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THE MINISTRY
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ΐ ΒΥ AS aes Se CHARLES GORE, M.A. yas ze
_ PRINCIPAL OF THE PUSEY HOUSB; FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD AND EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD BISHOP OF LINCOLN
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PREFACE.
THERE are two large questions having reference to Christianity ,. which it is important to keep distinct. There is the question /, ,. whether Christianity is true, and there is the question what, 1
as a fact in history, Christianity has been? It is an indis- pensable preliminary to all effective dealings with the practical problems, which arise in the attempt to apply and adapt Christianity to current needs and circumstances, that we should study profoundly the genius of Christianity as a con- tinuous historical fact—that we should have a clear answer to the question, what Christianity has been and is. This book, then (assuming broadly the truth of Christianity), attempts to give a partial answer to this second question. It maintains that Christianity is essentially the life of an actual visible
this society is the apostolic succession of the ministry. Ina /
of the apostolic succession.
As being an ‘apology’ for one clause in the Church’s prac- tical and theoretical creed, it will be subject to the usual suspicions of prejudice and want of free criticism to which apologetic literature is exposed, and from which the literature
society, and that at least one necessary link of connection in τ ov, ἴω 3
word, this book claims on behalf of the apostolic μκονδνία ὁ mee P| that it must be reckoned with as a permanent and essential εὐ τῶ element of Christianity. It is an‘ apology’ for the principle Re ‘pe
vi Preface.
of ‘free thought’ is supposed to be by comparison exempt. But it is, perhaps, only while we are very young that we are inclined to believe dissent from orthodox conclusions to afford any guarantee for a just and critical judgment; in fact, the ambition to form or propagate a new theory gives as strong a bias to the mind as the desire to maintain an old one. At any rate, I have tried to do with my ‘ prejudices’ all that a man can do with those inevitable accompaniments alike of his birth into a continuous society and of the first activities of his own individuality ; I have tried to subject them to an exact and free examination in the light of reason and history, and to let it correct or verify them.
A word must be said in explanation of the order and con- tents of this book. The principle of the apostolic succession has been a formative principle in church history. It seemed, therefore, the best course, after making good the preliminary grounds of this investigation (chap. 1), and explaining the idea of the ministry (chap. 11), to exhibit the extent to which in church history the principle of the apostolic succession has been postulated and acted upon since the time when the con- tinuous record begins—z.e. the latter half of the second century (chap. 11). The principle is then examined in the light of the Gospels (chap. Iv), of the apostolic documents (chap. v), and of the links of evidence which connect the apostolic age with the continuous history (chap. vi). After this nothing remains but to draw conclusions and make applications (chap. VII). This order treats the question—What has the Church in fact believed about her ministry? as a preliminary to the investi- gation of her title-deeds, and it was hardly possible for the present writer to treat the question in any other order. Whether or no Mr. Darwin is right in maintaining “that the
Preface. vii
only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness, and that you do not form your opinions without undergoing labour” (Life and Letters, i. p. 334), it is, at any rate, true
_ that a book had better represent that process of ‘labour’ by
which its writer’s opinions have in fact been formed.
The purpose of this book not being primarily or simply archeological, it has been possible to leave out of discussion a good many elements in the history of the ministry which do not, or so far as they do not, affect the principle. It has been
τ necessary to deal largely in quotations from ancient authors,
but it has been possible to omit almost all that bears, e.g. upon the growth of the metropolitan and patriarchal systems, the relations of the later episcopate to secular society, the history of ecclesiastical discipline or canon law in detail. On all these subjects the student will find a great deal of very valuable material in Dr. Hatch’s published works, and in his articles in the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities. I very much regret that what seems to me his extraordinary, his most unhistorical, under-estimate of the permanent element of belief and practice in the Christian Church has led to his being mentioned in these pages generally with criticism. I also regret that I had not read till it was too late his article on Paul the Apostle, in the Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. xviii. If I had done so, I could not have complained, as I have in reference to his Bampton Lectures, of his not plainly stating his position as to certain disputed New Testament documents. In that article he speaks of the Pastoral Epistles as “ probably even less defensible,” ¢.e. from the point of view of authenticity, than those to the Ephesians and Colossians (p. 422, col. 2; cf. also the remark at the head of the column on the Acts of the Apostles). I might also have noticed that he had already
Vili Preface.
(Diet. Chr. Ant. ii. p. 1481) spoken of the Epistle of Polycarp as “almost contemporary” with the Pastoral Epistles.
I had intended to conclude this book with a discussion of the validity of the episcopal succession in the English Church, but it has seemed better to reserve this, appealing as it would to a different class of readers, for another opportunity.
It remains for me only to express my gratitude for advice and help given me by my friend the Rev. Dr. Paget, and my colleague the Rev. F. E. Brightman—but especially I have to thank another colleague, Mr. R. B. Rackham, who has given ungrudging and continuous labour to preparing this book for publication, and rescuing it from many mistakes. He has also compiled the Table of Contents and the Index of Authors, etc., which will, I hope, render the book more useful for refer- ence. Vallarsius’ edition of Jerome has been used throughout, and Hartel’s Cyprian, which however follows the Oxford edition in the numbering of the Epistles.
Pusey Hovss, St, Peter’s Day, 1888.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Ir there are almost no alterations, except verbal corrections, in this Edition, it is not because I have not received valuable suggestions. For instance, I have been advised to enlarge the argument on pp. 34-36, as to the fundamental indepen- dence of the Church and the Collegia, and in doing so I should have had an opportunity of noticing Professor Ramsay’s remarks in the Hapositor of Dec. 1888, pp. 415 ff, on the use to which he supposes the Church in Phrygia to have put the guild organization, for purposes of concealment. But I have thought that I should do better to wait, before acting on any suggestions that I have received, till I have had the advantage of more criticisms, and till I can myself consider matters again with a fresher mind. Meanwhile, there are three points confirmatory of my argument, by mentioning which, I may perhaps forestall criticism.
1. The newly discovered writings of the Spaniard Priscillian * give us, as the sentiment of bishops contemporary with him in Spain, about A.D. 380, a view of the consecration and election of bishops, which falls in with the argument of pp. 100 ff; “Rescribitur . . . sicut dedicationem sacerdotis in sacerdote, sic electionem consistere petitionis in plebe” (7'ract. ii. p. 40). The context makes the meaning tolerably plain, viz. that it belongs to a bishop to consecrate a bishop, but to the people to choose and ask for him.
1 Just edited by their discoverer, Georg Schepps, in the Vienna Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum.
x Preface to the Second Edition.
2. Dr. Salmon has kindly pointed out to me that the argu- ment about Colluthus on p. 139 admits of being strengthened by calling attention to the fact that Colluthus claimed to be a bishop when he ordained. This appears in the letter of the Mareotic clergy, quoted by Athanasius, Apol. c. Ar. c. 76: “He [Ischyras] was appointed by Colluthus, the presbyter who pretended to the episcopate and was afterwards ordered by the synod of Hosius, and the bishops with him, to be a presbyter as he was before.” Thus Colluthus did not even claim to ordain as a presbyter.
3. Besides that mentioned on p. 371 of this book, there is another Syriac version of the Canons of Ancyra given by Cardinal Pitrain Analecta Sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi iv. 219. The 13th canon in this version is, I am told, inaccurately rendered by the Abbé Martin (p. 447). Translated literally it runs thus: “To chorepiscopi it is not allowed that they should ordain [make ordination] priests and deacons: but again also not that they should consecrate priests of the city, without the permission of the bishop with writings in every one place.” I am informed that there is no doubt that ‘priests of the city’ must be the object of the verb ‘conse- crate’ and not its subject, 1.6. that it represents πρεσβυτέρους not πρεσβυτέροις. This information I owe to Mr. C. H. Turner of St. John’s College, Oxford,
C. G.
Epiphany, 1889,
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH. PAGE Preliminary assumptions—
(1) The genuineness of New Testament documents 1 (2) The truth of the Incarnation : . 6 Preliminary inquiry: Did Christ found a visible Church ? . 9 The reasonableness of the idea in itself ὁ. 9
(1) Witness of the early Christian belief in a visible Church . . 4 ὃ 12 (unanimous in spite of differences in point of fe 13
in the West—Tertullian, Cyprian, Irenaeus,
(holding ‘nulla salus extra ecclesiam ’ together
with belief in God’s wider aii the Roman Church ‘ ‘ 13 in the East—Ignatius, Risen writers. 23 the Apologists—Aristides, Justin, Theophilus . 28 confirmed by the pagan conception of Christianity 30
(2) The social form of Christianity not due to the
secular influence of the ‘ collegia,’ for . : 31
(a) Christian writers show no trace of such influence . 3 34
(Ὁ) Christian fe bee was dag δὰ Judaism . ‘ : ‘ 35 (3) Witness of the New Pesthanesth ὁ : ξ 86
(a) The Gospels—
(i) Christ’s method, ᾿ς ἰ : 37
(ii) His institution of social sacraments Σ 40
xii Contents.
(iii) His Messianic claim (relation of the Church to the ‘kingdom of God’ ἣ (the Church not exclusive, though it makes an exclusive claim) (Ὁ) The Acts (c) St. Paul’s Epistles
This doctrine is not inconsistent with the doctrines of faith and liberty . but agreeable to the principle of all Temas ee (Heaven in the Apocalypse a city)
Two misconceptions as to the origin of the visible Church— (1) That it arose out of a previous condition of in- dividualism ; ν᾿
(2) That it was due to ree ἐἀδηνίοῦς difference between the Roman and Catholic conceptions
of church unity . ; : , ;
Notes on The idea of an invisible Church | pp. 19, 49.
CH. II. APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION.
The method of the inquiry
The principle of Apostolic Succession expounded It corresponds to the Incarnation, Sacraments, ete. The principle more important than the form in which it is embodied
Its importance as— (a) a bond of union for a universal spiritual society (Ὁ) emphasizing men’s dependence on God’s gifts (c) satisfying the moral needs of those who minister
Answers to objections that— (1) ‘It is sacerdotal’: true and false sacerdotalism (2) ‘ Unspiritual men are thus made to mediate spiri- tual gifts’: distinction of character and office .
PAGE
41 42
44
45 46
49 51 52
52
56
65
69 71
72 76
77 81
83
95
Contents.
(3) ‘It is opposed to liberty’: but liberty is opposed
to absolutism, not to authority ; the Church not
at first or necessarily an imperialist institution .
(4) “Τὸ cannot be true in fact’: this objection not tenable
(5) ‘It unchurches presbyterian bodies’: but results must not prevent our facing principles
-᾿
Note on Morinus’ ‘ de sacris ordinationibus’ . p. 68 Sacramental teaching of the early Fathers 79 Doctrine of lay-priesthood in catholic theology 89
CH. Il]. THE WITNESS OF CHURCH HISTORY.
Church history bears witness to certain fixed principles— 1. The principle of apostolic succession through the episcopate (with the requirement for the ministry of episcopal ordination) . appealed to by Irenaeus accepted by Tertullian : - anticipated by Hegesippus _ . ; ν᾿ A. Further evidence for the East— The episcopal successions— in Palestine, Syria, Asia, Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, Crete the supposed exceptional samiuliod of the Alexandrian Church (a) very doubtful in fact ; (Ὁ) not opposed to the principle of succession The conception of the ministry in— (i) liturgical writings (ii) canons of councils (iii) Greek Fathers — Athanasius, Geaaiery Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Epiphanius .
