all of this, and the circumstances of the second century forced out
into clearness what was so implied. Gnosticism, Montanism, Novatianism
all tended to found new bodies, which claimed to be the true Church.
How was the individual Christian to test their claims? It was in the
face of this question that Church writers, notably S. Cyprian and
S. Irenaeus, emphasized the importance of historical continuity in the
Church as secured by the apostolical succession of the episcopate. The
unity of the Church came primarily, they urged, from God, from heaven,
from the Father; it was secured by the foundation of the Church upon
the Apostles; the bishops have succeeded to the Apostles and so become
the guardians of the unity of the Church. As soon then as we find the
Christian episcopate universally organized, we find it treated as an
institution received from the Apostles and as carrying with it the
principle of historic continuity. So it has remained ever since, side
by side with the other safeguards of unity, the sacraments and the
common faith. The Roman Church has added to it what seemed a further
safeguard of unity, the test of communion with itself; but this was a
later claim, a claim which was persistently resented, and which was
urged with disastrous results. The Reformed Churches of the Continent,
in their protest against that additional test, have rejected the whole
principle of historic continuity; they have remained satisfied with
the bond of a common faith and of common sacraments: but the result
can scarcely be said to be as yet a securer unity. Even an Unitarian
historian recognises heartily that the characteristic of the Church in
England is this continuity. 'There is no point,' urges Mr. Beard[353],
'at which it can be said, here the old Church ends, here the new
begins.... The retention of the Episcopate by the English Reformers at
once helped to preserve this continuity and marked it in the
distinctest way.... It is an obvious historical fact that Parker was
the successor of Augustine, just as clearly as Lanfranc and Becket.'
This, then, is what the Church claims to be as the home of grace, the
channel of spiritual life. It claims to be a body of living persons
who have given themselves up to the call of Christ to carry on His
work in the world; a body which was organized by Himself thus far that
the Apostles were put in sole authority over it; a body which received
the Spirit to dwell within it at Pentecost; a body which propagated
itself by spiritual birth; a body in which the ministerial power was
handed on by the Apostles to their successors, which has remained so
organized till the present day, and has moved on through the world,
sometimes allied with, sometimes in separation from the State, always
independent of it; a body which lays on each of its members the duty
of holiness, and the obligation of love, and trains them in both.
But two objections arise here, which must be dealt with shortly. It is
urged first, this is an unworthy limitation: we ought to love all men;
to treat all men as brothers; why limit this love, this feeling of
brotherhood to the baptized, to the Church? True, we ought to love and
honour all men, to do good to all men. The love of the Christian, like
the love of Christ, knows no limits; but the limitations are in man
himself. All human nature is not lovable: all men are not love-worthy.
Love must, at least, mean a different thing; it must weaken its
connotation if applied to all men; there may be pity, there may be
faith, there may be a prophetic anticipating love for the sinner and
the criminal, as we recall their origin and forecast the possibilities
of their future; but love in the highest sense, love that delights in
and admires its object, love that is sure of a response, the sense of
brotherhood which knows that it can trust a brother--these are not
possible with the wanton, the selfish, the hypocrite. Though man has
social instincts which draw him into co-operation with others; he has
also tendencies to selfishness and impurity which work against the
spirit of brotherhood and make it impossible. Not till we have some
security that the man's real self is on the side of unselfishness, can
we trust him; and baptism with its gifts of grace, baptism with its
death to the selfish nature, baptism with its profession of allegiance
to the leadership of Christ, this, at least, gives us some security.
Even Comte, with his longing for brotherhood, tells us that in forming
our conception of humanity we must not take in all men, but those only
who are really assimilable, in virtue of a real co-operation towards
the common existence, and Mr. Cotter Morison would eliminate and
suppress those who have no altruistic affection. We limit, then, only
so far as seems necessary to gain reality; we train men in the
narrower circle of brotherhood, that they may become enthusiasts for
it, and go forth as missionaries to raise others to their own level.
As for those who lie outside Christianity, the Church, like our Lord
Himself in the parable of the sheep and the goats, like S. Paul in his
anticipation of the judgment day, recognises all the good there is in
them; like Justin Martyr and many of the early Fathers, it traces in
them the work of the Divine Word; and yet none the less did these
writers claim and does the Church still claim for itself the conscious
gift of spiritual life, in a sense higher than anything that lies
outside itself.
