices: those who had yielded to all manner of
sensual passions became chaste: those who had revelled in pride of
intellect became humble. But what a force of opposition to the spread of
the Christian religion did the moral state of the great cities in which
it had its principal seats present! Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus,
Corinth and Carthage were the very centres of all moral corruption when
the Christian seed was dropped upon them. This glamour of the heathen
life was an enemy the intensity and ubiquity of whose power lasted
without intermission from the beginning to the end of the time.
From the beginning likewise to the end the heathen philosophy, whether
Greek or Oriental, or in that amalgam of both which probably formed the
texture of cultured minds in this period, was a most dangerous and
influential foe. Against this also the Apostles themselves warn their
converts. From a very early time indeed the Gnostic sects put up the
pantheistic unity of the philosophic God against the Christian Trinity in
Unity. They tried to convert the Divine Logos into an æon. Led by their
doctrine that the essential seat of evil was in matter, they attacked
Christ in His human nature, denying the verity of His Body. They
constructed divine theogonies with all the brilliance of the Eastern
imagination and all the cleverness of Greek subtilty; and many who
resisted the foulness of heathen idolatry were led away by fantastic
schemes of spiritual unity--by pantheism in one of its many shapes. This
enemy also lasted through the whole period: the Gnostic systems passed
into the Neoplatonic, perhaps the most dangerous enemy which the Church
encountered in the three hundred years, and Arianism itself was but a
modification of Gnostic error.
But heresy, idolatry, and philosophy were helped throughout by that
jealousy of the Civil Power, the most marked perhaps in the best rulers,
such as Trajan and Decius, which abhorred above all things the formation
of an independent religious community in its bosom. How would an emperor
of cultivated tastes and incessant curiosity, such as Hadrian, exult over
the divisions of heresies and the varying systems of philosophy, looking
down on them all from his superior height! Irenæus observed that
heresies had no martyrs--the State did not persecute them. And philosophy
did not die for its belief; its essence was free thought--that is, the
license to change to-morrow what it asserted to-day. But how would a
monarchy which scrupled to authorise a guild of firemen in a provincial
city, lest it should form the nucleus of a secret society, abhor the
growth of a Church which had its centre in Rome and a governor in every
city, bound to the centre at Rome by the accord of a common faith, a
common worship, and the undivided rule of a single people, the _corpus
Christianorum_! Therefore heresy, idolatry, and philosophy were the
friends and allies of the Civil Power throughout this time. It patronised
them, and it could use all their influence, their resources, and their
intellect against the insurgent Church, while all the time it had at its
command every punishment which force can inflict on those who disregard
the laws of an empire. To be a Christian was to violate the Roman
majestas.
Over against these five enemies the Church received her spiritual
authority from the Person of her Lord; she planted it through her
episcopate over the earth; she maintained her one doctrine in the
teaching of that episcopate, her one worship in the sacrifice which it
everywhere offered; she worked out her independence in her organic growth
of structure, in the mode of her teaching, in her resistance to error of
every sort and kind; and, finally, the empire which had used every arm
against her, acknowledged her doctrine, her worship, and her government,
and her essential independence in all these as the kingdom of Christ,
when Constantine appeared at the Nicene Council, not to control, but to
carry into effect its decision, and when he wrote concerning it, "The
sentence of the three hundred bishops is nothing else but the decision of
God; especially since the Holy Spirit, by His action upon the minds of
such men, has brought into full light the divine will."[210]
When the Emperor of Rome, the successor of Tiberius, gave official
utterance to such words, he showed that the blood of martyrs shed through
ten generations, the endurance of confessors, the labours of priests who
refused the joys of domestic life in their imitation of the Virgin's Son,
the continence of those who carried out in themselves the vow of the
Virgin Mother of that Son, and what is included in all these, the
generation of the Christian people, had done their appointed work; and so
the kingdom of Cæsar recognised the kingdom of Christ.
FOOTNOTES:
[182] See Josephus, Jud. Antiq., l. 18, c. 4.
[183] See St. Basil, Ep. 141.
[184] For instances, see the utmost incredible account in De Civitate Dei
vi. 9; and, again, Clement of Alexandria, Cohortatio, p. 81 (Potter's ed.);
what I have said is in exact accordance with St. Athanasius, de Inc. Verbi,
sec. 46.