B. Further evidence for the West— The episcopal successions undoubted
Xiii
PAGE
97 107
109
116 116 125 127
128 134 138 142
144 152
154
161
xiv Contents.
The conception of the ministry in—
(i) Latin Fathers—Cyprian, Lucifer, writers who minimize the distinction of bishop and presbyter, i.e. Ambrosiaster, Jerome, etc. . .
(ii) canons of councils
(iii) liturgies .
2. Ordination was regarded sacramentally and conferred by laying-on of hands
3. It was believed to impose an ‘indelible character ’ though the distinction of ‘ valid’ and ‘ canonical’ was slowly formulated
4. The conception of the ministry from the first in- volved a sacerdotal principle, though the use of sacerdotal terms was of gradual growth
5. The ministry possessed exclusive powers, 6.9. only a priest could celebrate the Eucharist . ; Tertullian’s statement to the contrary due to Montanist views ; Montanism—its characteristics not a conservative movement Summary
Note on The conception of the ministry in the Clementines Ὁ. 130
i bs Clem. Alex. 135
τι an Origen . 140 The language of Firmilian ὁ. ‘ . 155 The early Irish episcopate. . . 162 ‘One bishop in a community’ . . 165 The primacy of Peter's see. i . 169 Functions of the presbyterate . ; aie ἡ. Morinus on the ‘ tradition of the instruments’ . 186 Signification of laying-onof hands ὁ. ‘387 Reordination Ἅ . pp. 189, 192, 193
Sources of sacerdotal language : - 199
PAGE
164 176 177
183 185
187
191
196
200
204 207 211 213
Contents. XV
CH. IV. THE INSTITUTION OF THE APOSTOLATE.
PAGE
The postulates of church history to be verified by an
appeal to Christ’s intention . " 5 2.10 The Gospels generally suggest the institution of ἃ per- ; manent apostolate . : ; : oo BD
especially in the commissions to— (1) St. Peter—his relation to (a) the other Apostles,
(6) the whole Church. ; ? ay)
(2) All the Apostles after the resurrection. 226 (the commission in St. John xx to the ‘Aasatiie
rather than the whole Church) : - . 229
Note on Sacrificial aspect of the Eucharist p. 226
CH. V. THE MINISTRY IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE. Evidence of St. Paul’s Epistles :
(a) The office of an apostle. 231 (6) The Church an organism with dffferentiated gifts and functions : 298
(c) The Pastoral Bpistlen their ἡ μονάδι ΠΝ iio 242 (i) a ministry of presbyter-bishops and deacons,
not the chief ministry ὁ 244 (ii) an extension of the apostolate to ἐαρδόοϊῖς men’ : : . 246 (iii) St. Paul’s idea of ΕΣ by the laying- on of hands : : ; . 249 Evidence of the other Epistles ; ; ς . 251 Evidence of the Acts: (a) The apostolate ᾿ : . 253 (6) A ministry of ‘ prophets μὰ See ‘ i! 268 (c) A local ministry of presbyter-bishops and deacons. 262 Summary : (1) The apostolate : . : . 265 (2) A subapostolic ministry . : . 266 (3) Presbyter-bishops . ν : : RAGE (4) Deacons. : . 268
(5) Ordination by tavinp-on of fiends ς . 268
Xvi Contents,
PAGE
Evidence is lacking as to— (a) details in the division of functions Ἂ . 269 (Ὁ) the form of the future ministry . : . 269
Note on The Angels of the Apocalypse. p. 254
CH. VI. THE MINISTRY IN THE SUBAPOSTOLIC AGE.
Links connecting this apostolic ministry with the epis- copate of church history §. °°. Ξ ἀπ νει,
In the East— I. St. James originates the ‘episcopate’ in Jerusalem. 273 II. ‘The Didache shows (a) a general ministry of ‘ apostles’ and ‘ prophets’ and ‘teachers ;’
(6) a local ministry of ‘bishops and deacons’... 276 ΠῚ. St. John (with other Apostles) develops ‘ episco- pacy’ in Asia... Ξ 286
This. is confirmed by the bsbnnis of Satis ἐς the threefold ministry of bishops, presbyters, and
deacons. , ; . 288 (in what sense the pnekbivlcrhte represents the Apostles) , ; $ : : 302 In the West—
IV. Clement’s Epistle (a) shows a differentiated ministry having suc- cession from the Apostles ; (Ὁ) postulates an order above the presbyter- bishops and deacons 5 : .(9) 808
V. Polycarp’s Epistle implies absence of a bishop at Philippi ; but this is not inconsistent with a superior ministry not localized there. . . 326
Contents,
VI. The Shepherd of Hermas suggests a third order above presbyters and deacons ἢ .
Summary—of possible theories : 1. A college of equal presbyters 2. The bishop hidden in the presbyterate 3. What alone seems to satisfy the δύο ΟΠ. episcopate derived from a gradual localization of ‘ prophets,’ ‘ teachers,’ and ‘ apostolic men’
Note on A second apostolic council . p. 274 The office of reader : . 284 The Ignatian controversy .. + 289
CH. VII. CONCLUSION AND APPLICATIONS.
The verdict of history as to (a) the Church, (Ὁ) sacer- dotalism, (c) episcopal ordination ;
Is confirmed by the witness of (a) the Gospels, (Ὁ) the apo- stolic, and (c) subapostolic documents εν
The cogency of the evidence: it can only be satisfied by the doctrine of the apostolic succession
This doctrine in its application (a) invalidates non-episcopal ministries : (0) recalls episcopal Churches to their true principles .
APPENDED NOTES.
A. Dr. Lightfoot’s Dissertation on “The Christian Ministry” B. The early history of the Alexandrian ministry . ©. Rites and prayers of ordination . D. (i) Canon xiii of Ancyra (ii) Chorepiscopi
XVii
PAGE
331
333 334
335
337
340
343
344 348
353 357 363 370 372
XViil Contents.
E. Supposed ordinations by presbyters in East and West .
F. The theory of the ministry held by Ambrosiaster, Jerome, etc. : 5
G. Laying-on of hands
H. Montanism
I. Prophecy in the Christian Chureh
K. The origin of the titles ‘ bishop,’ ‘ presbyter,’ τῶν iocaan with reference to recent criticism ;
L. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles . ‘ 5
Addendum on de Aleatoribus : 3 -
PAGE
374
378 383 390 394
399 411
420
CHAPTER 1. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH.
THE reader of the history of Christendom cannot me sunject fail to be conscious, at each stage of his subject, of the inquiry. prominent position held in the Church by a Ministry, which is regarded as having a divine authority for its stewardship of Christian mysteries—an authority which is indeed limited in sphere by varying political and ecclesiastical arrangements, but which in itself is believed to be derived not from below but from above, and to represent and perpetuate, by due succession from the Apostles, the institution of Christ. It is this Christian ministry which is to be the subject of the present inquiry. We shall endeavour to ascertain its history, to trace it back through its series of changes to the fountain-head. More than this, we shall endeavour to investigate its authority and search +e
᾿ into its title-deeds. Is this ministry, with its claim ~ 2) 10°» // of an apostolic succession, the mere product of να ἃ ae cumstances—valuable just so far as it is found spiritu- ally convenient? As claiming to be a priesthood,Z .-
does it represent a temporary accommodation of the,” ἧς, Z,~ . . . . . ᾽ 22144 AG Christian ideal, more or less necessitated by οἰτοῦτη- "7 Ὁ - . . 7 <9. ἔξω» Ocre stances, to the Jewish or pagan ideas amidst which the? 24. o/
SFI rr
Church spread? Is it a temporary restriction of the. fos Nan A
Prelim. as- sumptions.
(1) The genuineness of the N. T. records.
2 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
free Christian spirit—dangerous, however necessary ? Or, on the contrary, is it an original portion of Christ’s foundation? Is the episcopal succession, as it meets us in history, simply the fulfilment of Christ’s inten- tion, an essential and inviolable element of Christianity till the end ?
These are the main questions before us—ques- tions much controverted, yet not on that account incapable of yielding satisfactory solutions. But, like other controverted questions, these which concern the Christian ministry have a tendency to run off their own field and get upon territory foreign to themselves in one direction or another. It will therefore promote clearness if at the beginning the area of the present discussion is carefully marked out.
1. Asan historical inquiry, the investigation of the origines of the Christian ministry involves conclusions as to the date and authorship of a number of docu- ments. In regard to the great majority of these there is no division of opinion which is of serious moment for the present inquiry. But this is not the case with regard to some of the documents contained in the New Testament. The genuineness of the Epistles of St. Peter and St. James and of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians, still more the historical character of the Evangelical records and of the Acts of the Apostles, and the genuineness of St. Paul’s Pastoral Epistles, are questions of vital moment in dealing with the history of the ministry. It is well then, in order to narrow the field of inquiry, to make it plain at starting that the genuineness of these
I. | The Foundation of the Church. 3
Epistles and the historical character of these records are here generally assumed. ‘True, a considerable part of the inquiry is not affected by the decision in one sense or another of these critical questions. But in the discussion of the ministry in the apostolic age it has great weight.’ If a certain set of conclusions is here in the main taken for granted, this is not at all because it is desired to exempt the books of Scripture from free criticism. It is done, because no investiga- tion is satisfactory which does not at starting make plain the basis on which it rests, while a discussion of so large a number of critical questions would occupy too much space in preliminaries. It is done, then, to limit the area of inquiry; but, it must be added, with the clearest conviction that the conclusions assumed are those which the facts warrant. There does not seem to the present writer to be any reasonable ground for doubting, for instance, the unity or the genuineness of the Epistles of St. Paul to the Ephesians, to Timothy, and to Titus. The authorship of the Epistle to the Ephesians is guaranteed, not only by the external evidence, not only by its con-
1 Thus Professor Harnack (Hxpositor, May 1887) discusses the origin of the Christian ministry on the assumption that not only the Pastoral Epistles but also the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle of St. James are second century documents (pp. 334 n.°, 335 π, 3), and that the Epistle to the Ephesians was written ‘‘a considerable time after the Apostle’s death ” (p. 331). As he truly says—when he is proceeding ‘‘ to set forth the chronological data which we possess for the origin and the earliest development of the ecclesiastical constitution” —‘‘ This problem would receive the most diverse solutions from those occupying different standpoints regarding the origin of certain New Testament and post-apostolic writings. Any one, for example, who admits the genuineness of the Pastoral Epistles will reach quite different con- clusions from one who regards them as non-Pauline, and relegates them to the second century ” (p. 322).
4 Christian Ministry. [CHAP.
nection with the more ‘personal Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, but also by the lofty power and richness of thought with which it developes and unifies the fundamental conceptions of predestina- tion and of the Church, which St. Paul had already presented in the Epistles to the Romans and the Corinthians. The Pastoral Epistles are linked to- gether by intense coherence of subject and tone ; and there is hardly any writing which can be more certainly pronounced genuine by internal evidence than the second Epistle to Timothy." When we pass to the Acts of the Apostles, there would seem to be scarcely any bit of literary controversy in which, within recent years, we have experienced more completely the re- assuring effect of thorough inquiry. The remark- able Christology of the early chapters: the position assigned to the prophets in the earliest Church :? the accurate knowledge, as tested by recently- published inscriptions, which the author displays of the titles of local magistrates and the details of local sentiment :* the reiterated evidence, which the book affords in its later portions, that the author was an eye-witness of what he records—all this taken together goes to guarantee the substantial accuracy
1 Professor Salmon’s vindication of the genuineness of these Epistles will, I think, be considered adequate by a fair-minded and impartial reader. See his Introduction to the New Testament, lecture xx. Cf. also Professor Godet — on the Pastoral Epistles in the Hxpositor, January 1888.
