THE CHURCH OF THE FOURTH CENTURY.
Till the Imperial Government had become Christian, and heresies were put
down by the arm of power, the face of Christendom presented much the
same appearance all along as on the first propagation of the religion.
What Gnosticism, Montanism, Judaism and, I may add, the Oriental
mysteries were to the nascent Church, as described in the foregoing
Section, such were the Manichean, Donatist, Apollinarian and
contemporary sects afterwards. The Church in each place looked at first
sight as but one out of a number of religious communions, with little of
a very distinctive character except to the careful inquirer. Still there
were external indications of essential differences within; and, as we
have already compared it in the first centuries, we may now contrast it
in the fourth, with the rival religious bodies with which it was
encompassed.
2.
How was the man to guide his course who wished to join himself to the
doctrine and fellowship of the Apostles in the times of St. Athanasius,
St. Basil, and St. Augustine? Few indeed were the districts in the
_orbis terrarum_, which did not then, as in the Ante-nicene era, present
a number of creeds and communions for his choice. Gaul indeed is said at
that era to have been perfectly free from heresies; at least none are
mentioned as belonging to that country in the Theodosian Code. But in
Egypt, in the early part of the fourth century, the Meletian schism
numbered one-third as many bishops as were contained in the whole
Patriarchate. In Africa, towards the end of it, while the Catholic
Bishops amounted in all to 466, the Donatists rivalled them with as many
as 400. In Spain Priscillianism was spread from the Pyrenees to the
Ocean. It seems to have been the religion of the population in the
province of Gallicia, while its author Priscillian, whose death had been
contrived by the Ithacians, was honoured as a Martyr. The Manichees,
hiding themselves under a variety of names in different localities, were
not in the least flourishing condition at Rome. Rome and Italy were the
seat of the Marcionites. The Origenists, too, are mentioned by St.
Jerome as "bringing a cargo of blasphemies into the port of Rome." And
Rome was the seat of a Novatian, a Donatist, and a Luciferian bishop, in
addition to the legitimate occupant of the See of St. Peter. The
Luciferians, as was natural under the circumstances of their schism,
were sprinkled over Christendom from Spain to Palestine, and from Treves
to Lybia; while in its parent country Sardinia, as a centre of that
extended range, Lucifer seems to have received the honours of a Saint.
When St. Gregory Nazianzen began to preach at Constantinople, the Arians
were in possession of its hundred churches; they had the populace in
their favour, and, after their legal dislodgment, edict after edict was
ineffectually issued against them. The Novatians too abounded there; and
the Sabbatians, who had separated from them, had a church, where they
prayed at the tomb of their founder. Moreover, Apollinarians, Eunomians,
and Semi-arians, mustered in great numbers at Constantinople. The
Semi-arian bishops were as popular in the neighbouring provinces, as the
Arian doctrine in the capital. They had possession of the coast of the
Hellespont and Bithynia; and were found in Phrygia, Isauria, and the
neighbouring parts of Asia Minor. Phrygia was the headquarters of the
Montanists, and was overrun by the Messalians, who had advanced thus far
from Mesopotamia, spreading through Syria, Lycaonia, Pamphylia, and
Cappadocia in their way. In the lesser Armenia, the same heretics had
penetrated into the monasteries. Phrygia, too, and Paphlagonia were the
seat of the Novatians, who besides were in force at Nicæa and Nicomedia,
were found in Alexandria, Africa, and Spain, and had a bishop even in
Scythia. The whole tract of country from the Hellespont to Cilicia had
nearly lapsed into Eunomianism, and the tract from Cilicia as far as
Phoenicia into Apollinarianism. The disorders of the Church of Antioch
are well known: an Arian succession, two orthodox claimants, and a
bishop of the Apollinarians. Palestine abounded in Origenists, if at
that time they may properly be called a sect; Palestine, Egypt, and
Arabia were overrun with Marcionites; Osrhoene was occupied by the
followers of Bardesanes and Harmonius, whose hymns so nearly took the
place of national tunes that St. Ephrem found no better way of resisting
the heresy than setting them to fresh words. Theodoret in Comagene
speaks in the next century of reclaiming eight villages of Marcionites,
one of Eunomians, and one of Arians.
3.
These sects were of very various character. Learning, eloquence, and
talent were the characteristics of the Apollinarians, Manichees, and
Pelagians; Tichonius the Donatist was distinguished in Biblical
interpretation; the Semi-arian and Apollinarian leaders were men of
grave and correct behaviour; the Novatians had sided with the Orthodox
during the Arian persecution; the Montanists and Messalians addressed
themselves to an almost heathen population; the atrocious fanaticism of
the Priscillianists, the fury of the Arian women of Alexandria and
Constantinople, and the savage cruelty of the Circumcellions can hardly
be exaggerated. These various sectaries had their orders of clergy,
bishops, priests and deacons; their readers and ministers; their
celebrants and altars; their hymns and litanies. They preached to the
crowds in public, and their meeting-houses bore the semblance of
churches. They had their sacristies and cemeteries; their farms; their
professors and doctors; their schools. Miracles were ascribed to the
Arian Theophilus, to the Luciferian Gregory of Elvira, to a Macedonian
in Cyzicus, and to the Donatists in Africa.