[185] A fragment of this apology is preserved for us in Eusebius' History,
iv. 26.
[186] 1 Cor. xv. 6.
[187] As Baur, Die drei ersten Jahrhunderte, p. 464, attests.
[188] St. Greg. I Epist. xi. 66.
[189] Irenæus, iv. 33, 9.
[190] Eusebius, Hist., v. 1.
[191] Clement, Strom., ii. 20, p. 494, tous gnôstikous, tous tou kosmou
meizonas.
[192] Apologeticus, cap. 12.
[193] 1 Cor. i. 17, ii. 9.
[194] See Schwane, Dogmengeschichte, i. 557.
[195] Panegyric of the Martyrs by the Deacon Constantine.
[196] Clement of Alex., Cohortatio, sec. 10, p. 85. It might be fruitful to
compare the view of the world taken by the Christian Clement with that
taken by the pessimist Schopenhauer.
[197] The words inserted seem here to have fallen out of the text.
[198] Clement of Alex., Strom. vi., at the end.
[199] Tertullian, Apology, 50; Edinburgh translation.
[200] Cont. Cels., 1, 67; 2, 48; 2, 79; 1, 46; 8, 47; Edinburgh
translation.
[201] Irenæus, 2, 32.
[202] Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, c. 46-48.
[203] Gieseler, i. 208.
[204] As admitted by Friedländer, Sittengeschichte Roms., iii. 458, 459,
and see the argument of Celsus in Origen, 8, 45.
[205] On Psalm xxxvi. 3.
[206] St. Thomas, Cont. Gent., 3, 99.
[207] St. Cyprian, Ep. 8.
[208] Sermon 281.
[209] St. Thomas, Contra Gent., 1, 6.
[210] Constantine's letter to the Church of Alexandria, recorded by
Socrates, Hist. 1, 9.
INDEX.
ADAM, Father and Head of his race, 3;
does not lose the Headship by his fall, 11;
is likewise Priest and Teacher of his race, 14-16;
created in full possession of language, 5;
has an infused knowledge of the animal creation, 5;
has the Image and Likeness of God both as an Individual and as Head
of his race, 6;
subserves the mystery of the Incarnation, 8;
as does the whole society founded in Adam and his children, 55.
Æschylus, his rigid statement of satisfaction due for sin, 260.
Alexandria: its catechetical school, 345;
becomes a Christian university, 385;
its succession of ten distinguished presidents, 386.
Altar, the heathen, on which beasts were sacrificed, bômos, the
Christian, on which the Unbloody Sacrifice is offered,
thusiastêrion, 232.
Apostolate, the powers conveyed to it by Christ, 136, 138, 139, 149-151;
summary of these powers, 154, 155, 159;
(See PRIMACY and EPISCOPATE).
Aquinas, St. Thomas, his doctrine of the subordination of the Temporal
to the Spiritual Power, grounded upon the superiority of the
end pursued by the latter, 123;
Miracles a proof that the order of things proceeds from God, not by
necessity of nature, but by His free-will, 450;
the conversion of the world without miracles would have been the most
marvellous of all marvels, 452;
marks that sacrifice must be offered to God alone, 256;
his statement of the supernatural government tending to a supernatural
end, 94-96;
sums up patristic doctrine on the Eucharist in his hymn, Lauda Sion,
274.
Athanasius, St., represents the principles on which the ante-nicene
Church maintained the faith, 389;
how he states the authority of Scripture, 370;
the rule of faith, 392;
what he thinks of private judgment, 393;
his tests of heresy, 393;
on ecclesiastical definitions, 394;
says Scripture and Tradition are united in the Church's magisterium,
395;
how he accounts for the cessation of idolatry, oracles, and magic,
440-443.
Athenagoras, his conversion, 383.