But many, who would follow thus far, would draw another line, and
would include within the Church all the baptized, whether professing
churchmen or not. Once more, so far as we draw any distinction within
the limits of the baptized, it is for the sake of reality. We
recognise that every atom of their faith is genuine, that so far as
they have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, they are true members of
the Church; that so far as they have banded themselves together into a
society, they have something akin to the reality of the Church, and
gain some of its social blessings. But then it is they who have banded
themselves together into a society: and that means they have done it
at their own risk. We rest upon the validity of our sacraments,
because they were founded by the Lord Himself, because they have His
special promises, because they have been handed down in regular and
valid channels to us. Have they equal security that their sacraments
are valid? Again, we must hold that schism means something of evil:
that it causes weakness: that it thus prevents the full work of
brotherhood, of knitting Christian with Christian in common worship:
that so it prevents the complete witness of the Church in the world;
that in so far as such Christians are schismatic, they are untrue and
harmful members of the Church. The full complete claim of the Church
is that it is a body visibly meeting together in a common life, and
forming by historical continuity a part of the actual body founded by
our Lord Himself. It would be unreal to apply this conception of a
complete historic brotherhood to those who have separated themselves
from the Church's worship, and whose boast is that they were founded
by Wesley, or Luther, or Calvin. A Church so founded is not
historically founded by Christ. It may have been founded to carry on
the work of Christ, it may have been founded in imitation of Him, and
with the sincerest loyalty to His person, but it cannot be said to
have been founded by Him. Even if circumstances have justified it, it
is at any rate not the ideal; and whatever confessions the historic
Church may have to make of its own shortcomings, it still must witness
to the ideal of a visible unity and historical continuity. Amid the
divisions of Christendom, and in face of her own shortcomings, the
Church of England does not claim to be the full complete
representation of the Church of Christ. She is only one national
expression of the Catholic Church: she feels that 'it is safer for us
to widen the pale of the kingdom of God, than to deny the fruits of
the Spirit[354];' she has ever on her lips the prayer, 'Remember not,
Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers, neither take
vengeance of our sins,' and yet she must make her claim boldly and
fearlessly to have retained the true ideal of the Church; to be loyal
to the essential principle that her life comes historically from
Christ and not from man.
II. But the Church is the school of truth as well as the school of
virtue. Its ministers form a priesthood of truth as well as a
priesthood of sacrifice. Its priests' lips have 'to keep knowledge.'
Christianity is, as the School of Alexandria loved to represent it, a
Divine philosophy, and the Church its school.
This conception of the Church starts from our Lord's own words. His
Apostles are to be as scribes instructed unto the kingdom of Heaven;
they are to have the scribes' power to decide what is and what is not
binding in the kingdom; the Spirit is to lead them into all truth;
they are to make disciples of all the nations, 'teaching them to
observe all things whatsoever I commanded you.' The function of the
Church then with regard to truth is primarily to bear witness to that
which has been revealed. It does not primarily reveal, it tells of the
truths which have been embodied in the historic life of Jesus Christ
or explained in His teaching. 'One is its teacher; One is its master,
even the Christ.' It holds a 'faith once delivered to the saints.'
Hence, from the first, there grew up some quasi-authoritative formula,
in which we can see the germ of the later Creeds, which each Christian
Missionary would teach to his converts. S. Paul himself received from
others and handed on to the Corinthians, as his first message to them,
some such half-stereotyped Creed, narrating the central facts of the
Death and Resurrection of the Lord; his teaching was as a mould which
shaped the lives of the converts as they were poured, like so much
molten metal, into it. It was authoritative, not even an angel from
heaven could preach another gospel. As time went on and false teaching
spread, this side of the Church's work is emphasized more and more.
The Church is to be the pillar and ground-work of the truth. Timothy
and Titus are to hold fast the deposit, to prevent false teaching, to
secure wholesomeness of doctrine no less than sobriety of life.
The contests of the next centuries bring out this idea of witness into
clearer prominence, and the Episcopate, as it had been the guarantee
of unity, becomes now the guarantee of truth. Thus, S. Ignatius is
face to face with Docetic and Gnostic teaching; with him the bishops
are 'in the mind of Jesus Christ;' they are to be treated 'as the
Lord;' to avoid heresy, it is necessary to avoid 'separation from the
God of Jesus Christ, from the Bishop and the ordinances of the
Apostles;' the one bishop is ranked with the one Eucharist, the one
flesh of Jesus Christ, the one cup, the one altar, as the source of
unity; submission to the Bishop and the Presbyters is a means towards
holiness, towards spiritual strength and spiritual joy[355]. These are
incidental expressions in letters written at a moment of spiritual
excitement: but the same appeal reappears in calmer controversial
treatises. S. Irenaeus argues against Gnosticism on exactly the same
grounds. Truth is essentially a thing _received_; it was received by
the Apostles from Christ. He was the truth Himself; He revealed it to
His Apostles; they embodied it in their writings and handed it on to
the Bishops and Presbyters who succeeded them; hence the test of truth
is to be sought in Holy Scripture and in the teaching of those
Churches which were founded directly by the Apostles[356]. With equal
strength Tertullian urges that the truth was received by the churches
from the Apostles, by the Apostles from Christ, by Christ from God; it
is therefore independent of individuals; it must be sought for in Holy
Scripture, but as the canon of that is not fixed, and its
interpretation is at times doubtful, it must be supplemented by the
evidence of the apostolic Churches; and he challenges the heretics to
produce the origin of their churches and shew that the series of
bishops runs back to some Apostle or apostolic man[357].