5 Harnack selects Acts xiii. 1 f. with vi. 1 f. as passages in which the reader ‘‘ enters at once upon historical ground . . . which bears the marks of higher credibility.”
3 See Dr. Lightfoot’s “ Illustrations of the Acts from Recent Discoveries,” Contemp. Review (May 1878), and Dr. Salmon’s Jntrod. Ὁ. 339f.
I. | The Foundation of the Church. 5
of the whole record.’ Further, the position assigned to the Apostles in St. Paul’s Epistles and in the Acts suggests or presupposes some such dealings of Christ with them in particular as the Gospels record. Once again, then (for this reason and in virtue of all the body of considerations which make for the trust- worthiness of the evangelic records), it is here taken
for granted without scruple that Jesus Christ did
really give in substance those instructions and com- missions to His Apostles and to His Church, both before and after His Resurrection, which He is recorded to have given in the narratives of St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John.? It is then from no
1 While we wait for an article on the subject of the Acts by the man who perhaps in all Europe is best qualified for the task, I may refer (1) to Dr. Salmon’s Jnirod. lect. xviii; (2) to the discussions on the relation of the Acts to the Epistle to the Galatians in Dr. Lightfoot’s Commentary on the latter Epistle, and the appended essay on ‘‘St. Paul and the Three ” ; (3) to the remarkable admissions of one of the last critics amongst those who pay honour to the name of Baur—Dr. Pfleiderer (see his Hibbert Lectures, lect. i). Cf. Harnack Dogmengesch. i. pp. 62, 63, etc.
? The authenticity of St. John’s Gospel has been sufficiently vindicated of recent years by Professor Godet and Dr. Westcott.
With reference to a point of some importance for the subject of the ministry in St. Matthew’s Gospel—our Lord’s commission to St. Peter— Prof. Harnack has recently argued (Contemp. Review, Aug. 1886, ‘“‘ The Present State of Research in Early Church History,” p. 230) that an earlier version of the narrative is preserved in the text of Tatian’s Diatessaron. We have in Armenian St. Ephraem’s Commentary on this Harmony of the Gospels. In the Latin translation of this (Zvangelit Concordantis Expositio facta a S. Ephraemo, in Lat. trans. a R. P. Aucher, Mechitarista, pp. 153, 154) the words run: Beatus es Simon, et porte inferi te non vincent. Afterwards the words Tu es petra are quoted. Here it appears that it is against St. Peter that the gates of death are not to prevail, and nothing is said of the foundation of the Church. But we have not the whole text of the Diatessaron; St. Ephraem only quotes it to comment on it. Nor does he always quote it fully. In this case he gives no hint of the words Tu es petra till afterwards, out of their order. Elsewhere itis manifest that he does not quote the whole text ; see his comments on St. Jokn, as incorporated in the Harmony (pp. 145-153); and again (p. 66) on the Sermon on the Mount, where the quoted text of St. Matt. v. 22-32
6 Christian Ministry. [CHAP.
fear of free criticism that the authenticity and trust-
worthiness of these New Testament documents is here
assumed.
| @Tetmth 2. It will also be taken for granted that the apostolic
carnation. interpretation of the Person of Christ is the true one —that He was the Incarnate Son of God. It is impor- tant to make this plain, because, though little stress will be laid upon this doctrine, yet our rational attitude towards the development of Christian institutions depends to a certain extent upon our relation to it.’ The Incarnation represents necessarily a climax in the divine self-revelation. It represents this necessarily, because no closer relation of God to man is conceivable than that involved in the “ Word—Who is God— made flesh” in the historical Person, Christ Jesus, in such sense that “he who hath seen Him hath seen the
runs thus: ‘‘Sed ego dico vobis: qui dicit fratri suo, fatue . . . qui dicit
fratri suo, vilis aut stulte. . . . Audistis quia dictum est: non adulterabis, sed ego dico vobis: quicunque aspicit et concupiscit, adulterat. Si manus tua vel pes tua scandalizet te...” St. Ephraem does not by any means
quote the whole text; but he refers to more than he quotes. Thus in the passage under discussion, if we reconstruct his text from his commentary (Dominus cum ecclesiam suam aedificaret etc., p. 154), it must have run to this effect: ‘* Blessed art thou, Simon. Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against thee.” The ‘‘ thee” may be due simply to the “it” (αὐτῆς) being referred to πέτρα and not to ἐκκλησία, a reference which Origen in loc, discusses. Probably St. Ephraem accepts this reference and, interpreting the rock of St. Peter, glosses αὐτῆς as equivalent to gov. There are no traces of any such reading as Harnack imagines to have existed in the Greek or in the Syriac versions (either Cureton’s or the Peshitto), which have our text. See Zahn’s Diates- saron Ὁ. 163.
1 For example, it seems a grave critical defect in Dr. Hatch’s Bampton Lectures, The Organization of the Early Christian Churches, that, as he has not explained his relation to certain most significant New Testament documents, so also he has not made it plain whether he really believes the ‘super- natural’ character of the Person of Christ. If he does, then his propositions about the merely ‘natural’ development of Christian institutions will surely want correcting (lecture i. p. 18).
ae eS
1.| The Foundation of the Church. ”
Father.” God cannot come any nearer to man, man cannot come any nearer to God than is effected in Him, in Whom “ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” This is “the end of the days.” As M. Godet strikingly observes : ‘‘ The history of the world (from the Christian point of view) is summarized in its essence in these three words: He is coming: He is come: He is coming again.”* The development then of God’s revelation of Himself comes to its climax in the Incarnation. Henceforth another sort of development begins. All institutions, all races, all individuals are gradually brought into the light of Christ and judged by their relation to Him. Christ developes Himself as the Second Adam, realizing the capacities of all humanity by bringing it all, age by age, race by race, individual by individual, into relation to Himself, till He can ‘come again,’ in the revelation of the glory of the sons of God, as the acknowledged centre and head of humanity and of the universe.
It is not here proposed to inquire whether analogies will be found in other departments of evolution to what has taken place in the history of religion. This is a large question, which does not belong to our pre- sent subject. But the general theory of evolution must, of course, like every other generalization, mould itself to the facts. It must take account, among other things, of religious facts. Now in the history of religion a term has, in a certain sense, been reached in the past. The Christian moral standard, the Christian character claims to be essentially final. The Person-
1 tudes Bibliques, N. T. p. 291.
8 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
ality of Christ, as it finds expression in His own lan- guage and action and in the belief about Him of His earliest disciples,’ represents finality. Thus also the grace of His Spirit is the fulness of grace, adequate for _all ages and all men; and the truth revealed in Him is ‘a faith once for all delivered,’ simple and universal, which is to mould human character to the end.’ Plainly, then, the rational acceptance of this position about Christ gives us certain premises or pre- suppositions with reference to the institutions which perpetuate the presence, and represent the will and mind, of Christ. A ‘once for all delivered’ faith and grace associates itself naturally with a once for all in- stituted society and a once for all established ministry. The question whether “‘ the Christian societies, and the confederation of those societies which we commonly speak of in a single phrase as ‘the visible Church of Christ,’ were formed without any special interposition of that mysterious and extraordinary action of the divine volition, which, for want of a better term, we speak of as ‘supernatural,’” * is rationally conditioned by the question whether the manifestation of the Christ is of this order. A supernatural cause sug-
1 TI may refer to Dr. Sanday’s What the First Christians thought about Christ (Oxford House Papers) and to the argument in Mr. Stanton’s Jewish and Christian Messiah p. 154 f.
2 See Dr. Westcott’s Christus Consummator pp. 124 f. 151 f.
3 Hatch B. L. p. 18. On p. 20, the author says the Church ‘‘is divine as the solar system is divine.” Now inasmuch as the Church is a human society, he must mean that it is divine, as the British constitution or the Roman empire is divine. But if Christ be personally God, if in virtue of a divine life He burst the tomb and rose the third day from the dead, the society to which He gave birth may presumably be divine in another sense—not as exempted from ‘‘ the universe of law,” but because it belongs
to that kingdom of law in which effects are relative to causes... WJ). eo. κω
Am one Om unt
a ΨΘΜΕΟΝΟΣ
—
- ὌΝ
1.7 The Foundation of the Church. 9
gests supernatural effects. Nothing will be assumed here about the Church and the ministry. The conclusions shall be drawn strictly from the evidence. But belief in the Incarnation opens our eyes to give due weight to the evidence. Now on the basis of these assumptions a Prelim : inquiry. question arises, which must be determined before the proper subject of the present inquiry can be ap- proached. Did Christ found a Church in the sense pia cnrist found a 1 ibl of a visible society ? Geeks That He should have done so is intelligible enough. ~ , As it has recently been said,” “it is only by becoming | embodied in the undoubting convictions of a society, lr »χο- ἐς by being, as it were, assimilated with its mind and , motives—that is to say, with living human minds and ; wills—and informing all its actions, that ideas have. 7 >). reality, and possess power, and become more than dry *- aree oe and lifeless thoughts.” “As great moral and social - ...... .- .Ψ . . . . 2 and political ideas are preserved in life and force °F 0h being embodied in the common and living convictions -/.<7. - L of the society which we call the State, so great spiri- tual ideas, which are the offspring of Christianity, are preserved in life and force by becoming the recognised beliefs and motives of the society which we call the 1 «For although it is indisputable that our Lord founded a Church, it is an Not unproved assumption that that Church is an aggregation of visible or organ- |‘) ~~ ized societies ; and although it is clear that our Lord instituted the rite of “ “~~~ ~~ Christian baptism, it is an unproved assumption that baptism was at the outset, as it has become since, not merely a sign of discipleship, but also a ceremony of initiation into a divine society” (Hatch B. ZL. pref. sec. ed. p. xii). To the idea that the Church is ‘‘a visible society, or aggregatio of societies,” is opposed the idea that it is ‘‘ synonymous with the elect.”
2 The Christian Church by R. W. Church, Dean of St. Paul’s, (Oxford House Papers, No. xvii.) pp. 4, 5, 15.
10 Christian Ministry. [CHAP.
Church.” Christianity would never have done what it has done in the world, if it had been a mere body of abstract truth, like a philosophy, to be apprehended by this or that individual. It would never have done what it has done, if it had been embodied only in a book or collection of books. It has lived on, and worked upon men, as a society or group of societies. This, of course, everybody would admit. The question is whether believers in Christ were left to organize themselves in societies by the natural attraction of sympathy in beliefs and aims, and are, therefore, still at liberty to organize themselves on any model which seems from time to time to promise the best results, or whether the divine Founder of the Christian religion Himself instituted a society, a brotherhood, to be the home of the grace and truth which He came to bring to men: so that becoming His disciple, meant from the first this—in a real sense this only—incorporation into His society. If this was the case, the Church was not created by men, nor can it be recreated from time to time in view of varying circumstances. It comes upon men from above. . It makes the claim of a divine institution. It has the authority of Christ. Christ did not, according to this view, encourage His disciples to form societies ; He instituted a society for them to belong to as the means of belonging to Him.’