Augustine, St., his description of the "Connection of Ages" down to
Christ, and from him, xxx-xxxii;
witnessed the Catholic Church, but did not foresee Christendom, xxxiv;
his description of the Two Cities, xxxvii;
attests that the shedding of blood in sacrifice from the beginning
points to the sacrifice of Christ, 15, 255;
that the Christian Sacrifice is the principle of unity to Christ's
mystical Body, 276;
how he understood the "One Episcopate," 280;
mentions thousands of bishops as existing in 314 A.D., 216;
why he saw in the Church the Godhead of its Founder, 280;
his testimony to the force of the Catholic Church upon his mind,
165, 229;
the number, names, and offices of heathen deities, 407;
the seven churches in the apocalypse signify the fulness of the one
Church, 174;
his rule that what has been always kept in the Church, without being
ordered by a council, is of apostolical authority, 296;
complains of judgments as to secular matters being pressed upon
him, 306;
forbids the words of the creed to be written down, 348;
comments on an answer of St. Felicitas, 451.
BABYLON, type of the kingdom of force, xxvi;
identified with heathen Rome by St. Peter and St. John, xxix.
Basil, St., places the nature of God outside the conception of number,
406.
Baur, Die drei ersten Jahrhunderte, 364, 366;
Constantine's view of the Church, 416;
sees the episcopal idea in the angels of the seven churches, 174.
Bernard, St., his comment on the sheep committed to Peter, 178.
Bianchi, Potestà della Chièsa, on the honour given by the Gentiles to
their priesthood, 60, 63, 64;
how St. Jerome says that bishops, priests, and deacons succeed the
high-priest, priests, and Levites of the Mosaic hierarchy, 191;
the bishop's office an archê, 219;
selects five points of the Church's organic growth, 296;
the Apostles follow their Lord's example in placing power in a head,
298;
distribution of episcopal jurisdiction from the beginning, 300;
on the Church's hearing and deciding causes, 303;
on the criminal and penitential forum, 304;
the Apostles prohibited Christians from pleading before secular
tribunals, 306;
jurisdiction, 307;
election of bishops in the first three centuries, 309;
bishops sent out from Rome to convert the nations, 219, 310;
the Church's administration of temporal goods, 312, 313.
Bossuet, his six points of the original human society, 29;
what he thinks of a State without a religion, 41;
the Christian people's relation to Christ, 101, 108.
CATECHETICAL SCHOOLS, at Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa,
386, 387.
Chamard, Dom, L'Etablissement du Christianisme, quoted, 217.
Christ, His action as at once and always King, Lawgiver, and Priest,
the subject of this volume, xx;
kingdom of Christ as prophesied, xxi-xxviii;
as fulfilled, xxix-xl;
His High-priesthood consists in two acts, 239;
His people answer to Him in the triple order established by Him as
the Priest, the Prophet, and the King, 101.
Chrysostom, St., his epitome of the Church's course preceding his own
time, 230;
Christ's one undeniable miracle that He founded the race of
Christians, 231;
contrast of the race with that out of which it was formed, 232;
the incessant conflict amid which it was done, 233;
dwells on the presence of Christ's physical Body in the Eucharist,
275;
the Eucharist one sacrifice, everywhere, and for ever, 277.
Cities, the Two, date from the Fall, 14;
city of the devil, prevailing, leads to the Deluge, 17;
described by St. Augustine, xxxvii.
Clement of Alexandria, his conversion, and great ability, 385;
attests the persecution in his time, 419;
on the power of the kêrugma, 429;
impotence of philosophy contrasted with it, 430;
exposes the heathen deities, 407.
Clement, St., of Rome, his letter to the Church of Corinth, the first
Papal Pastoral, 184;
called most authoritative by Irenæus, 185;
likens Christian obedience to Roman military discipline, 186;
speaks of minute regulations as to religious ordinances given by
Christ, 187;
makes all spiritual order to descend from above, 188;
argues for the Christian order _à fortiori_, as compared with
the Mosaic, 189;
says the Apostles established bishops everywhere, with rule of
succession, 190;
attests the continuation of the Mosaic hierarchy in the Christian,
191;
says Christian ordinances are to be observed more accurately than
Mosaic, 193;
describes the descent of power from above in the first sixty years,
194-196;
confirms in this the Scriptural records, and supplies details, 197;
exercises the primacy in the lifetime of St. John, 197-200;
St. Clement and St. Ignatius complete and corroborate each other, 203;
insists on the care with which our Lord instituted the government of
His Church, 238;
marks St. Paul to have been martyred by Nero's deputies, 367.