4.
How was an individual inquirer to find, or a private Christian to keep
the Truth, amid so many rival teachers? The misfortunes or perils of
holy men and saints show us the difficulty; St. Augustine was nine years
a Manichee; St. Basil for a time was in admiration of the Semi-arians;
St. Sulpicius gave a momentary countenance to the Pelagians; St. Paula
listened, and Melania assented, to the Origenists. Yet the rule was
simple, which would direct every one right; and in that age, at least,
no one could be wrong for any long time without his own fault. The
Church is everywhere, but it is one; sects are everywhere, but they are
many, independent and discordant. Catholicity is the attribute of the
Church, independency of sectaries. It is true that some sects might seem
almost Catholic in their diffusion; Novatians or Marcionites were in all
quarters of the empire; yet it is hardly more than the name, or the
general doctrine or philosophy, that was universal: the different
portions which professed it seem to have been bound together by no
strict or definite tie. The Church might be evanescent or lost for a
while in particular countries, or it might be levelled and buried among
sects, when the eye was confined to one spot, or it might be confronted
by the one and same heresy in various places; but, on looking round the
_orbis terrarum_, there was no mistaking that body which, and which
alone, had possession of it. The Church is a kingdom; a heresy is a
family rather than a kingdom; and as a family continually divides and
sends out branches, founding new houses, and propagating itself in
colonies, each of them as independent as its original head, so was it
with heresy. Simon Magus, the first heretic, had been Patriarch of
Menandrians, Basilidians, Valentinians, and the whole family of
Gnostics; Tatian of Encratites, Severians, Aquarians, Apotactites, and
Saccophori. The Montanists had been propagated into Tascodrugites,
Pepuzians, Artotyrites, and Quartodecimans. Eutyches, in a later time,
gave birth to the Dioscorians, Gaianites, Theodosians, Agnoetæ,
Theopaschites, Acephali, Semidalitæ, Nagranitæ, Jacobites, and others.
This is the uniform history of heresy. The patronage of the civil power
might for a time counteract the law of its nature, but it showed it as
soon as that obstacle was removed. Scarcely was Arianism deprived of the
churches of Constantinople, and left to itself, than it split in that
very city into the Dorotheans, the Psathyrians, and the Curtians; and
the Eunomians into the Theophronians and Eutychians. One fourth part of
the Donatists speedily became Maximinianists; and besides these were the
Rogatians, the Primianists, the Urbanists, and the Claudianists. If such
was the fecundity of the heretical principle in one place, it is not to
be supposed that Novatians or Marcionites in Africa or the East would
feel themselves bound to think or to act with their fellow-sectaries of
Rome or Constantinople; and the great varieties or inconsistencies of
statement, which have come down to us concerning the tenets of heresies,
may thus be explained. This had been the case with the pagan rites,
whether indigenous or itinerant, to which heresy succeeded. The
established priesthoods were local properties, as independent
theologically as they were geographically of each other; the fanatical
companies which spread over the Empire dissolved and formed again as the
circumstances of the moment occasioned. So was it with heresy: it was,
by its very nature, its own master, free to change, self-sufficient;
and, having thrown off the yoke of the Church, it was little likely to
submit to any usurped and spurious authority. Montanism and Manicheeism
might perhaps in some sort furnish an exception to this remark.
5.
In one point alone the heresies seem universally to have agreed,--in
hatred to the Church. This might at that time be considered one of her
surest and most obvious Notes. She was that body of which all sects,
however divided among themselves, spoke ill; according to the prophecy,
"If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more
them of His household." They disliked and they feared her; they did
their utmost to overcome their mutual differences, in order to unite
against her. Their utmost indeed was little, for independency was the
law of their being; they could not exert themselves without fresh
quarrels, both in the bosom of each, and one with another. "_Bellum
hæreticorum pax est ecclesiæ_" had become a proverb; but they felt the
great desirableness of union against the only body which was the natural
antagonist of all, and various are the instances which occur in
ecclesiastical history of attempted coalitions. The Meletians of Africa
united with the Arians against St. Athanasius; the Semi-Arians of the
Council of Sardica corresponded with the Donatists of Africa; Nestorius
received and protected the Pelagians; Aspar, the Arian minister of Leo
the Emperor, favoured the Monophysites of Egypt; the Jacobites of Egypt
sided with the Moslem, who are charged with holding a Nestorian
doctrine. It had been so from the beginning: "They huddle up a peace
with all everywhere," says Tertullian, "for it maketh no matter to them,
although they hold different doctrines, so long as they conspire
together in their siege against the one thing, Truth."[254:1] And even
though active co-operation was impracticable, at least hard words cost
nothing, and could express that common hatred at all seasons.