The Church is thus primarily a witness: the strength of its authority
lies in the many sides from which the witness comes; but the
exigencies of controversy, and indeed of thought even apart from
controversy, rendered necessary another function in respect to truth.
The Church was compelled to formulate, to express its witness in
relation to the intellectual difficulties of the time. Christianity is
indeed essentially a matter not of the intellect, but of the will, a
personal relation of trust in a personal God. Its first instinct is,
as the first instinct of friendship would be, to resent intellectual
analysis and dogmatic definition. But as the need of telling others
about a friend, or defending him against slander, would compel us to
analyse his qualities and define his attractiveness; so it was with
the Church's relation to the Lord. It bore witness to the impression
which His life had made upon His followers that He was Divine; it bore
witness to the facts of the life that attested it and to His own
statements. But the claim was denied; it needed justifying; it needed
to be shewn to be consistent with other truths, such as the unity of
God, and the reality of His own human nature, and so definition was
forced upon the Church. The germ of such definitions is found in the
New Testament; the deeper Christological teaching of the Epistles to
the Ephesians and to the Colossians, and of the prologue of S. John
are instances of such intellectual analysis and formulation, and were
evidently written in the face of controversy. The technical decisions
of the great councils of the fourth and fifth centuries and their
expression in the Nicene and 'Athanasian' Creeds are the outcome of
the same tendency. Yet even in them, the Church acts, in a sense, as a
witness; the Scriptures are appealed to as the ultimate authority; the
Creed is the summary of its chief doctrines: the one aim is to secure
and express the truth witnessed to by churches throughout the world,
to eliminate novelty and caprice; the new definitions are accepted,
because they alone are felt to express the instinct of the Church's
worship. By this time the canon of Holy Scripture was fixed. It
becomes thenceforth an undying fountain of life from which the water
of pure doctrine can be drawn. Tradition and development can always be
checked by that.
In the truths then which the Church teaches we may distinguish two
classes. First, there are the central truths to which it bears
absolute witness; such as the Fatherhood of God, the Person and work
of Jesus Christ, the Redemption of all mankind, the origin and purpose
of human life. These it teaches authoritatively. Its conduct is
exactly analogous to that of a parent teaching the moral law to his
children; teaching the commandments authoritatively at first, till the
child can be educated to understand the reason of them. So the Church
says to her children, or to those who are seeking after truth 'there
is an absolute truth in religion as well as in morality: we have
tested it; generations of the saints have found it true. It is a truth
independent of individual teachers; independent of the shifting moods
of opinion at any particular period; and you must accept it on our
authority first. Further, these are truths which affect life,
therefore they cannot be apprehended merely by the intellect. You must
commit yourself to them; act upon them; there is a time when the
seeker after truth sees where it lies; then it must cease to be an
open question. "You must seek till you find, but when you have once
found truth, you must commit yourself to it[358]." You must believe
that you may understand; but it is _that_ you may understand.' The
dogma is authoritatively taught, that the individual may be kept safe
from mere individual caprice and fancifulness, but also that he
himself may come to a rational understanding of his belief. No doubt
the truth is so wide that to the end of our lives we shall still feel
the need of guidance and of teaching. 'As long as we live,' said
Calvin, 'our weakness will not allow us to be discharged from school.'
Like S. Ignatius on his way to martyrdom, the Christian may feel at
his dying day, 'Now I begin to be a disciple;' but the aim of the
Church is to make each member have a rational hold upon his faith.
When we are young we accept a doctrine because the Church teaches it
to us; when we are grown up, we love the Church because it taught us
the doctrine. 'The Churchman never surrenders his individual
responsibility. But he may and must surrender some portion at least of
his independence, and he benefits greatly by the surrender[359].'
'Submission to the authority of the Church is the merging of our mere
individualism in the whole historic life of the great Christian
brotherhood; it is making ourselves at one with the one religion in
its most permanent and least merely local form. It is surrendering our
individuality only to empty it of its narrowness[360].'
Secondly, there are other truths, which are rather deductions from
these central points or statements of them in accordance with the
needs of the age; such as the mode of the relation of the Divine and
human natures in Christ, of free-will to predestination, or the method
of the Atonement, or the nature of the Inspiration of Holy Scripture.