Council of Arles, 375;
its testimony to the Pope's authority, 397;
says the Apostles Peter and Paul sit for ever in the Roman see, 398;
Constantine acknowledges its judgment as that of Christ, 398.
Council of Trent, its description of the Christian sacrifice, 265, 268.
Coelestine, Pope, St., how the law of supplication establishes the
law of belief, 329.
Cyprian, St.--every city has its bishop in his time, 217;
meaning of his aphorism on the oneness and solidarity of the
Episcopate, 222;
which he compares with the divine Unity in the Trinity, 224;
his testimony as to the election of bishops in his own time, 308;
sees Christ present in the martyrs, 450.
DANIEL, the prophet, his vision of the kingdom of God set
up on earth, xxiii-xxviii.
Dante, the great statue, xxix;
St. John the Evangelist, 172;
the saints before and after Christ form the great rose of Paradise,
448.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, description of the Roman Pontifical
College, 61.
EPISCOPATE, the One, planted in every city by the Apostles, 194;
attested by St. Ignatius, 202;
by Eusebius the historian, 207;
who gives the succession at Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem,
210;
by Tertullian, 212;
by Irenæus, 213;
each city and small town had its bishop before the peace of the
Church, 216;
the bishop said to wield a government, 218;
bishops sent out from Rome to convert the nations, 219;
episcopal government universal, 220;
but the One Episcopate much more than this, 222;
a regimen ruling one flock through the whole world, 224-226;
the undivided rule of a single people, the Corpus Christianorum, 462;
set forth by De Marca, 222;
by St. Leo the Great in A.D. 446, 223;
co-exists with the Primacy, 227;
considered a miracle by St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine, 228;
contrasted with national churches, 180, 181, 237;
Christian government, worship, belief, and practice wrapt up together
herein, 238;
organic growth of the One Episcopate in mother and daughter churches,
296;
developed in provincial councils, 302;
exercised in decisions of coercive power, 303;
exhibited in election of bishops, 307;
the whole a derivation of the mission of Christ, 311;
gradually clothes itself in temporal goods, 312-316;
the living personal authority that to which the assistance of the Holy
Ghost is promised from beginning to end, 335;
our Lord's missionary circuits the germ, 340;
the mission carried on by the Apostles, 341-343;
personal authority exhibited in the system of catechesis, 344;
the use of a creed, 347;
the dispensing of sacraments, 349;
the inflicting of penance, 351;
the dispensing of the Scriptures, 352;
all this continued during fifteen hundred years, 355-359;
gift of infallibility lodged in the magisterium, 387, 389;
which is the Church's divine government and concrete life, as attested
by Athanasius, 395.
Eusebius, of Cæsarea, notes three periods in the first ninety years,
206, 207;
sum of his testimony as to the three great sees and the episcopate,
209;
records that Peter came to Rome in the reign of the Emperor Claudius,
209;
and the martyrdom of the two Apostles, 210;
attests the divine power by which the Church was planted, 211;
the Paschal Lamb sacrificed once a year, but Christians are ever
satisfied with the Body of the Lord, 270;
contrasts the divine polity and philosophy of the Church with the
incessant variation of heresies, 221;
attests the multitude of martyrs everywhere in the reign of Marcus
Aurelius, 418.
FISH, the sacred symbol in the catacombs of Christ's person
and work, 287.
Franzelin, Cardinal, the Church's teaching office, 330-335;
that which is essential, the perpetual succession of living men, 339;
the revelation made by Christ to the Apostles complete as to its
substance, 361;
the act of Christ's High Priesthood in the Incarnation, 239;
the reality of the Body and Blood of Christ on the altar asserted by
St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Justin, and St. Irenæus, 269;
the physical Body of Christ in the Eucharist insisted on by the
Fathers, 274.
Friedländer admits the universal belief in miracles of Jews and heathens
as well as Christians, 445.
GIESELER, five things on which the apologists laid stress, 444.
Gregory the Great, St., his letter to King Ethelbert, 416;
the whole Church represented by the sevenfold number of the churches,
174;
repeatedly speaks of the see of the chief of the apostles as the see
of one in three places--Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, 297.