Accordingly, by Montanists, Catholics were called "the carnal;" by
Novatians, "the apostates;" by Valentinians, "the worldly;" by
Manichees, "the simple;" by Aërians, "the ancient;"[254:2] by
Apollinarians, "the man-worshippers;" by Origenists, "the flesh-lovers,"
and "the slimy;" by the Nestorians, "Egyptians;" by Monophysites, the
"Chalcedonians:" by Donatists, "the traitors," and "the sinners," and
"servants of Antichrist;" and St. Peter's chair, "the seat of
pestilence;" and by the Luciferians, the Church was called "a brothel,"
"the devil's harlot," and "synagogue of Satan:" so that it might be
called a Note of the Church, as I have said, for the use of the most
busy and the most ignorant, that she was on one side and all other
bodies on the other.
6.
Yet, strange as it may appear, there was one title of the Church of a
very different nature from those which have been enumerated,--a title of
honour, which all men agreed to give her,--and one which furnished a
still more simple direction than such epithets of abuse to aid the busy
and the ignorant in finding her, and which was used by the Fathers for
that purpose. It was one which the sects could neither claim for
themselves, nor hinder being enjoyed by its rightful owner, though,
since it was the characteristic designation of the Church in the Creed,
it seemed to surrender the whole controversy between the two parties
engaged in it. Balaam could not keep from blessing the ancient people of
God; and the whole world, heresies inclusive, were irresistibly
constrained to call God's second election by its prophetical title of
the "Catholic" Church. St. Paul tells us that the heretic is "condemned
by himself;" and no clearer witness against the sects of the earlier
centuries was needed by the Church, than their own testimony to this
contrast between her actual position and their own. Sects, say the
Fathers, are called after the name of their founders, or from their
locality, or from their doctrine. So was it from the beginning: "I am of
Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas;" but it was promised to the
Church that she should have no master upon earth, and that she should
"gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad."
Her every-day name, which was understood in the marketplace and used in
the palace, which every chance comer knew, and which state-edicts
recognized, was the "Catholic" Church. This was that very description of
Christianity in those times which we are all along engaged in
determining. And it had been recognized as such from the first; the name
or the fact is put forth by St. Ignatius, St. Justin, St. Clement; by
the Church of Smyrna, St. Irenæus, Rhodon or another, Tertullian,
Origen, St. Cyprian, St. Cornelius; by the Martyrs, Pionius, Sabina, and
Asclepiades; by Lactantius, Eusebius, Adimantius, St. Athanasius, St.
Pacian, St. Optatus, St. Epiphanius, St. Cyril, St. Basil, St. Ambrose,
St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and Facundus. St. Clement
uses it as an argument against the Gnostics, St. Augustine against the
Donatists and Manichees, St. Jerome against the Luciferians, and St.
Pacian against the Novatians.
7.
It was an argument for educated and simple. When St. Ambrose would
convert the cultivated reason of Augustine, he bade him study the book
of Isaiah, who is the prophet, as of the Messiah, so of the calling of
the Gentiles and of the Imperial power of the Church. And when St. Cyril
would give a rule to his crowd of Catechumens, "If ever thou art
sojourning in any city," he says, "inquire not simply where the Lord's
house is, (for the sects of the profane also make an attempt to call
their own dens houses of the Lord,) nor merely where the Church is, but
where is the Catholic Church. For this is the peculiar name of this Holy
Body, the Mother of us all, which is the Spouse of our Lord Jesus
Christ."[256:1] "In the Catholic Church," says St. Augustine to the
Manichees, "not to speak of that most pure wisdom, to the knowledge of
which few spiritual men attain in this life so as to know it even in its
least measure,--as men, indeed, yet, without any doubt,--(for the
multitude of Christians are safest, not in understanding with quickness,
but in believing with simplicity,) not to speak of this wisdom, which ye
do not believe to be in the Catholic Church, there are many other
considerations which most sufficiently hold me in her bosom. I am held
by the consent of people and nations; by that authority which began in
miracles, was nourished in hope, was increased by charity, and made
steadfast by age; by that succession of priests from the chair of the
Apostle Peter, to whose feeding the Lord after His resurrection
commended His sheep, even to the present episcopate; lastly, by the very
title of Catholic, which, not without cause, hath this Church alone,
amid so many heresies, obtained in such sort, that, whereas all
heretics wish to be called Catholics, nevertheless to any stranger, who
asked where to find the 'Catholic' Church, none of them would dare to
point to his own basilica or home. These dearest bonds, then, of the
Christian Name, so many and such, rightly hold a man in belief in the
Catholic Church, even though, by reason of the slowness of our
understanding or our deserts, truth doth not yet show herself in her
clearest tokens. But among you, who have none of these reasons to invite
and detain me, I hear but the loud sound of a promise of the truth;
which truth, verily, if it be so manifestly displayed among you that
there can be no mistake about it, is to be preferred to all those things
by which I am held in the Catholic Church; but if it is promised alone,
and not exhibited, no one shall move me from that faith which by so many
and great ties binds my mind to the Christian religion."[257:1] When
Adimantius asked his Marcionite opponent, how he was a Christian who did
not even bear that name, but was called from Marcion, he retorts, "And
you are called from the Catholic Church, therefore ye are not Christians
either;" Adimantius answers, "Did we profess man's name, you would have
spoken to the point; but if we are called from being all over the world,
what is there bad in this?"[257:2]
8.