1 Of course this antithesis requires guarding. The supernatural influence in the genesis of the Church did not annihilate ‘“‘the natural inclination which all men have unto sociable life :”” but it controlled and intensified it. This consilience of the natural and supernatural is beautifully expressed by Hooker, #. P. i. 15. 2.
1. ]e The Foundation of the Church. II
Now, as we watch the history of Christendom, we discern “a great number of organized religious bodies owing their existence and their purpose to Christian belief and Christian ideas;” but in the midst of these we discern also something incom- parably more permanent and more universal—one great continuous body—the Catholic Church. There it is; none can overlook its visible existence, let us say from the time when Christianity emerges out of the gloom of the sub-apostolic age down to the period of the Reformation. And all down this period of its continuous life this society makes a constant and unmistakeable claim. It claims to have been instituted as the home of the new covenant of salva- tion by the Incarnate Son of God. Is the claim which this visible Catholic Church has made a just one? This is our present question: we are not asking yet whether the Church has any particular form of polity by divine institution, but whether the thing itself— the visible society—is the handiwork of Christ. This @tinsc ΑΝ much we premise: that it would be nothing extra- ordinary if Christ did institute a Church. It is reasonable to think’ that, if He came to leave among
1 Of. the measured words of Butler, Analogy pt. τι. ch. i: ‘‘As Chris- tianity served these ends and purposes, when it was first published, by the miraculous publication itself, so it was intended to serve the same purposes in future ages by means of the settlement of a visible Church ; of a society distin- guished from common ones and from the rest of the world, by peculiar religious institutions, by an instituted method of instruction and an instituted form of external religion. Miraculous powers were given to the first preachers of Christianity, in order to their introducing it into the world: a visible Church was established in order to continue it, and carry it on successively throughout all ages. . . . To prevent [Christianity being sunk and forgotten in a very few ages], appears to have been one reason why a visible Church was instituted ; to be like a city upon a hill, a standing memorial to the
12 Christian Ministry. [CHaP.
mankind the inestimable treasures of redemptive
: truth and grace, He would not have cast them abroad ον NWriah among men, but would have given them a stable home irl | in a visible and duly constituted society—a society simple enough in its principles to be capable of adaptation to the varying needs of ages and nations
and individuals, simple enough to be catholic, but organized enough to take its place amidst the institu-
tions of the world with a recognisable and permanent
character.
Witness of But, as a fact, does history record that He did act ey τς thus? The affirmative answer to this question shall Yor, cox’, be given first by exhibiting the impressive unanimity -& (<= with which the early Christians believed that He did : tuta-*nfé,secondly, by making it plain that the existence of πὰς the visible Church was not due to external ‘secular’
vy’ influences: lastly, by supporting the position from the evidence of the New Testament, especially of the Gospels.
Q) Baty (1) It is plain that the visible society admits ot
beet being differently represented, according as it is re- gaat We garded as the home of divine grace, uniting men by the + Spirit through Christ to God and to one another ; or as oa) w»),,,the kingdom of truth, maintaining the ‘witness of
dae Tut Jesus ;’ or as the organ of divine authority, guiding ajo ~~" and disciplining the lives of men. But it is equally Heer )
plain that such modes of representing the Church
world of the duty which we owe our Maker, to call men continually . .. to attend to it, and by the form of religion ever before their eyes, remind them of the reality ; to be the repository of the oracles of God ; to hold up the light of revelation . . . and propagate it throughout all generations to the end of the world.” Cf. also the general argument of his Charge to the Clergy of Durham.
τ παρ δ
1.} The Foundation of the Church. 13
are not at all incompatible with one another, and all of them equally postulate the wisibility of the Church.
We proceed then to trace up the different lines of tradition in the Church so as to show that the differ- ence of colour put upon Christian truth by the varieties of spiritual temperament and the varying claims of circumstance did not affect this central posi- tion. Andas, of recent years, considerable originality has been assigned to the “ Augustinian theory” of the Church,’ we will make a beginning with the inte west: Church of St. Augustin—the Church of Africa. Now, whatever novelty there may have been in Augustin’s presentation of the matter,’ at least he did not origin- ate the idea of a visible Church. Let us take our earliest representative of African Christianity, Ter- tertunian. tullian (at the end of the second century), and listen to what he teaches on the subject, in argument with the Gnostics, giving it as the one thing certain, what- ever may be matter for question.
‘Christ Jesus our Lord,” he says,* “so long as He
1 E.g. by Dr. Hatch /.c. pp. xii, xiii.
2 St. Augustin’s doctrine of the Church is thus stated by Mr. Cunningham (St. Austin p. 116): ‘*The kingdom of God was not a mere hope, but a present reality, not a mere name for a divine idea, but an institution, duly organized among men, subsisting from one generation to another ; closely inter-connected with earthly rule, with definite guidance to give, and a definite part to take in all the affairs of actual life. To him the kingdom of God was an actual Polity, just as the Roman Empire was a Polity too: it was ‘visible’ in just the same way as the earthly State, for it was a real institution with definite organization, with a recognised constitution, with a code of laws and means of enforcing them, with property for its uses, and officers to direct it.” This would represent what is meant by “ the Augus- tinian theory.” But in fact St. Augustin’s relation to the idea of the Church is a complex one. On the whole he intended to spiritualize rather than materialize it: cf. Hermann Reuter Augustinische Studien, esp. pp. 101, 150-1, 485 ff.
3 de Praeser. 20: ‘‘Christus Iesus, Dominus noster, permittat dicere
14 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
was living on earth, spoke Himself either openly to the people or apart to His disciples. From amongst these he had attached to His person twelve especially, who were destined to be the teachers of the nations. Accordingly, when one of these had fallen away, the remaining eleven received His command, as He was departing to the Father after His Resurrection, to go and teach the nations, who were to be baptized into the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. At once, then, the Apostles (whose mission this title in- dicates), after adding Matthias to their number as the twelfth in the place of Judas on the authority of the prophecy in David’s psalm, and after receiving the promised strength of the Holy Ghost to enable them to work miracles and preach, first of all bore witness to the faith in Judzea and established Churches, and afterwards going out into the world proclaimed the same teaching of the same faith to the nations, and
interim, quisquis est, cuiuscunque dei filius, cuiuscunque materiae homo et deus, .. . quamdiu in terris agebat, ipse pronuntiabat sive populo palam sive discentibus seorsum, ex quibus duodecim praecipuos lateri suo allegerat destinatos nationibus magistros. Itaque uno eorum decusso reliquos undecim digrediens ad Patrem post resurrectionem iussit ire et docere nationes tinguendas in Patrem et in Filium et in Spiritum sanctum. Statim igitur apostoli, quos haec appellatio missos interpretatur, assumpto per sortem duodecimo Matthia in locum Iudae ex auctoritate prophetiae quae est in psalmo David, consecuti promissam vim Spiritus sancti ad virtutes et eloquium, primo per Iudaeam contestata fide in Iesum Christum ecclesiis institutis, dehinc in orbem profecti eandem doctrinam eiusdem fidei nationi- bus promulgaverunt. Et proinde ecclesias apud unamquamque civitatem condiderunt, a quibus traducem fidei et semina doctrinae ceterae exinde ecclesiae mutuatae sunt, et quotidie mutuantur, ut ecclesiae fiant. Ac per hoc et ipsae apostolicae deputabuntur, ut soboles apostolicarum ecclesiarum. Omne genus ad originem suam censeatur necesse est. Itaque tot ac tantae ecclesiae una est illa ab apostolis prima, ex qua omnes.’ Sic omnes primae et omnes apostolicae, dum una omnes probant unitatem. Communicatio pacis et appellatio fraternitatis et contesseratio hospitalitatis, quae iura non alia ratio regit, quam eiusdem sacramenti una traditio.”
SS ισι πο ἱκανῶς, μἱδοάρσωναος πα τὰ δ
1. ] The Foundation of the Church. 15
forthwith founded Churches in every city, from which all other Churches in their turn have received the tradition of the faith and the seeds of doctrine; yes, and are daily receiving, that they may become Churches; and it is on this account that they too will be reckoned apostolic, as being the offspring of apostolic Churches. Every kind of thing must be referred to its origin. Accordingly, many and great as are the Churches, yet all is that one first Church which is from the Apostles, that one whence all are derived. So all are the first, and all are apostolic, while all together prove their unity: while the fellowship of peace and the title of brotherhood and the interchange of hospitality remain amongst them—
rights which are based on no other principle than the
one handing down of the same faith.”
Here we have a perfectly clear conception of the one catholic Church,’ founded in fulfilment of Christ’s intentions by His immediate ambassadors, of which every local Church is the representative for a par- ticular area. Behind “the Churches,” and prior to them in idea is the one Church which each embodies.”
1 Second century writers speak of the Church as actually catholic—so
strong is their sense that it is meant to be so—i.e. they speak of the Church as having spread universally. Cf. πάντα τὰ ἔθνη τὰ ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν κατ-
οἰκοῦντα, ἀκούσαντα καὶ πιστεύσαντα... ἐκλήθησαν (Hermas Sim. ix. 17) ; ἡ ἐκκλησία. .. κατὰ τῆς ὅλης οἰκουμένης ἕως περάτων τῆς γῆς διεσπαρμένη (Iren. i. 10. 1); ‘‘expansa in universum mundum” (ib. iv. 36. 2); ἡ κατὰ
τὴν οἰκουμένην καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία (Mart. Polyce. 8).
2 The thought of salvation in the Church is so prominent in Tertullian’s mind that he finds it in the Lord’s Prayer. Speaking of the title ‘‘ Father,” he says (de Orat. 2): ‘‘ Appellatio ista et pietatis et potestatis est. Item in Patre Filius invocatur ; Ego enim, inquit, et Pater unum sumus. Ne mater quidem ecclesia praeteritur. Siquidem in filio et patre mater recognoscitur, de qua constat et patris et filii nomen.”
Cyprian 6. A.D. 255.
16 Christian Ministry. [CHAP.
Thus the Church is to Tertullian’s mind God’s insti- tution for man’s education and salvation. To the Church belong the Scriptures ; so utterly in fact does he refuse to separate the books of the Church from herself that he declines, in theory at least, even to argue as to the meaning of the Scriptures with those outside the Church, because they do not belong to them. So little does he conceive of the Christian religion as an abstract doctrine written in a book !?
It was, then, through membership in this one apostolic Church, catholic and local, that African Christians believed themselves to inherit the grace of Christ. Communion with God depended on com- munion with His Church. ‘“ He cannot have God for his father,” Cyprian is fond of emphasizing,’ ‘‘ who has not the Church for his mother.” ‘ Dost thou believe” —so runs the baptismal interrogation in St. Cyprian’s day—‘“‘(in) the remission of sins and eternal life through the holy Church?” *
1 de Praescr. 19: ‘* Ergo non ad scripturas provocandum est, nec in his constituendum certamen, in quibus aut nulla aut incerta victoria est, aut parum certa. Nam etsi non ita evaderet collatio scripturarum, ut utramque partem parem sisteret, ordo rerum desiderabat illud prius proponi, quod nune solum disputandum est: quibus competat fides ipsa, cuius sint scrip- turae.”