Gregory of Nazianzum, calls his office as bishop a government, 218.
Gregory VII., St., on the union of Church and State, 127.
HAGEMANN, Die römische Kirche, how Constantine looked at the
Church, 293;
speaks of particular tendencies in local churches, 376.
Heinrich, Dogmatische Theologie, 387.
Heresy, its principle, as opposed to that of orthodoxy, 378;
the apostolic writings full of warnings against it, 380;
its incessant attacks through the second century, 382.
Hergenröther, on the development of synodical institutions, 302.
Hilary, St., attests that every church has its bishop, 217.
IGNATIUS of Antioch, St., contemplates the whole Episcopate
in the mind of Christ, as the mind of the Father, 173, 202;
corroborates St. Clement of Rome, 200, 203;
states the organic unity of a local church, 203.
Innocent I., Pope, St., grounds the wide jurisdiction of the See of
Antioch on its being the first see of the chief of the apostles,
296.
Irenæus, St., quoted, 185, 202;
describes the propagation of the Church, 213;
barbarians believing in Christ follow the order of tradition without
pen or paper, 220;
the Church's deposit of doctrine like the principle of life in a body,
339;
bears witness to the multitude of martyrs everywhere, 418;
and of miracles, 438.
JOHN, ST., does not record the institution of the Eucharist,
but adds what may be considered a comment upon it, 134;
records promises made to the Apostles, 149-151;
the universal pastorship conferred on Peter, 152;
how his expressions sum up both the universal mission of the
apostolate, and the supreme pastorship of Peter, 177;
his double warning as to the many things concerning Jesus not written,
157;
his vision of the heavenly court as the Eucharistic Sacrifice, 324-327;
his vision of our Lord in the government of the Church through his
bishops, 171-175;
identifies heathen Rome with Babylon, xxix.
Josephus, 402;
States Poppæa to have been a Jewish proselyte, 366.
Jurisdiction, how partitioned in the Episcopate, stated by De Marca, 222;
by St. Leo the Great, 223;
Bianchi, 306;
necessary in any kingdom, 278-280.
Justin Martyr, St., says the presence of Christ's Body and Blood on the
altar is as real as the Incarnation itself, 269;
the tale of his conversion, 382.
KINGDOM of Christ, thirteen characteristics of, 103-107;
foretold by Daniel, xxii-xxviii;
subsists from age to age by its own force, 131;
disposed to the Apostolic College, 144;
jurisdiction necessary to it, 278;
as it appeared in A.D. 29 and A.D. 325, 291;
recognised by Constantine at the Council of Arles, A.D. 314, 398;
and at the Nicene Council, 290, 463;
consists in three things, Sacerdotium, Magisterium, Jurisdictio,
answering to worship, belief, and government in the people which
is its outcome, 411;
the intimate cohesion of these three, 87-90;
the perfect antagonism which they constituted in Christians to the
Pagan empire, 404-411;
the five conflicts which the kingdom underwent in the three centuries,
459-463.
Kleutgen, on the two meanings of _tradition_, 344;
on the word of God, written and unwritten, 361;
on the special gift of the Apostolic Body, 361.
LASAULX, Die Sühnopfer der Griechen and Römer, und ihr
Verhältniss zu dem einem auf Golgotha, extracts from, 245-253;
on human sacrifices, 259-262.
Leo the Great, St., illustrates the "One Episcopate" of St. Cyprian, 223;
his perfect picture of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in his day, 223.
Leo XIII. in his encyclical June 1881, declares civil power to be a
vicegerency from God, 20.
Lightfoot, Dr., suggests that the Primacy belongs not to the bishop but
to the Church of Rome, 205.
Luke, St., records the institution of the priesthood, 133;
the power given to the Apostles, 139, 159;
vast importance of the conversation which he alone records about the
disposition of the kingdom, and its ruler, 141-147;
distinguishes Peter from the other Apostles, as much as St. Matthew
and St. John, 148;
his reticence as to the place to which St. Peter went, when delivered
from prison, and its reason, 373.