"Whereas there is one God and one Lord," says St. Clement, "therefore
also that which is the highest in esteem is praised on the score of
being sole, as after the pattern of the One Principle. In the nature
then of the One, the Church, which is one, hath its portion, which they
would forcibly cut up into many heresies. In substance then, and in
idea, and in first principle, and in pre-eminence, we call the ancient
Catholic Church sole; in order to the unity of one faith, the faith
according to her own covenants, or rather that one covenant in different
times, which, by the will of one God and through one Lord, is gathering
together those who are already ordained, whom God hath predestined,
having known that they would be just from the foundation of the
world. . . . . But of heresies, some are called from a man's name, as
Valentine's heresy, Marcion's, and that of Basilides (though they
profess to bring the opinion of Matthias, for all the Apostles had, as
one teaching, so one tradition); and others from place, as the Peratici;
and others from nation, as that of the Phrygians; and others from their
actions, as that of the Encratites; and others from their peculiar
doctrines, as the Docetæ and Hematites; and others from their
hypotheses, and what they have honoured, as Cainites and the Ophites;
and others from their wicked conduct and enormities, as those Simonians
who are called Eutychites."[258:1] "There are, and there have been,"
says St. Justin, "many who have taught atheistic and blasphemous words
and deeds, coming in the name of Jesus; and they are called by us from
the appellation of the men whence each doctrine and opinion began . . .
Some are called Marcians, others Valentinians, others Basilidians,
others Saturnilians."[258:2] "When men are called Phrygians, or
Novatians, or Valentinians, or Marcionites, or Anthropians," says
Lactantius, "or by any other name, they cease to be Christians; for they
have lost Christ's Name, and clothe themselves in human and foreign
titles. It is the Catholic Church alone which retains the true
worship."[258:3] "We never heard of Petrines, or Paulines, or
Bartholomeans, or Thaddeans," says St. Epiphanius; "but from the first
there was one preaching of all the Apostles, not preaching themselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord. Wherefore also all gave one name to the
Church, not their own, but that of their Lord Jesus Christ, since they
began to be called Christians first at Antioch; which is the Sole
Catholic Church, having nought else but Christ's, being a Church of
Christians; not of Christs, but of Christians, He being One, they from
that One being called Christians. None, but this Church and her
preachers, are of this character, as is shown by their own epithets,
Manicheans, and Simonians, and Valentinians, and Ebionites."[259:1] "If
you ever hear those who are said to belong to Christ," says St. Jerome,
"named, not from the Lord Jesus Christ, but from some other, say
Marcionites, Valentinians, Mountaineers, Campestrians, know that it is
not Christ's Church, but the synagogue of Antichrist."[259:2]
9.
St. Pacian's letters to the Novatian Bishop Sympronian require a more
extended notice. The latter had required the Catholic faith to be proved
to him, without distinctly stating from what portion of it he dissented;
and he boasted that he had never found any one to convince him of its
truth. St. Pacian observes that there is one point which Sympronian
cannot dispute, and which settles the question, the very name Catholic.
He then supposes Sympronian to object that, "under the Apostles no one
was called Catholic." He answers, "Be it thus;[259:3] it shall have been
so; allow even that. When, after the Apostles, heresies had burst forth,
and were striving under various names to tear piecemeal and divide 'the
Dove' and 'the Queen' of God, did not the Apostolic people require a
name of their own, whereby to mark the unity of the people that was
uncorrupted, lest the error of some should rend limb by limb 'the
undefiled virgin' of God? Was it not seemly that the chief head should
be distinguished by its own peculiar appellation? Suppose this very day
I entered a populous city. When I had found Marcionites, Apollinarians,
Cataphrygians, Novatians, and others of the kind, who call themselves
Christians, by what name should I recognize the congregation of my own
people, unless it were named Catholic? . . . . Whence was it delivered
to me? Certainly that which has stood through so many ages was not
borrowed from man. This name 'Catholic' sounds not of Marcion, nor of
Apelles, nor of Montanus, nor does it take heretics for its authors."