2 Pp. \xxiv. 7: “ὍΘΙ et ex qua et cui natus est, qui filius ecclesiae non est? ut habere quis possit Deum patrem, habeat ante ecclesiam matrem.” Cf. Hp. lv. 24: ‘“* Quisque ille est et qualiscunque est, Christianus non est qui in Christi ecclesia non est.” Zp. Ixxiii. 21: ‘‘Salus extra ecclesiam non est.” Cyprian’s conception of the bishop constituting the Church will be brought out later.
3 Hp. \xix. 7: ‘‘ Credis remissionem peccatorum et vitam aeternam per sanctamecclesiam?” Zp. lxx. 2: ‘‘ Credis in vitam aeternam et remissionem peccatorum per sanctam ecclesiam ?”
Dr. Westcott (Historic Faith, Note iii. p. 186) does not notice the latter form. Previously (p. 116) he lays stress on the idea that ‘‘ we do not say we believe in” the Church: we believe only ‘“‘that it is.” This distinction
I. | The Foundation of the Church. 17
There is no reason to think that such a question would have startled or shocked the faithful in any part of the Christian Church. Certainly Irenaeus, the trensens bishop of Lyons, who represents the Church of Gaul and the Churches of Asia where he had been brought up, held the same belief in the Church and made the same exclusive claim for it.
“Τὴ the Church,” he says, “ God placed apostles, prophets, doctors, and the whole operation of the Spirit, and all who do not have recourse to the Church do not participate in Him, but deprive themselves of life. . . . For where the Church is there is the Spirit of God, and where the Spirit of God is there is the ‘Church and all grace.” “‘ God will judge all those who make schisms. . . . No reformation can be wrought by them which can compensate for the injury of the schism. God will judge all those who are outside the truth—that is, who are outside the Church.” ‘ The Church has been planted as the paradise in this world: so then, of every tree of the paradise ye shall eat, says the Spirit of God—that is, of every Scripture of the Lord.”
comes from Rufinus ; cf. his Commentary on the Creed § 36: ‘“‘hac itaque praepositionis syllaba Creator a creaturis secernitur et divina separantur ab humanis.” Cf, St. Augustin de Fide et Symbolo 21. But this would apply neither to all the western Creeds (see, in Heurtley’s Harmonia Symbolica, Creeds xix, xxvi, xxvii, xxx, xxxvii-viii, and the early Spanish Creed in Priscillian T’ract. ii. p. 36), nor to the eastern form of the Con- stantinopolitan Creed (the form of most authority in the Church) with the earlier eastern Creeds (see Pearson On the Creed art. ix, notes 52, 53; and Westcott 1.6. p. 195). It is therefore surely impossible to lay stress on it.
1 Trenaeus’ conception of the organization of the Church is presented later. The passages here quoted are iii. 24. 1 (quoted below, p. 120) ;
iv. 33. 7: ‘“Avaxpwe? δὲ rods τὰ σχίσματα ἐργαζομένους, κενοὺς ὄντας τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ἀγάπης καὶ τὸ ἴδιον λυσιτελὲς σκοποῦντας, ἀλλὰ μὴ τὴν ἕνωσιν τῆς ἐκκλησίας" καὶ διὰ μικρὰς καὶ τὰς [τυχούσας] αἰτίας τὸ μέγα καὶ ἔνδοξον σῶμα τοῦ Χρισσοῦ
Β
(recognition also of God’s wider dealings)
18 Christian Ministry. | CHAP.
It might be asked how St. Irenaeus reconciles this exclusive claim which he makes for the Church with a truth to which he also gives expression—namely, that God’s revelation of Himself through His Son, Who is the Eternal Word, ‘the Light which lighten- eth every man,’ is in a sense universal, and that in order to the apprehension of this universal revelation there is a universal capacity for faith which is exhi- bited in all moral obedience to God wherever found.’ Irenaeus teaches this, with the Alexandrians and with Justin Martyr.’ With the last-named father he would,
τέμνοντας καὶ διαιροῦντας Kat ὅσον τὸ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς dvapovvras’ . . . οὐδεμία δὲ τηλικαύτη δύναται πρὸς αὐτῶν κατόρθωσις: γενέσθαι, ἡλίκη τοῦ σχίσματός ἐστιν ἣ βλάβη. Iudicabit autem et omnes eos qui sunt extra veritatem, id est qui sunt extra ecclesiam.”
v. 20. 2: ‘*Fugere igitur oportet sententias ipsorum [haereticorum]. . . confugere autem ad ecclesiam, et in eius sinu educari, et dominicis scrip- turis enutriri. Plantata est enim ecclesia paradisus in hoc mundo. Ab omni ergo ligno paradisi escas manducabitis, ait Spiritus Dei; id est, ab omni scriptura dominica manducate.”
The connection in the mind of the early Church between schism and heresy is very close. The fundamental idea of heresy is that of self-willed separatism or particularism. Cf. Rothe Anfdnge der christlichen Kirche § 53 Ὁ. 563 f. and pseudo-Athan. Dict. et Interpret. Parabol. Evang. qu. 38 (quoted by Rothe l.c. p. 566) Πόθεν λέγεται αἵρεσις ; ἀπὸ τοῦ αἱρεῖσθαί τι ἴδιον, καὶ τοῦτο ἐξακολουθεῖν. This expresses the primitive idea.
1 Tren. iv. 6. 5,7: “Εὖ δᾶ hoc Filium revelavit Pater, ut per eum omnibus manifestetur et eos quidem, qui credunt ei iusti, in incorruptelam et in aeter- num refrigerium recipiat ; credere autem ei, est facere eius voluntatem. . . . Nemo cognoscit .. . Patrem, nisi Filius et-quibuscunque Filius revelaverit. Revelaverit enim non solum in futurum dictum est, quasi tunc inceperit Verbum manifestare Patrem, cum de Maria natus; sed communiter per totum tempus positum est. Ab initio enim assistens Filius suo plasmati, revelat omnibus Patrem, quibus vult et quando vult et quemadmodum vult Pater; et propter hoc in omnibus et per omnia unus Deus Pater et unum Verbum Filius et unus Spiritus et una salus omnibus credentibus in eum.”
2 Justin Apol. i. 46: Tov Χριστὸν πρωτότοκον τοῦ θεοῦ εἶναι ἐδιδάχθημεν καὶ προεμηνύσαμεν λόγον ὄντα, οὗ πᾶν γένος ἀνθρώπων μετέσχε. καὶ of μετὰ λόγου βιώσαντες Χριστιανοί εἰσι, κἂν ἄθεοι ἐνομίσθησαν, οἷον ἐν “Ἕλλησι μὲν Σωκράτης καὶ Ἡράκλειτος καὶ οἱ ὅμοιοι αὐτοῖς, ἐν βαρβάροις δὲ ᾿Αβραὰμ καὶ ᾿Ανανίας καὶ ᾿Αζαρίας καὶ Μισαὴλ καὶ ᾿Ηλίας καὶ ἄλλοι πολλοί, ὧν τὰς πράξεις ἢ τὰ ὀνόματα καταλέγειν μακρὸν εἶναι ἐπιστάμενοι τανῦν παραιτούμεθα. ὥστε καὶ οἱ προγενόμενοι
=
TE Per
I. ] The Foundation of the Church. 19
no doubt, recognise all who, even in heathen lands as well as among the Jews, “lived or live with right reason,” as the “friends of Christ” the Eternal Reason, and even as “ Christians.” How would he reconcile such a position with the exclusive claim of the Church? Probably by holding that all who had not had the opportunity of becoming members of the Church while on earth would, if they had been true to their light, be received into the Church in Paradise. At any rate the reconciliation was not effected by the idea of an invisible Church to which they belonged— an invisible Church containing the true servants of God whether they belonged to the visible Church or not. Neither the existence of good men outside the Church, nor the presence of bad men inside it, ever drove the Christian Fathers, whether eastern or western, to this hypothesis.’
ἄνευ λόγου βιώσαντες ἄχρηστοι καὶ ἐχθροὶ τῷ Χριστῷ ἦσαν καὶ φονεῖς τῶν μετὰ λόγου βιούντων" οἱ δὲ μετὰ λόγου βιώσαντες καὶ βιοῦντες Χριστιανοὶ καὶ ἄφοβοι καὶ ἀτάραχοι ὑπάρχουσιν.
1 The Church on earth was regarded as subdivided into false and true members—the latter constituting the κυρίως ἐκκλησία of Origen, the corpus Christi verum of Jerome and Augustin. Neither of these (as Rothe, Anfiinge eic. p. 618 n. 44, remarks) ‘‘agrees with the invisible Church of the Protestants.” The point of difference is specially this, that, whereas the members of the ‘invisible Church’ are regarded as belonging indif- ferently to any or no ecclesiastical unity, with Origen and Augustin the conception is the opposite. The membership in the ‘true Church’ depends upon membership in the one visible Church on earth. The true Church is a subdivision of the actual Church—its genuine members. For ‘non omnes qui tenent ecclesiam, tenent et vitam acternam’’ (Augustin de Bapt. ν. 20); ‘‘multi . . . sunt in sacramentorum communione cum ecclesia, et iam non sunt in ecclesia” (de Unit. Eccl. 74). See further Rothe Anfiange § 61, esp. pp. 612 ff. and Stanton’s Jewish and Christian Messiah p. 230: “Τοῦ me premise that I think the distinction cannot be maintained, which was first introduced by the theology of the sixteenth century [‘the idea appears pretty fully developed in Wiklif,’ footnote], between a visible and invisible Church in this world, the latter consisting only of the truly godly. Not only is such a distinction uncountenanced by Scripture,
The Roman Church
Victor 6. A.D. 190.
20 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
From Africa and Gaul we come to the great west- ern centre—Rome. Certainly the idea of the visible Church and its unity was prominent there at the time when Victor, the bishop, attempted to excommunicate the Churches of Asia for keeping Easter after their own specially Johannine tradition. He endeavoured, says Kusebius,* “ to cut them off from the common unity” and make them “ utterly excommunicate.” He was reproved by Irenaeus for introducing into the Church the idea of a rigid uniformity, in place of the common faith, as the bond of union. He is reminded how, in the middle of the century, his pre- decessor Anicetus had kept his fellowship with the Asiatic Polycarp, in spite of their difference as to this
but the very idea of a Church is that of a Society which has its officers and its organisation. It is a contradiction in terms to call a number of indivi- duals a Church who are not united together in a body. The moment they do begin to unite, by virtue of their common supposed characteristic of genuine godliness, they cease to be invisible. There have been such attempts to form a pure Church; but history and the warnings of our Lord Himself have taught us what to think of them.” Of course the greater part of the Church is to us invisible, but that is because its members are no longer on earth, and they enjoy ‘‘perfect fellowship with one another, as well as with their Lord.” Cf. also William Law’s Third Letter to the Bishop of Bangor, at the beginning—a powerful and racy passage. Of course the truth that the Church is a visible society, containing evil as well as good, is involved in our Lord’s language in the parables of the Net gathering of every kid and the Ficld of wheat and tares: itis involved also in St. Paul’s whole conception of the Church and of ‘the saints,’ that is the Christians as bound to holiness by the consecration laid upon them in virtue of being baptized members of Christ, but not necessarily actually holy. Still it was only when the long
‘repose of the last parts of the second century and the first half of the third
made the Christian profession popular and easy, that the full weight of the problem came upon the Church, In part there was a disposition to meet it by rigorous discipline, passing into an impatient refusal to tolerate the ‘ mixed ’ condition of the Church; and this was a fruitful source of schism. In part stress was laid upon the Church on earth being only an outpost of a celestial society (cf. Tertull. de Bapt. 15 una ecclesia in caelis), an earthly image of it (cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. iv. 8. 66 εἰκὼν τῆς οὐρανίου ἐκκλησίας ἡ ἐπίγειος), or a preparation-ground for it : and thus necessarily imperfect. 1 Euseb. H. ZH. v. 2.