If, in any case, a point of this kind has consciously come before the
whole Church and been reasoned out and been decided upon, such a
decision raises it into the higher class of truths, which are taught
authoritatively; but if this is not so, the matter remains an open
question. It remains a question for the theologians; it is not imposed
on individual Christians; though it may at any time become ripe for
decision. The very fixity of the great central doctrines allows the
Church to give a remarkable freedom to individual opinion on all other
points. Practically, how much wider is the summary of the rule of
faith as given in Irenaeus (III. 4), or Tertullian (_Praescr._ 13), or
Origen (_De Principiis_), or in the Apostles' or Nicene Creed, than
the tests of orthodoxy that would be imposed in a modern religious, or
scientific circle! S. Vincent of Lerins is the great champion of
antiquity as the test of truth; yet he who lays it down that 'to
declare any new truth to Catholic Christians over and above that which
they have received never was allowed, nowhere is allowed, and never
will be allowed,' also insists on the duty of development, of growth,
within the true lines of the central truths. 'Is there,' he assumes an
objector to urge, 'to be no growth within the Church? Nay, let there
be growth to the greatest extent; who would be so grudging to man,
such an enemy to God, as to attempt to prevent it; but yet let it be
such that it be growth, not change of the faith.... As time goes on,
it is right that the old truths should be elaborated, polished, filed
down; it is wrong that they should be changed, maimed or mutilated.
They should be made clear, have light thrown on them, be marked off
from each other; but they must not lose their fulness, their entirety,
their essential character[361]. So it has happened in the course of
the Christian history; doctrines like that of the Atonement have been
restated afresh to meet the needs of the age. So it is happening
still; doctrines like that of the method of creation or of the limits
of inspiration are still before the Church. The Church is slow to
decide, to formulate: it stands aside, it reiterates its central
truths, it says that whatever claims to be discovered must ultimately
fit in with the central truths; creation must remain God's work; the
Bible must remain God's revelation of Himself; but for a time it is
content to wait, loyal to fact from whatever side it comes; confident
alike in the many-sidedness and in the unity of truth. While he
accepts and while he searches, the Churchman can enjoy alike the
inquiry of truth which is the love-making or wooing of it, the
knowledge of truth which is the presence of it, and the belief of
truth which is the enjoying of it, and all these together, says Lord
Bacon, are the sovereign good of human nature[362].
Thus far we have in this part considered the Church's function with
regard to truth from the point of view of those whom it has to teach.
Its function is no less important from the point of view of the truth
itself. As spiritual life is a tender plant that needs care and
training; so spiritual truth is a precious gem, that may easily be
lost and therefore needs careful guarding. 'The gem requires a casket,
the casket a keeper.' Truth is indeed great and will prevail, but not
apart from the action of men: not unless there are those who believe
in it, take pains about it and propagate it. This is the case even
with scientific truths; _à fortiori_ therefore, with moral and
religious truths which affect life and need to be translated into life
before they can be really understood. The comparative study of
religions is shewing us more and more how much of deep spiritual truth
there is in heathen religions, but it is shewing us equally how little
power this truth had to hold its own, how it was overlaid, crushed
out, stifled. The truth of the unity of God underlies much of the
polytheism of India, Greece, and Rome; but it is only the philosopher
and the scholar that can find it there. It is only in the Jewish
Church, the nation which stood alone from other nations as a witness
to the truth, that it retained its hold as a permanent force. The
Fatherhood of God is implied in the very names and titles of most of
the chief heathen gods; but what a difference in its meaning and force
since the time of Jesus Christ! It is not only that He expanded and
deepened its meaning, so that it implied the fatherhood of all men
alike, and a communication of a spiritual nature to all; it is also,
and much more, that He committed the truth as a sacred deposit to a
Church, each member of which aimed at shewing himself as the son of a
perfect Father, and which witnessed to the universal Fatherhood by the
fact of an universal brotherhood.
The very truths of natural religion, which heathenism tended to
degrade, found a safe home within the Church; the knowledge of the
Creator, His eternal power and Godhead, which the nations had known
but lost, because they glorified Him not as God, neither were
thankful, has been kept alive in the Eucharistic services of the
Church, repeating through the ages its praise of the Creator: 'We
praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee, we give thanks to Thee,
for Thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father
Almighty.'
III. We pass naturally to the third point: the Church is the home of
worship. It is the Temple of the Lord. As a teaching body, it had
carried on and spiritualized the work of the Jewish Synagogue: it also
took up and spiritualized the conceptions of prayer and praise and
sacrifice which clustered round the Jewish Temple. The Body of Christ
was to take the place of the Temple when the Jews destroyed it[363].
And here, as in all other respects, the body is the organ and
representative of the risen Lord. He, when on earth, had been a priest
in the deepest sense of the word: He, as the representative of the
Father, had mediated the Father's blessings to man: He, as one with
man, had become a merciful and faithful high-priest for man; He had
offered His whole life to God for the service of man; He had by the
offering of His pure will made purification of sins: He lives still, a
priest for ever, pleading, interceding for mankind.