In his second letter, he continues, "Certainly that was no accessory
name which endured through so many ages. And, indeed, I am glad for
thee, that, although thou mayest have preferred others, yet thou agreest
that the name attaches to us, which should you deny nature would cry
out. But and if you still have doubts, let us hold our peace. We will
both be that which we shall be named." After alluding to Sympronian's
remark that, though Cyprian was holy, "his people bear the name of
Apostaticum, Capitolinum, or Synedrium," which were some of the Novatian
titles of the Church, St. Pacian replies, "Ask a century, brother, and
all its years in succession, whether this name has adhered to us;
whether the people of Cyprian have been called other than Catholic? No
one of these names have I ever heard." It followed that such
appellations were "taunts, not names," and therefore unmannerly. On the
other hand it seems that Sympronian did not like to be called a
Novatian, though he could not call himself a Catholic. "Tell me
yourselves," says St. Pacian, "what ye are called. Do ye deny that the
Novatians are called from Novatian? Impose on them whatever name you
like; that will ever adhere to them. Search, if you please, whole
annals, and trust so many ages. You will answer, 'Christian.' But
if I inquire the genus of the sect, you will not deny that it is
Novatian. . . . Confess it without deceit; there is no wickedness in
the name. Why, when so often inquired for, do you hide yourself? Why
ashamed of the origin of your name? When you first wrote, I thought you
a Cataphrygian. . . . Dost thou grudge me my name, and yet shun thine
own? Think what there is of shame in a cause which shrinks from its own
name."
In a third letter: "'The Church is the Body of Christ.' Truly, the body,
not a member; the body composed of many parts and members knit in one,
as saith the Apostle, 'For the Body is not one member, but many.'
Therefore, the Church is the full body, compacted and diffused now
throughout the whole world; like a city, I mean, all whose parts are
united, not as ye are, O Novatians, some small and insolent portion, and
a mere swelling that has gathered and separated from the rest of the
body. . . . Great is the progeny of the Virgin, and without number her
offspring, wherewith the whole world is filled, wherewith the populous
swarms ever throng the circumfluous hive." And he founds this
characteristic of the Church upon the prophecies: "At length, brother
Sympronian, be not ashamed to be with the many; at length consent to
despise these festering spots of the Novatians, and these parings of
yours; and at length, to look upon the flocks of the Catholics, and the
people of the Church extending so far and wide. . . . Hear what David
saith, 'I will sing unto Thy name in the great congregation;' and again,
'I will praise Thee among much people;' and 'the Lord, even the most
mighty God, hath spoken, and called the world from the rising up of the
sun unto the going down thereof.' What! shall the seed of Abraham, which
is as the stars and the sand on the seashore for number, be contented
with your poverty? . . . Recognize now, brother, the Church of God
extending her tabernacles and fixing the stakes of her curtains on the
right and on the left; understand that 'the Lord's name is praised from
the rising up of the sun unto the going down thereof.'"
10.
In citing these passages, I am not proving what was the doctrine of the
Fathers concerning the Church in those early times, or what were the
promises made to it in Scripture; but simply ascertaining what, in
matter of fact, was its then condition relatively to the various
Christian bodies among which it was found. That the Fathers were able to
put forward a certain doctrine, that they were able to appeal to the
prophecies, proves that matter of fact; for unless the Church, and the
Church alone, had been one body everywhere, they could not have argued
on the supposition that it was so. And so as to the word "Catholic;" it
is enough that the Church was so called; that title was a confirmatory
proof and symbol of what is even otherwise so plain, that she, as St.
Pacian explains the word, was everywhere one, while the sects of the day
were nowhere one, but everywhere divided. Sects might, indeed, be
everywhere, but they were in no two places the same; every spot had its
own independent communion, or at least to this result they were
inevitably and continually tending.
11.
St. Pacian writes in Spain: the same contrast between the Church and
sectarianism is presented to us in Africa in the instance of the
Donatists; and St. Optatus is a witness both to the fact, and to its
notoriety, and to the deep impressions which it made on all parties.
Whether or not the Donatists identified themselves with the true Church,
and cut off the rest of Christendom from it, is not the question here,
nor alters the fact which I wish distinctly brought out and recognized,
that in those ancient times the Church was that Body which was spread
over the _orbis terrarum_, and sects were those bodies which were local
or transitory.
"What is that one Church," says St. Optatus, "which Christ calls 'Dove'
and 'Spouse'? . . . It cannot be in the multitude of heretics and
schismatics. If so, it follows that it is but in one place. Thou,
brother Parmenian, hast said that it is with you alone; unless, perhaps,
you aim at claiming for yourselves a special sanctity from your pride,
so that where you will, there the Church may be, and may not be, where
you will not. Must it then be in a small portion of Africa, in the
corner of a small realm, among you, but not among us in another part of
Africa? And not in Spain, in Gaul, in Italy, where you are not? And if
you will have it only among you, not in the three Pannonian provinces,
in Dacia, Moesia, Thrace, Achaia, Macedonia, and in all Greece, where
you are not? And that you may keep it among yourselves, not in Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Pamphylia, Phrygia, Cilicia, in the three Syrias,
in the two Armenias, in all Egypt, and in Mesopotamia, where you are
not? Not among such innumerable islands and the other provinces,
scarcely numerable, where you are not? What will become then of the
meaning of the word Catholic, which is given to the Church, as being
according to reason[263:1] and diffused every where? For if thus at your
pleasure you narrow the Church, if you withdraw from her all the
nations, where will be the earnings of the Son of God? where will be
that which the Father hath so amply accorded to Him, saying in the
second Psalm 'I will give thee the heathen for Thine inheritance and the
uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession,' &c.? . . The whole
earth is given Him with the nations; its whole circuit (_orbis_) is
Christ's one possession."[263:2]
12.