1] The Foundation of the Church. 21
particular custom—‘“ those who observed it, and those who did not, keeping the peace of the whole Church.”
But we may go back in the same Church at least? to the earlier part of the second century, to the days of Hermas, the seer of the Shepherd. In his visions the Church is represented as an aged lady, who appears to Hermas, and “through whom he receives visions and revelations.” She is aged, it is explained to him, because “she is the first creation of God, on whose account the world was made.”’ The Church is here thought of as in a way existing from the begin- ning in the purpose of God, in the ideal world. But this divine Idea has become a fact. The actual Church, τ made up « up of those yet alive and of some who have departed in the faith of Christ, is represented to Hermas under the figure of a tower with a marvellous unity, which is being built by the angels of God upon the waters of baptism, the stones which are used for the tower, and those which are rejected, representing all sorts of men.* This actual Church which is in process of being constructed is declared to be identical with the ideal Church. What existed before in idea is now real. And this real, visible Church is the only way
1 See further on the date, in chap. v1.
2 Vis. ii. 4: Τὴν πρεσβυτέραν, παρ᾽ ἧς ἔλαβες τὸ βιβλίδιον, τίνα δοκεῖς εἶναι ; ἐγώ φημι Thy Σίβυλλαν Πλανᾶσαι, φησίν, οὐκ ἔστιν. Tis οὖν ἐστίν ; φημί. Η ἐκκλησία, φησίν. εἶπον αὐτῷ" Διατί οὖν πρεσβυτέρα ; Ὅτι, φησίν, πάντων πρώτη
ἐκτίσθη" διὰ τοῦτο πρεσβυτέρα, καὶ διὰ ταύτην ὁ κόσμος κατηρτίσθη. Cf. Vis. iv.
1: αἱ ἀποκαλύψεις καὶ τὰ ὁράματα & μοι ἔδειξεν διὰ τῆς ἁγίας ἐκκλησίας αὐτοῦ.
8. Vis. iii. 2-8.
4 The tower which is the visible Church on earth is the ideal Church which appeared to Hermas, ‘O μὲν πύργος ὃν βλέπεις οἰκοδομούμενον, ἔγώ εἰμι, ἡ ἐκκλη- σία, ἡ ὀφθεῖσά σοι καὶ νῦν καὶ τὸ πρότερον (Vis. iii. 3). Cf. [pseudo] Clem. ad Cor. 14. If Hermas’ Church of the divine Idea is spoken οὗ ‘‘as a sort of Aeon ” (Rothe Anjfdnge p. 612 ἢ. 42) it must be remembered that the Idea is
Hermas.
Vhs h 9
22 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
of salvation. ‘“ When the tower is finished, those who have not yet repented can no longer find place, but will be cast out.”? There is another vision of the building of the tower to the same effect.* In this it is made plain that the Church in its present state is imperfect. Many, who had been gathered out of all nations “into the one body,” have fallen away and been cast out for awhile or for ever. Those who are members of the Church at present are evil as well as good; many will have to be cast out; and thus the Church as a whole will at the last be purified into complete holiness and unity. Still, as it is, the Church represents God’s will, God’s purpose of redemption ; and those who separate themselves from it, separate themselves from the hope of salvation—like the cove- tous or the extortionate. They are represented as men diseased : ‘‘they who are covered with scabs are they who denied their Lord and turned not to Him, but have become dry and desert-like, and cleave not
to the saints of God, but isolating themselves, lose —
their own souls.”* How could imagery express more strongly the idea of salvation through the Church ?* We may go back in the same Church to a yet
actualized to Hermas, as the Word is made flesh. This differentiates the Church’s system from the Gnostic; the Valentinian Aeon ἐκκλησία is (by contrast) only ideal. For the Jewish form of the doctrine of the eternal Church see Book of Enoch c. 39.
1 Vis. iii. 5. There is, however, an inferior salvation implied for some who do not find place in the tower, if they repent, and after a purgatorial purification (ib. 7).
2 Sim. ix. This tower is built upon the great Rock, Christ.
3 Sim. ix. 26.
4 The commission to Clement to send the book to the other cities (εἰς ras ἔξω πόλεις) implies the sense that the local Churches are essentially connected (Vis. ii. 4).
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I.| The Foundation of the Church. 23
earlier date, and still in the Epistle of Clement we cement shall find, without poetry or vision, the sense of the ig Church as vivid as possible. The Church in that Epistle is a visible society, with the divine principle
of order stamped upon her, as upon the Church of the old covenant, by God’s authority,’ and there is
a common tradition over the different local Churches,
for neglecting which that at Rome is bound to take her sister at Corinth to task. The western temper
no doubt tended later (as will be seen) to colour the idea of the Church. As the Church at Rome became Latinized and came to inherit the secular preroga- tives of the Roman name in addition to her own spiritual privileges, no doubt her influence gave a new tone—the tone of secular empire—to Christian insti- tutions. Thus the doctrine of the Church becomes materialized, but it is a complete mistake to suppose that the conception of the Church, or of the visible unity of the Church, was at all western in origin.
Ignatius of Antioch was a thorough oriental ; i theBast: and he writes to Churches which inherit the fruits **” το of the last years of apostolic influence when that influence had its centre at Ephesus. Yet it is im- possible to conceive a teaching about the Church as a visible society more intense, more passionate, than that of Ignatius. Christ’s authority is perpetuated in visible societies with a visible organization, and each of these societies, each Church, with its bishop
”
1 Clem. ad Cor. 40-44; see further chap. vi. ‘‘ The new law of the Church”) yg Clement ‘‘ most characteristically connected with the two models of te political and military organization of the Roman state and the sacerdota hierarchy of the Jewish theocracy ” (Pfleiderer Hibbert Lectures p. 252).
The Alex. andrians—
24 Christian Ministry. [oHAP.
and priests and deacons, is an embodiment of what is not local, but catholic.’ “ Where the bishop appears, there let the people be, as where is Christ Jesus, there is the catholic Church.” ‘“ He who is within the sanctuary is pure, he who is outside is impure, that is to say, he who does anything apart from bishop and presbytery and deacons is not pure in his conscience.” “If any one follows a separatist he does not inherit the kingdom of God.” ἢ
The Church may be represented from different points of view. It may be emphasized, as was said above, as the home of a divine grace covenanted to its members alone; this is perhaps the thought specially suggested by the scriptural metaphors of the body of Christ and the branches of the Vine. It may be emphasized from the side of authority, the Church being the mistress of men to subdue and to rule them; and this is the thought specially dear to the Roman genius. It may be emphasized also from the side of the revelation of truth, the Church being the school of truth to train human characters under its discip- line ; and no doubt to the Alexandrians it is from this point of view that Christianity is mostly, though not of course exclusively,’ thought of and Joved. Christ is the Truth. It is on the Church’s truth that the minds of Athanasius and Didymus are mainly
1 ad Smyrn. 8. ‘‘ The bishop is the centre of each individual Church, as Jesus Christ is the centre of the universal Church” (Lightfoot’s note), For further quotations and discussion see chap. VI.
2 ad Trall. 7: ad Philad. 3.
3 See, e.g., a fine passage in Origen (c. Cels. vi. 48) where the Church is described as an organism, ensouled by the indwelling Word—i7d τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ ψυχουμένην τῆν πᾶσαν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκκλησίαν.
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I. | _ The Foundation of the Church. 25
fixed ; + it is the divine philosophy—superseding all the fragmentary truth possible to the world apart from Christ by including it in a completer, purer whole— that Clement and Origen love. But it is quite an error to suppose that they were the less churchmen on this account. We have in St. Augustin’s Confes- sions an account of an old Platonic philosopher, Marius Victorinus, trying to induce a simple-hearted bishop to consider him a Christian on account of his convictions, without requirig him to come into the Church. Did walls, he asked, make Christians? The question was one better left without a direct answer. But at any rate the philosopher was given to under- stand that he could only become a Christian by being baptized into the Christian body. This ‘ ecclesiastical
temper ’ was as much that of Clement and Origen as”
of later Alexandrians.
Clement may indeed have had an idea of a “Church within a Church,” a Church of the men of knowledge who get beyond mere faith ; but men of faith and men of knowledge are at one in common church member- ship, in common use of the sacraments, in common obedience to ‘‘ the Church’s rule,” “‘ the apostolic and ecclesiastical right rule of beliefs.”* The faith is not
1 This is very beautifully illustrated by Didymus’ commentary on the Psalms. The guidance and food of the soul is mainly the Church’s truth, as expressed in her exact dogmas, and his feeling towards this truth is re- peatedly expressed with the greatest genuineness and force. Later, in the fifth century, the theology of Cyril has a quite different tone from the theology of Leo. The first thought of the one is Truth, of the other Government.
? Men of understanding are described as ὅσοι ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ [Χριστοῦ] σαφηνηθεῖσαν τῶν γραφῶν ἐξήγησιν κατὰ τὸν ἐκκλησιαστικὸν κανόνα ἐκδεχόμενοι διασώζουσιν
. (Strom, vi. 15. 125); οἷ, ἡ ἀποστολικὴ καὶ ἐκκλησιαστικὴ ὀρθοτόμία τῶν δογμάτων
Clement ¢, A.D. 190-200.
Origen.
26 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
a philosophy; it is embodied in the one visible Church, true, ancient, catholic, and apostolic. This only, in contrast to all the late-devised “schools” of heresy which cannot be called Churches, is the home of the elect, the one true virgin mother of human souls.’ ‘‘ This being the case,” he says, “it is plain that these later-born heresies and those yet subsequent to them are innovations, driven along distorted lines, upon the most ancient and true Church. It has also, I think, been made plain from what has been said that the Church which is true and really ancient is one, and into it the elect according to God’s purpose are gathered. . . . The One Church is associated with the nature of the One God. In substance, in conception, in origin, in excellence, we say that the ancient and catholic Church is one only, having nothing like or equal to herself.” ’
Just in the same way the truth, which Origen set himself with such noble zeal to expound and to put
(ib. vii. 16. 104). The heretic is a man who has ‘‘ kicked at the tradition of the Church and leaped off to the opinions of human heresies” (ib. vii. 16.95) ; he neither enters the kingdom of heaven himself, nor allows those whom he deceives to arrive at the truth.
1 Cf. Strom. vii. 17. (quoted below) ; vii. 15. 92; Paed. i. 6. 42 (on the one virgin mother). For further quotations see Rothe Anfange pp. 584f., 593, 601, etc. ; and Dr. Bigg’s Bampton Lectures, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, pp. 86, 153 τ 3, 98-100, etc.