MAGISTERIUM, of the Church, shown in her teaching, 316;
which at first was oral only, based upon authority, 317;
three classes of truths forming the divine and apostolical tradition,
319;
the period of exclusively oral teaching specially exhibits the Church's
teaching office, 320;
seen in the rite of baptism, 321;
in the Eucharistic Liturgy, 322;
in the rite of ordination, 328;
fullness of the magisterium shown in these rites, 329;
not changed or diminished by the writings of the New Testament,
330-335;
consists in the unchangeable principle of a living personal authority,
335;
thus expressed by Irenæus, 213;
acts of the magisterium which preceded the New Testament, 336;
is the continuation of Christ's personal teaching, 340;
and of the apostolic mission, 341;
and abides in all ages, 343;
is shown in five things, the system of catechesis, the use of a Creed,
the dispensing of sacraments, the enjoining of penance, the
handling of Scripture, 343-355;
unimpeached through fifteen centuries, 355;
its principle, a divine authority establishing a kingdom, 360;
it transmits the word of God, written or unwritten, 361;
which is complete, as to its substance, from the beginning, 361;
the defence against error lodged in it, 387;
consists in the Church's divine government and concrete life, 389;
employs the whole word of God, written or unwritten, as its Rule of
Faith, 395.
Maine, Sir Henry, author of "Ancient Law," quoted upon original society,
46;
the patriarchal theory, 47, 49;
family, the unit of ancient society, not the individual, 50-54;
universal belief, or assumption of blood-relationship, 51;
the Roman _patria potestas_, a relic of the original rule, 53;
union of government with religion, 53;
property sprung out of joint-ownership, 53.
Marca, De, his statement of jurisdiction in the Episcopate, 222.
Mark, St., the only Evangelist who does not record special powers given
to Peter, 156;
records the institution of the priesthood, 133;
the powers given to the Apostolic Body, 138, 154.
Martin, Dr., Bishop of Paderborn, on the High-priest's office, 75.
Martyrdom, an essential element in the world's conversion, 445;
its occasion the enmity between the serpent's seed and the Woman's
Seed, 447;
before Christ looks to Christ, and after Christ looks back on Him, 448;
parallel with miracles in principle, witness, power, and perpetuity,
449-455;
martyrs, champions of a great army, 421;
endure for God what heroes endure for natural goods, 431-434;
fill up what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ, until His mystical
Body is completed, 453, 454;
hated by all who deny a Creator, Judge, and Remunerator, 455;
the Deacon Constantine's panegyric, 427.
Matthew, St., records the institution of the priesthood, 133;
the transmission of spiritual power, 136;
the special promises to Peter, 137;
distinguishes the Apostolate and the Primacy, 154-155.
Melito, of Sardis, calls the Christian faith a philosophy nurtured
together and begun together with Augustus, 414.
Miracles, their existence alleged by every ancient Christian writer, 445;
by Jews and Heathens of every class, 445;
by Origen, who insists on miracles of conversion as greater than
bodily miracles, 435;
and that miracles only could account for the conversions wrought, 438;
attested by Irenæus, of his own time, 439;
by Athanasius, of the sign of the cross, and the name of Christ, 442;
connection between miracles and martyrdom, as to their principle,
witness, power and perpetuity, 449-454;
the Christian faith rests upon two miracles, the Incarnation and the
Resurrection of Christ, 445-447;
the absolute necessity of miracles to substantiate the mission of
Christ, 444;
the Incarnation, the reason of miraculous power, 447;
and the Fall of man its necessity, 447.
Möhler, on the use of the Creed, 347;
on the first Christian writers, 381;
on the Roman catechetical school, 386.
NÄGELSBACH, original kingship springs from fathership, 48;
sacrifice, an essential of Greek piety, 244;
the Greek seeks a living personal God, 244.
Newman, Cardinal, describes the system of catechesis, 345;
his history of the Arians referred to, 349;
notes on St. Athanasius quoted, 390-395;
his treatise on the Rise and Successes of Arianism, a storehouse of
information, 397;
says that particular authors do not speak _ex cathedra_, nor as
a Council may speak, 388.
Nicene Council, occasion of its convocation, 289;
Constantine recognised therein the Church as a divine kingdom, 290;
and the solidarity of the Episcopate, 292;
compared with the Roman Senate, 293;
its force as to the relation between Church and State, 294;
its sixth Canon, 297;
Constantine, acknowledging its sentence as the decision of God,
recognised the kingdom of Christ in the world, 463.