An African writer contemporary with St. Augustine, if not St. Augustine
himself, enumerates the small portions of the Donatist Sect, in and out
of Africa, and asks if they can be imagined to be the fulfilment of the
Scripture promise to the Church. "If the holy Scriptures have assigned
the Church to Africa alone, or to the scanty Cutzupitans or Mountaineers
of Rome, or to the house or patrimony of one Spanish woman, however the
argument may stand from other writings, then none but the Donatists have
possession of the Church. If holy Scripture determines it to the few
Moors of the Cæsarean province, we must go over to the Rogatists: if to
the few Tripolitans or Byzacenes and Provincials, the Maximianists have
attained to it; if in the Orientals only, it is to be sought for among
Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians, and others that may be there; for who
can enumerate every heresy of every nation? But if Christ's Church, by
the divine and most certain testimonies of Canonical Scriptures, is
assigned to all nations, whatever may be adduced, and from whatever
quarter cited, by those who say, 'Lo, here is Christ and lo there,' let
us rather hear, if we be His sheep, the voice of our Shepherd saying
unto us, 'Do not believe.' For they are not each found in the many
nations where she is; but she, who is everywhere, is found where they
are."[264:1]
Lastly, let us hear St. Augustine himself again in the same controversy:
"They do not communicate with us, as you say," he observes to
Cresconius, "Novatians, Arians, Patripassians, Valentinians, Patricians,
Apellites, Marcionites, Ophites, and the rest of those sacrilegious
names, as you call them, of nefarious pests rather than sects. Yet,
wheresoever they are, there is the Catholic Church; as in Africa it is
where you are. On the other hand, neither you, nor any one of those
heresies whatever, is to be found wherever is the Catholic Church.
Whence it appears, which is that tree whose boughs extend over all the
earth by the richness of its fruitfulness, and which be those broken
branches which have not the life of the root, but lie and wither, each
in its own place."[265:1]
13.
It may be possibly suggested that this universality which the Fathers
ascribe to the Catholic Church lay in its Apostolical descent, or again
in its Episcopacy; and that it was one, not as being one kingdom or
civitas "at unity with itself," with one and the same intelligence in
every part, one sympathy, one ruling principle, one organization, one
communion, but because, though consisting of a number of independent
communities, at variance (if so be) with each other even to a breach of
communion, nevertheless all these were possessed of a legitimate
succession of clergy, or all governed by Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.
But who will in seriousness maintain that relationship, or that sameness
of structure, makes two bodies one? England and Prussia are both of them
monarchies; are they therefore one kingdom? England and the United
States are from one stock; can they therefore be called one state?
England and Ireland are peopled by different races; yet are they not one
kingdom still? If unity lies in the Apostolical succession, an act of
schism is from the nature of the case impossible; for as no one can
reverse his parentage, so no Church can undo the fact that its clergy
have come by lineal descent from the Apostles. Either there is no such
sin as schism, or unity does not lie in the Episcopal form or in the
Episcopal ordination. And this is felt by the controversialists of this
day; who in consequence are obliged to invent a sin, and to consider,
not division of Church from Church, but the interference of Church with
Church to be the sin of schism, as if local dioceses and bishops with
restraint were more than ecclesiastical arrangements and by-laws of the
Church, however sacred, while schism is a sin against her essence. Thus
they strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel. Division is the schism, if
schism there be, not interference. If interference is a sin, division
which is the cause of it is a greater; but where division is a duty,
there can be no sin in interference.
14.
Far different from such a theory is the picture which the ancient Church
presents to us; true, it was governed by Bishops, and those Bishops came
from the Apostles, but it was a kingdom besides; and as a kingdom admits
of the possibility of rebels, so does such a Church involve sectaries
and schismatics, but not independent portions. It was a vast organized
association, co-extensive with the Roman Empire, or rather overflowing
it. Its Bishops were not mere local officers, but possessed a
quasi-ecumenical power, extending wherever a Christian was to be found.
"No Christian," says Bingham, "would pretend to travel without taking
letters of credence with him from his own bishop, if he meant to
communicate with the Christian Church in a foreign country. Such was the
admirable unity of the Church Catholic in those days, and the blessed
harmony and consent of her bishops among one another."[266:1] St.