2 Strom. vii. 17. 107 : Ὧν οὕτως ἐχόντων συμφανὲς Ex τῆς προγενεστάτης καὶ ἀληθεστάτης ἐκκλησίας τὰς μεταγενεστέρας ταύτας καὶ τὰς ἔτι τούτων ὑποβεβηκυίας τῷ χρόνῳ κεκαινοτομῆσθαι παραχαραχθείσας αἱρέσεις. ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων ἄρα φανερὸν οἷμαι γεγενῆσθαι, μίαν εἷναι τὴν ἀληθῆ ἐκκλησίαν τὴν τῷ ὄντι ἀρχαίαν, εἰς ἣν οἱ κατὰ πρόθεσιν δίκαιοι ἐγκαταλέγονται" ἑνὸς γὰρ ὄντος τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἑνὸς τοῦ κυρίου. διὰ τοῦτο καὶ τὸ ἄκρως τίμιον κατὰ τὴν μόνωσιν ἐπαινεῖται μίμημα ὃν ἀρχῆς τῆς μιᾶς. τῇ γοῦν τοῦ ἑνὸς φύσει συγκληροῦται ἐκκλησία 7 μία, ἣν εἰς πολλὰς κατατέμνειν βιάζονται αἱρέσεις. κατά τε οὖν ὑπόστασιν κατά τε ἐπίνοιαν κατά τε ἀρχὴν κατά τε ἐξοχὴν μόνην εἶναί φαμεν τὴν ἀρχαίαν καὶ καθολικὴν ἐκκλησίαν... . ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡ ἐξοχὴ τῆς ἐκκλησίας, καθάπερ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς συστάσεως, κατὰ τὴν μονάδα ἐστὶν πάντα τὰ ἄλλα ὑπερβάλλουσα καὶ μηδὲν ἔχουσα ὅμοιον ἣ ἴσον ἑαυτῇ.
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1. | The Foundation of the Church. 27
into relation to the whole of knowledge, was no abstract truth to be thought out by the free action of the individual mind; it was a truth committed to a society and, though the sanctified reason could ex- plain, elucidate, accommodate it, it could not trans- gress or neglect ‘“‘the rule of faith” without being self-condemned.* “Let the preaching of the Church be preserved,” he says at the beginning of the book which most. laid him open to accusations of heresy, ‘handed down through the order of succession from the Apostles, and remaining up to the present time in the Churches: that alone is to be believed as truth which is in no disagreement with the ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.”* Origen’s teaching upon the Church is full and rich, and when he comments, for instance, on the red cord which marked Rahab’s house for safety, he says with equal positiveness that there is no salvation except through the blood of Christ, and no salvation outside the Church.* Undoubtedly
1 See Bigg B.L. lecture v. init.
2 de Princip. prooem. 2: ‘‘Servetur vero ecclesiastica praedicatio per successionis ordinem ab apostolis tradita et usque ad praesens in ecclesiis permanens; illa sola credenda est veritas, quae in nullo et ecclesiastica et apostolica discordat traditione.”’
3 in Iesu Nave hom. iii. 5: ‘‘Sciebat etenim quia nulli esset salus nisi in sanguine Christi. . . . Si quis ergo salvari vult veniat in hanc domum.. . . Ad hane veniat domum in qua Christi sanguis in signo redemptionis est . . . Nemo ergo sibi persuadeat, nemo semet ipsum decipiat : extra hanc domum, id est extra ecclesiam, nemo salvatur.” in Matt. xii. 11: ἥτε ἐκκλησία, ὡς Χριστοῦ οἰκοδομή, τοῦ οἰκοδομήσαντος ἑαυτοῦ τὴν οἰκίαν φρονίμως ἐπὶ τὴν πέτραν, ἀνεπιδεκτός ἐστι πυλῶν ἄδου, κατισχυουσῶν μὲν παντὸς ἀνθρώπου τοῦ ἔξω τῆς πέτρας καὶ τῆς ἐκκλησίας, οὐδὲν δὲ δυναμένων πρὸς αὐτήν. Cf. his interpretation of St. John 1. 29: ‘‘He taketh away the sin of the world,” i.e. ‘‘ the world of the Church,” the world within the world—the true κόσμος (in Ioann. vi. ad fin.). It should be added that Origen, like Augustin, recognised that the Church had in some sense begun to exist from the beginning, cf. in Cant. i, 11, 12: ‘‘prima etenim fundamenta congregationis ecclesiae statim ab initio sunt posita.”
A.D. 228-231,
The apolo- gists—
Aristides.
28 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
Clement and Origen alike endeavoured to mitigate this doctrine of exclusive salvation within the Church, so as to bring it into harmony with God’s universal purposes, with His recognised equity and good-will towards all, and with the universal presence of the Word to all men.* But with all this it is an un- doubted truth that they did, like all the other Fathers, regard God’s covenant in Christ as made with a visible society, membership in which was of universal obliga- tion and alienation from which was death.
Nor can it be maintained that the more philosophic apologists of the second century were inclined “ to transform the Gospel into a monotheistic moral sys- tem.” It has been said that in the recently recovered fragment of the Apology of the philosopher Aristides, presented to the Emperor Hadrian about a.p. 125, “Christianity is exhibited as the most absolutely certain philosophy.” * But an important consideration
2)
1 E.g. (1) By generous recognition of the preparatory discipline of God leading up to the Incarnation all over the world: see above, p. 18.
(2) By drawing a distinction between different points of Christian belief ; οἱ els τὰ κυριώτατα παραπίπτοντες are distinguished from οἱ περὶ τῶν ἐν μέρει σφαλλόμενοι. Only the former are ψεῦσται τῷ ὄντι (Clem. Strom. vi. 15. 124). Cf. Origen c. Cels. v. 63.
(3) By distinguishing grades of salvation, and excluding virtuous disbe- lievers in Christ only from the highest eternal life. Origen in Rom. ii. 7: ‘* Iste licet alienus a vita videatur aeterna, quia non credit Christo, et intrare non possit in regnum caelorum, quia renatus non est ex aqua et Spiritu, vide- tur tamen quod per haec, quae dicuntur ab apostolo, bonorum operum gloriam et honorem et pacem perdere penitus non possit. . . . Sed tamen in arbitrio legentis sit, probare quae dicta sunt.”
* Harnack, Contemp. Review (Aug. 1886), p. 229. The fragments of two Sermones 85. Aristidis Philosophi have been edited from an early Armenian version, with a Latin translation, by the Mechitarist Fathers. The first Sermo has at least one interpolated word, corresponding to the Latin word deipara, but is otherwise apparently genuine. The Emperor Hadrian is assured that there are four stirpes (compertum est nobis quattuor esse humani generis stirpes) or four nationes of men: barbarians, Greeks,
1. | The Foundation of the Church. 29
is here left out of account. Christians are spoken
of as constituting a new “race” or “kind” of men; side by side with Greeks and barbarians and Hebrews are Christians. The mere adherents of a philosophic school could not be so described ; Chris- tians can be (however liable the expression is to be misunderstood), because Christianity is essentially a society,a body. To Justin Martyr Christians are “the Fastin genuine high-priestly race of God,” and the account **” ἢ of the sacraments which he gives the emperor in his Apology, shows us how completely he conceived of Christianity as a society.’ There is, again, no more beautiful description of the Church than that given
by another apologist, Theophilus of Antioch, when he Theophiius compares the “holy Churches” to fertile and well- inhabited islands in the sea, which have fair harbours
of truth to welcome and give security to storm-tossed souls. ‘‘'To these they flee for refuge who wish to be saved, and who are lovers of the truth, wishing to escape the wrath and judgment of God.” And there
are other islands, barren and dry and uninhabited
Hebrews, and Christians. Hadrian himself, some ten years later, uses simi- lar language (if his letter to Servian is genuine; see Lightfoot’s /gnatius i. p. 464): “‘hune [nummum] Christiani, hunc Iudaei, hunec omnes veneran- tur et gentes.” Cf. Melito’s expression for the Christians—rd τῶν θεοσεβῶν γένος (ap. Euseb. H. Ε΄. iv. 26), and the same word in the Ep. ad Diognet. 1 (referred to as used by him) καινὸν τοῦτο γένος ἢ ἐπιτήδευμα, also πολιτεία (c. 5), though the auther is explaining that Christians remain members of their own different races and are not a people apart. Cf. Justin’s ἀρχιερατικὸν τὸ ἀληθινὸν γένος ἐσμὲν τοῦ θεοῦ (Dial. 116) and μιᾷ ψυχῇ καὶ μιᾷ συναγωγῇ καὶ μιᾷ ἐκκλησίᾳ (ib. 63). It becomes an expression of popular hatred against Christians that they are a genus tertium. See Tertull. Scorp. 10: ‘‘ genus tertium deputamur.” ad. Nat. 1. 8: ““ Romani, Iudaei, dehine Christiani ; ubi autem Graeci?” Also Origen c. Cels. viii. 75: ἡμεῖς ἐν ἑκάστῃ πόλει ἄλλο σύστημα πατρίδος, κτισθὲν λόγῳ Θεοῦ, ἐπιστάμενοι. 1 Apol. i. 65.
The heathen idea of the Christians.
30 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
save of wild beasts, on whose harbourless coasts ships are only wrecked, and these “ are the schools of error, that is of the heresies, which destroy those who approach them.”?
Such being the Christian conception of their own body, it was inevitable that the world outside also should have regarded them as members of a society or brotherhood. Asa matter of fact it was in this way that they became an object of suspicion. They seemed a sort of secret society, with an unintelligible ‘ free- masonry’ of their own. Men suspected them of all sorts of secret iniquities. And all this was due to the closeness of their corporate life; they seemed a “people of profane conspiracy,” “ὃ secret race, avoid- ing the light, silent in public, chattering in corners,” who “recognised one another by secret marks and signs, and loved almost before they knew one another,” * calling one another by the suspicious name of “ brother.”* So, like any other guild or sodality, they appeared before the eyes of men as a body whose privileges were conditional on membership. Exact terms of membership were a special feature of contem-
1 Theophilus ad Autolycum ii. 14. In order to carry back the evidence of the church conception to the earliest days, outside the area of Christian his- tory covered by the New Testament, it should be mentioned that the Didache conceives of Christians as constituting a visible society governed by a common law. The visible society, the Church, knit together by social sacraments (though these sacraments are conceived of in a judaic, meagre spirit), is the home of the revelation of knowledge and immortality given in Christ, and the antechamber to the final kingdom. Cf. x. 5: ‘‘ Remember Thy Church to deliver her from all evil, and perfect her in Thy love, and gather her from the four winds, the sanctified Church, into Thy kingdom which thou didst prepare for her.” Cf. ix. 4.
* This vivid picture is given in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, cc. 8, 9.
3 «Sic nos, quod invidetis, fratres vocamus” (Octav. 31).
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I. | The Foundation of the Church. 31
porary guilds. Their members constituted a sort of republic apart." Thus, though Christians might make public explanation of their rites and doctrines to avoid the misconceptions of the outside world, yet these rites and doctrines were admittedly the private property of their society, and no one could have the Christian’s God for his father who had not the , Christian’s Church for his mother.
(2) But it has been suggested that Christianity @thesocia owed its existence as a visible society to the fact that Shrsteny
secular in-
in the age when it ppread there was a special tendency uence of the to association ‘in the air.’ Undoubtedly it was an age of guilds.* “The need of association, of the strength which comes of association was, at any rate, as great in antiquity as to-day; and among the peoples of antiquity it is the Romans, perhaps, who had the keenest sense of the need.”* The religious associations and trade guilds (sodalitates, collegia) were indeed ancient institutions at Rome. But the principle of © association had received a great development, beginning with the later years of the Republic and under the early Empire. Thus every trade, every interest, came to have its collegium with its organization more or less elaborate, its officers, its specified terms of member- ship, its periodical feast. ‘“ But it was not necessary, in order to form an association, to be members of the same profession, to be neighbours even, or compatriots ;
1 See esp. Boissier (as below) p. 261.
3 See—an admirable account—Boissier La Réligion Romaine bk. ii. ch. 3: Mommsen de Collegiis et Sodaliciis Romanorum: Hatch B. L. p. 26 f. My quotations are from Boissier.