Noah, refounds the human race, 18;
his first act, an act of sacrifice to which God attaches an universal
covenant with his race, 18-21;
is Father, King, Priest, and Teacher of his race, 22;
among whom he establishes Marriage, Sacrifice, Civil Government, and
the alliance of Government with Religion, 22-24.
ORIGEN, insists on the divine power shown in converting
sinners, 434;
on miracles of conversion as greater than bodily miracles, 435;
on the spread of the Church and the conversion of sinners viewed
together, 436;
not possible without miracles, 437;
as the soul vivifies and moves the body, so the word arouses and moves
the whole body, the Church, 359;
sets up a catechetical school at Cæsarea in Palestine, 386.
Ovid, his statement of the power of vicarious sacrifice, 261.
PANTÆNUS, his conversion, labours, and renown, 384.
Paul, St., six names whereby he describes his commission, 168;
the Church to him "the Body of Christ," 162-165;
says mission is necessary to every herald of the Gospel, 164;
attests the grace given by ordination, 165;
places in the one Christian Ministry the seat of dogmatic truth, 162;
sees an inseparable bond in unity, truth, and government, 167;
how he records the institution of the Priesthood, 132;
appoints bishops, 165, 217.
Peter, St., the six privileges recorded to have been bestowed on him,
in which his primacy consists, 160;
speaks of Rome under the name of Babylon, xxix.
Phillipps' Kirchenrecht, 130.
Philo, describes the concourse of Jews to Jerusalem, 78;
quoted upon sacrifice, 248.
Plato, makes piety to consist in prayer and sacrifice, 243.
poimainein, force of the word, to be Shepherd, 177-178.
Power, the Spiritual, a derivation from the Person of Christ, out of the
union of the divine and human natures in him, 103, 111, 162;
creates the supernatural society for a supernatural end, 93;
to which the present life is subordinated, 94;
and which is beyond the provision of temporal government, 96;
a kingdom subsisting by its own force from age to age, 131;
divine truth maintained by the perpetual operation of its one hierarchy
in the Body of Christ, 162-164;
has in Scripture five qualities, 175;
the coming from above, 175;
completeness, 176-179;
unity, 179-181;
independence of civil government, 181;
perpetuity to the end of time, 182;
the transmission of such a power witnessed in the Church's history from
A.D. 39 to A.D. 325, 184-237;
the resting of this power upon the Sacrifice of His Body instituted by
Christ, 238-243, 263-286;
its independence as to government shown in its organic growth, 295-316;
its independence as to teaching shown in its communication of doctrine,
316-339;
in its mode of positive teaching, 340-355;
in its mode of resisting error, 359-399;
in its conflict with the Roman empire's civil power, 400-463;
the creation of such a power by the direct action of God foretold by
the Prophet Daniel, 600 years before Christ, xxi-xxviii.
Powers, the Two, appear united in the Headship of Adam, 11-13;
and again in Noah, 19;
in whom civil government is established by divine authority, 20;
it is a common good of all his race, 38-40;
the two Powers ever in alliance through all gentilism, 41-42;
civil government springs as little from those governed, as fathership
from children, 48-52;
"Law originally is the parent's word," 53;
relation of the two Powers from the beginning, 56, 108;
Gentile deification of the State, 58;
relation of the two Powers in the Mosaic Law, 67, 72-82;
Analogy between them, 95;
subjection of the spiritual to the civil power, the final result of
gentilism, 70;
the spiritual power has a new basis in the Person of Christ, 110;
co-operation of the two Powers as stated by St. Gregory VII., 126;
Christians subject to both Powers, 111;
amity intended by God between them, 114;
their separate action not intended, 115;
persecution of the spiritual by the temporal not intended, 119;
the indirect spiritual power over temporal things, 124;
the ideal relation of the two Powers, and the various deflections from
it described under the image of marriage, 128;
alliance of the two Powers in the Roman empire at the advent of
Christ, 400;
how and why the civil power acknowledged the triple spiritual liberty
of belief, worship, and government, 455, 462.