Gregory Nazianzen calls St. Cyprian an universal Bishop, "presiding," as
the same author presently quotes Gregory, "not only over the Church of
Carthage and Africa, but over all the regions of the West, and over the
East, and South, and Northern parts of the world also." This is
evidence of a unity throughout Christendom, not of mere origin or of
Apostolical succession, but of government. Bingham continues "[Gregory]
says the same of Athanasius; that, in being made Bishop of Alexandria,
he was made Bishop of the whole world. Chrysostom, in like manner,
styles Timothy, Bishop of the universe. . . . . The great Athanasius, as
he returned from his exile, made no scruple to ordain in several cities
as he went along, though they were not in his own diocese. And the
famous Eusebius of Samosata did the like, in the times of the Arian
persecution under Valens. . . Epiphanius made use of the same power and
privilege in a like case, ordaining Paulinianus, St. Jerome's brother,
first deacon and then presbyter, in a monastery out of his own diocese
in Palestine."[267:1] And so in respect of teaching, before Councils met
on any large scale, St. Ignatius of Antioch had addressed letters to the
Churches along the coast of Asia Minor, when on his way to martyrdom at
Rome. St. Irenæus, when a subject of the Church of Smyrna, betakes
himself to Gaul, and answers in Lyons the heresies of Syria. The see of
St. Hippolytus, as if he belonged to all parts of the _orbis terrarum_,
cannot be located, and is variously placed in the neighbourhood of Rome
and in Arabia. Hosius, a Spanish Bishop, arbitrates in an Alexandrian
controversy. St. Athanasius, driven from his Church, makes all
Christendom his home, from Treves to Ethiopia, and introduces into the
West the discipline of the Egyptian Antony. St. Jerome is born in
Dalmatia, studies at Constantinople and Alexandria, is secretary to St.
Damasus at Rome, and settles and dies in Palestine.
Above all the See of Rome itself is the centre of teaching as well as
of action, is visited by Fathers and heretics as a tribunal in
controversy, and by ancient custom sends her alms to the poor Christians
of all Churches, to Achaia and Syria, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, and
Cappadocia.
15.
Moreover, this universal Church was not only one; it was exclusive also.
As to the vehemence with which Christians of the Ante-nicene period
denounced the idolatries and sins of paganism, and proclaimed the
judgments which would be their consequence, this is well known, and led
to their being reputed in the heathen world as "enemies of mankind."
"Worthily doth God exert the lash of His stripes and scourges," says St.
Cyprian to a heathen magistrate; "and since they avail so little, and
convert not men to God by all this dreadfulness of havoc, there abides
beyond the prison eternal and the ceaseless flame and the everlasting
penalty. . . . Why humble yourself and bend to false gods? Why bow your
captive body before helpless images and moulded earth? Why grovel in the
prostration of death, like the serpent whom ye worship? Why rush into
the downfall of the devil, his fall the cause of yours, and he your
companion? . . . . Believe and live; you have been our persecutors in
time; in eternity, be companions of our joy."[268:1] "These rigid
sentiments," says Gibbon, "which had been unknown to the ancient world,
appear to have infused a spirit of bitterness into a system of love and
harmony."[268:2] Such, however, was the judgment passed by the first
Christians upon all who did not join their own society; and such still
more was the judgment of their successors on those who lived and died in
the sects and heresies which had issued from it. That very Father, whose
denunciation of the heathen has just been quoted, had already declared
it even in the third century. "He who leaves the Church of Christ," he
says, "attains not to Christ's rewards. He is an alien, an outcast, an
enemy. He can no longer have God for a Father, who has not the Church
for a Mother. If any man was able to escape who remained without the Ark
of Noah, then will that man escape who is out of doors beyond the
Church. . . What sacrifice do they believe they celebrate, who are
rivals of the Priests? If such men were even killed for confession of
the Christian name, not even by their blood is this stain washed out.
Inexplicable and heavy is the sin of discord, and is purged by no
suffering . . . They cannot dwell with God who have refused to be of one
mind in God's Church; a man of such sort may indeed be killed, crowned
he cannot be."[269:1] And so again St. Chrysostom, in the following
century, in harmony with St. Cyprian's sentiment: "Though we have
achieved ten thousand glorious acts, yet shall we, if we cut to pieces
the fulness of the Church, suffer punishment no less sore than they who
mangled His body."[269:2] In like manner St Augustine seems to consider
that a conversion from idolatry to a schismatical communion is no gain.
"Those whom Donatists baptize, they heal of the wound of idolatry or
infidelity, but inflict a more grievous stroke in the wound of schism;
for idolaters among God's people the sword destroyed, but schismatics
the gaping earth devoured."[269:3] Elsewhere, he speaks of the
"sacrilege of schism, which surpasses all wickednesses."[269:4] St.
Optatus, too, marvels at the Donatist Parmenian's inconsistency in
maintaining the true doctrine, that "Schismatics are cut off as branches
from the vine, are destined for punishments, and reserved, as dry wood,
for hell-fire."[269:5] "Let us hate them who are worthy of hatred," says
St. Cyril, "withdraw we from those whom God withdraws from; let us also
say unto God with all boldness concerning all heretics, 'Do not I hate
them, O Lord, that hate thee?'"[270:1] "Most firmly hold, and doubt in
no wise," says St. Fulgentius, "that every heretic and schismatic
soever, baptized in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, unless
aggregated to the Catholic Church, how great soever have been his alms,
though for Christ's Name he has even shed his blood, can in no wise be
saved."[270:2] The Fathers ground this doctrine on St. Paul's words
that, though we have knowledge, and give our goods to the poor, and our
body to be burned, we are nothing without love.[270:3]
16.
One more remark shall be made: that the Catholic teachers, far from
recognizing any ecclesiastical relation as existing between the
Sectarian Bishops and Priests and their people, address the latter
immediately, as if those Bishops did not exist, and call on them to come
over to the Church individually without respect to any one besides; and
that because it is a matter of life and death. To take the instance of
the Donatists: it was nothing to the purpose that their Churches in
Africa were nearly as numerous as those of the Catholics, or that they
had a case to produce in their controversy with the Catholic Church; the
very fact that they were separated from the _orbis terrarum_ was a
public, a manifest, a simple, a sufficient argument against them. "The
question is not about your gold and silver," says St. Augustine to
Glorius and others, "not your lands, or farms, nor even your bodily
health is in peril, but we address your souls about obtaining eternal
life and fleeing eternal death. Rouse yourself therefore. . . . . You
see it all, and know it, and groan over it; yet God sees that there is
nothing to detain you in so pestiferous and sacrilegious a separation,
if you will but overcome your carnal affection, for the obtaining the
spiritual kingdom, and rid yourselves of the fear of wounding
friendships, which will avail nothing in God's judgment for escaping
eternal punishment. Go, think over the matter, consider what can be said
in answer. . . . No one blots out from heaven the Ordinance of God, no
one blots out from earth the Church of God: He hath promised her, she
hath filled, the whole world." "Some carnal intimacies," he says to his
kinsman Severinus, "hold you where you are. . . . What avails temporal
health or relationship, if with it we neglect Christ's eternal heritage
and our perpetual health?" "I ask," he says to Celer, a person of
influence, "that you would more earnestly urge upon your men Catholic
Unity in the region of Hippo." "Why," he says, in the person of the
Church, to the whole Donatist population, "Why open your ears to the
words of men, who say what they never have been able to prove, and close
them to the word of God, saying, 'Ask of Me, and I will give Thee the
heathen for Thine inheritance'?" At another time he says to them, "Some
of the presbyters of your party have sent to us to say, 'Retire from our
flocks, unless you would have us kill you.' How much more justly do we
say to them, 'Nay, do you, not retire from, but come in peace, not to
our flocks, but to the flocks of Him whose we are all; or if you will
not, and are far from peace, then do you rather retire from flocks, for
which Christ shed His Blood.'" "I call on you for Christ's sake," he
says to a late pro-consul, "to write me an answer, and to urge gently
and kindly all your people in the district of Sinis or Hippo into the
communion of the Catholic Church." He publishes an address to the
Donatists at another time to inform them of the defeat of their Bishops
in a conference: "Whoso," he says, "is separated from the Catholic
Church, however laudably he thinks he is living, by this crime alone,
that he is separated from Christ's Unity, he shall not have life, but
the wrath of God abideth on him." "Let them believe of the Catholic
Church," he writes to some converts about their friends who were still
in schism, "that is, to the Church diffused over the whole world, rather
what the Scriptures say of it than what human tongues utter in calumny."
The idea of acting upon the Donatists only as a body and through their
bishops, does not appear to have occurred to St. Augustine at
all.[272:1]
17.
On the whole, then, we have reason to say, that if there be a form of
Christianity at this day distinguished for its careful organization, and
its consequent power; if it is spread over the world; if it is
conspicuous for zealous maintenance of its own creed; if it is
intolerant towards what it considers error; if it is engaged in
ceaseless war with all other bodies called Christian; if it, and it
alone, is called "Catholic" by the world, nay, by those very bodies, and
if it makes much of the title; if it names them heretics, and warns them
of coming woe, and calls on them one by one, to come over to itself,
overlooking every other tie; and if they, on the other hand, call it
seducer, harlot, apostate, Antichrist, devil; if, however much they
differ one with another, they consider it their common enemy; if they
strive to unite together against it, and cannot; if they are but local;
if they continually subdivide, and it remains one; if they fall one
after another, and make way for new sects, and it remains the same; such
a religious communion is not unlike historical Christianity, as it comes
before us at the Nicene Era.