Priesthood, begun in Adam, 15;
and afresh in Noah, 22;
carried on from them through all the race, 56;
distinguished from the Civil Power in the Roman Republic, 60;
united afterward to the Principate, but still distinct, 62;
the College of Pontifices reverse a tribunicial law, 63;
the distinction from civil power in it runs through all ancient
nations, 64;
witness to the unity of man's race, 65;
the Aaronic, 72;
special offices of the High-priest, 72;
part of the High-priest through the whole history from Moses to
Christ, 75;
his jurisdiction under the Roman empire, 77;
the Jewish priesthood and worship, a prophecy and preparation for
Christ, 80;
the High-priest's treatment of Christ, 82;
the Christian priesthood springs from the Person of Christ, 86;
as the human race from Adam, 111;
institution of the Christian Priesthood, 132-135;
all the mission of Christ collected in his Priesthood, 135;
the Christian hierarchy succeeds the Mosaic, 191;
Priesthood of the Church springs from the two acts of Christ's High
Priesthood, 242;
priesthood, teaching, and jurisdiction cohere inwardly, 87, 287-288;
acknowledged equally by Constantine, 462.
Primacy, the, of the Church, instituted by Christ himself, 137, 143-148,
152-153, 176-179;
the words conveying it compared with those which convey the Apostolate,
154;
the witness of St. Matthew to the distinction between Apostolate and
Primacy, 155;
the witness of St. Luke to the same distinction, 155;
the witness of St. John to the same distinction, 155, 156;
summary of its powers as given in the Gospels, 160;
how St. Paul bears witness to it, 166-168;
exercised by St. Clement in the lifetime of St. John, 197-200;
the two forces of the Primacy and the Hierarchy exist from the
beginning, 90;
are exactly expressed by St. Leo in the year 446, 223;
hold the Church together in the ante-nicene period, 375;
are the joint result of our Lord's words, 161.
RENAUDOT, the Eucharistic Liturgy, 323.
SACERDOS, in the language of the third century, signifies the
bishop, as offering the sacrifice of the altar, 217, 279;
as ekklêsia signifies a diocese, 304.
Sacrifice, rite of bloody, appears in the family of the first man, and
dates from his fall, 15;
unintelligible without the notion of sin, 15;
its prevalence among the Gentiles, 243-250;
specialities of the rite, described by Lasaulx, 250-253;
associated with prayer, 253;
with the sense of guilt, 254;
enacted by God at the Fall as a perpetual prophecy, 256;
the most striking characteristic of the world before Christ, 257;
human, 259-261;
enaction of, a divine act, 263;
the Christian Sacrifice counterpart of the original institution, 264;
and fulfilment of the whole Mosaic ritual, 264;
its prodigious meaning and power, 267-274;
presence of Christ's physical Body in it, according to St. Chrysostom,
275;
is the principle of unity to Christ's mystical Body, according to St.
Augustine, 276;
the double act of Christ's High-priesthood thereby impressed on the
world, 276;
fulfils over the world the parable, I am the true Vine, 280-286;
the Eucharistic, picture of, by an apostle, 324.
Schwane, Dogmengeschichte, 370, 424.
Sophocles, his sense of the power of vicarious sacrifice, 260.
Stöckl, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, 377.
TACITUS, his _compages_ of the Roman empire, xxxiv;
says that Poppæa was surrounded with fortune-tellers, 366.
Taparelli, Saggio teoretico di dritto naturale, philosophical basis
on which the spiritual society rests, 98.
Tatian, history of his conversion, 383.
Tertullian, history of his conversion, 384;
marks Domitian as a persecutor of the Church, 372;
attests the persecution in his time, 420;
sufferings which followed on conversions, 431-434;
describes the first propagation of the Church, 211-213;
compares the Church to a single vine planted in all lands, 239;
the apostles sheltered by their position as Jews, 364;
marks the Jews as sources of all calumny against Christians, 368.
Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, his conversion and writings, 384.
Tradition, has two meanings, (1) the _unwritten_ word of God,
(2) the whole doctrine of salvation as handed down, 344;
divine and apostolical tradition, 319;
announcing the acts and words of Christ, part of, 337;
various parts of tradition in its full sense, 338.
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