3 Boissier ii. p. 248.
49 Christian Ministry. [CHAP.
it was enough to experience isolation or weakness, to feel the need of union to fight against misery or ‘ennui.’ This need was not rare, especially among the working classes.”* The tendency to use this freedom of asso- ciation for purposes of political faction led to its being put under restraint. No association might be formed without permission.*” But notwithstanding such prohibition, associations were formed and spread. ‘They filled Rome, they spread in the little towns, they penetrated into the country, they covered the richest provinces,” they honeycombed all ranks of society.” They existed—where the authority to re- press should have been strongest—even in the army. Contemporaneously with the early spread of Chris- tianity they developed largely as burial societies—in part, because association in this form was allowed.* These burial guilds, in common with perhaps all col- legia, had a religious basis more or less nominal, though the real purpose of association was of another sort.” With some of the associations the religious object, the promotion of some special cult, was the primary and real bond of union. This had been the case to a very great extent with the Greek guilds.°
1 Boissier ii. p. 260.
2 Hatch B. L. p. 27 υ.
3. Boissier ii. p.250. But the spread was unequal.
4 This we know to have been the case in the first century. See Boissier ii. p. 280. The inscription from Lanuvium, which is the main evidence of this, is given at the end of Mommsen’s de Collegits. There were different classes of burial guilds, some not having the name collegium, but socictas (Boissier ii. p. 272).
5 Boissier ii. p. 268.,
® θίασοι, Epavor, dpyewves. See Foucart’s Les Associations Religieuses chez les Grecs.
1. | The Foundation of the Church. 23
They had come into existence in the days before and during the Macedonian supremacy, to cultivate some form of oriental worship with greater freedom than the State religion would tolerate. They had their terms of membership, their priests and officers of various sorts, generally elected annually, their sacred book, their ‘immutable law,’ their assembly to pass decrees—each one a microcosm of the State organiza- tion. These Greek guilds had been much less in- fluential, less respectable, and less prevalent than the Roman. However, they lasted on, and formed an element in that tendency to associate which (since the inscriptions have come to be studied) we know to have been a main characteristic of the otherwise somewhat monotonous life of the early empire.
Such was the character of the period in which Christianity spread. No doubt the Christian Church appeared as one of these multifarious ‘collegia.’ It was regarded by Pliny in Bithynia as a ‘collegium illicitum’ whose very existence was illegal. Again, “the first form, in which any Christian body was recognised by the law, was as a benefit-club with special view to the interment of the dead.”* No doubt, again, the familiarity of the Greek and Roman world with societies, with the idea of incorporation, with terms of membership, its privileges and the loss of them, greatly facilitated the spread of the Christian Church. It was thus an element in what
1 Lightfoot’s /gnatius i. pp. 17-21. The Jewish communities were also classed with the θίασοι ; cf. Joseph. Ant. [ud, xiv. 10: Γάϊος Καῖσαρ, ὁ ἡμέ- Tepos στρατηγὸς καὶ ὕπατος, ἐν τῷ διατάγματι κωλύων θιάσους συνάγεσθαι Kara πόλιν, μόνους τούτους οὐκ ἐκώλυσεν οὔτε χρήματα συνεισφέρειν οὔτε συνδεῖπνα ποιεῖν.
C
(α) No trace of such in- fluence in Christian writers.
e'
34 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
we recognise as the ‘ divine preparation’ for the spread of the Gospel; just as the Roman empire itself was another, and the general use of the Greek language, and the diffusion of the religion of the Jews through their dispersion, and the recognition in contemporary philosophy of the idea of the divine Reason or Word. But if the question be asked whether the influence of these contemporary guilds may not have modified the Christian religion in such a way as to be the cause of its assuming the form of an association or system of associations—the Church and the Churches—the answer is a decisive negative.
For, in the first place, any conception of real affi- nity between the Church and the collegia was, as the quotations above will have shown sufficiently, quite foreign to the minds of the Christian writers. Ter- tullian indeed suggests a contrast between them based
on the fact that Christians, and they alone, mutually
supported one another and had all things common ; but there was no consciousness of resemblance.”
1In some later developments Christianity may have borrowed in detail from contemporary clubs, e.g. the subdivision of monastic bodies into decuriae and centuriae probably (see Boissier ii. p. 264 with reference to Jerome’s letter); again, some customs with reference to the dead and the use of the term memoria in this connection (cf. μεμόριον, μεμορίτηΞ5), Boissier ii. p. 290. The term σύνοδος was used for the meetings of guildsmen : cf. σεμνοτάτη σύνοδος Foucart p. 202, sancta synodus (of an actors’ guild with immoral reputation) Boissier ii. p. 267f, But so obvious a term can hardly be said to have been borrowed to express the meetings of bishops. Also ἐκκλησία, but (see next page, note *) not in the Christian sense.
2 The collegia were only very subordinately or slightly charitable asso- ciations (see Boissier i. pp. 302, 303); the Greek ἔρανοι probably not at all. “‘ Les Eranes,” says Foucart (p. 145), “n’étaient pas des sociétés de secours mutuels.” The stipes menstruae were contributions to benefit-clubs, not like the weekly alms of the Christians ; see Tertull. Apol. 39. The point of closest connection between the Church and the guilds lay in the common meal ; the ‘love-feast’ of the Christians had shown very early its affinities
I. | The Foundation of the Church. 35
Nothing in fact was less characteristic of the Christian Church than those natural features of all association which it shared with the guilds, nothing less expressed the sentiments of its members towards their ‘ mother.’ “The resemblances” between the Church and the collegia, says M. Boissier, “are striking at the first glance; as soon as one approaches, the differences are apparent.” *
Secondly, the nomenclature of the Christian com- munities suggests the minimum of connection.? For in fact the Christian Church had its roots deep in Jewish soil. It derived from Judaism its charac-
to the guild suppers (1 Cor. xi. 17f.). But St. Paul meets this danger by marking the essential difference in origin and aim of the ‘Lord’s Supper.’ Historically, it was a development of the Paschal supper (St. Matt. xxvi. 7).
1 Boissier ii. p. 302.
® In the collegia and sodalicia we should hear of the album, or roll of mem- bers: the magistri: the quinquennales: the patroni: the gradus: the schola: the cena: theedituus: the quaestores. In the Greek ἔρανοι or θίασοι we should have the προστάτης, the ἄρχοντες, the ἐπιμελητής, the ἕάκοροι, the ἱεροποιοί, the γραμματεύς, the ἀρχιερανιστής, the ταμίας. What an alien atmo- sphere to this is suggested by the Christian nomenclature! It is the pagan Lucian who speaks of Peregrinus as θιασάρχης of the Christian community.
The characteristic Christian terms are derived from Jewish use; e.g. ἐκκλησία has, primarily at least, the sense of the elect people as such—the Church, rather than the classical sense of the assembly, i.e. the people gather- ed together for a special purpose, and the former sense is based on Old Testament use. Cf. Acts vii. 38. Thus Vitringa (quoted by Trench New Testament Synonyms p. 4): “ἡ ἐκκλησία [=5nr np] designat multitudinem aliquam quae populum constituit, per leges et vincula inter se iunctam, etsi saepe fiat non sit coacta nec cogi possit.” The Hebrew word Srp i is explained
thus (by contrast to ANY, συναγωγή, coetus congregatus): “aniversam ali-
cuius populi multitudinem vinculis societatis unitam et rempublicam sive civitatem quandam constituentem.” Μυστήριον again has (at first) the Old Tes- tament meaning of a divine secret communicated, rather than the pagan sense of a mystery of initiation. So βαπτισμός, εὐχαριστία, τράπεζα Κυρίου, ἐπίθεσις χειρῶν, ἐξομολόγησις, χρῖσμα, ἀδελφοί, καθέδρα, πρεσβύτερος, ποιμήν, προφήτης, εὐαγγελιστής, etc., are all terms of Jewish origin. . So perhaps is ἐπίσκοπος, (see App. Note kK). The prominent Christian functions of prayer, fasting and almsgiving descend from the Jewish stock, with the whole religious basis of Christianity.
(Ὁ) Christian
forms
derived from Judaism.
(3) Witness of N. T. Christ founded a visible Church.
(«) Evidence of the Gospels.
that
36 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
teristic nomenclature—that is to say, from a source much more ancient than the Roman empire or Greek society. The origin of the social form of
Christianity is to be sought in the Jewish conception
of the Messianic kingdom and in the deliberate inten- tion of Him, who founded the Church, in claiming to be the Messiah.
(3) Does, then, the New Testament bear out the position that Christ appeared as the founder and organizer of a visible society? This question shall be answered from the evidence of (a) the Gospels, (8) the Acts, (y) St. Paul’s Epistles.
(a) The question may be approached with less alarm because there is a remarkable unanimity among men of the keenest historical insight in seeing in Jesus one who above all things came to found a society, a king- dom. ‘‘To deny,” says the author of Hece Homo, “that Christ did undertake to found and to legislate for a new theocratic society, and that he did claim the office of judge of mankind, is indeed possible, but only to those who altogether deny the credibility of the extant biographies of Christ. If those bio- graphies be admitted to be generally trustworthy, then Christ undertook to be what we have described ; if not, then of course this, but also every other, account of Him falls to the ground.” “The city of God, of which the Stoics doubtfully and feebly spoke, was now set up before the eyes of man. It was no unsubstantial city such as we fancy in the clouds, no invisible pattern such as Plato thought might be laid up in heaven, but a visible corporation whose members
1. | The Foundation of the Church. 37
met together to eat bread and drink wine, and into which they were initiated by bodily immersion in water.”! There are three lines of evidence which seem to make the truth of this position clear :—
First, there is the method of Christ. Nothing is@m | more remarkable than the refusal of Christ to commit %"** Himself to men as He found them. There is some- thing at first sight repellent in the solemn words of St. John: ‘Jesus did not commit Himself to those who first believed in His name, when they saw the miracles, because He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.’* That sad secret of human nature—its lamen- table untrustworthiness—the secret which in slow, embittering experience has often turned enthusiasts into cynics and made philanthropists mad—Jesus knew it to start with. And, knowing it, He would not build His spiritual edifice on the shifting sands of such a humanity. It was not that He distrusted the capacity of human nature for the highest life. On the contrary, He came to proclaim the brotherhood of all men under the realized fatherhood of God—but not the brotherhood of men as they were. Except
1 Ecce Homo [18th ed.] pp. 39, 128. On this subject of Christ’s insti- tution of a visible Church, I should like to refer (among recent writers) to the Dean of St. Paul’s Advent Sermons ii and iii, and his Oxford House Paper, No. xvii; Mr. Stanton’s Jewish and Christian Messiah; Dr. West- cott’s Essay on ‘ The Two Empires’ in his Zpp. of St. John; Mr. Holland’s Creed and Character ; and Dr. Milligan’s Resurrection of our Lord lecture vi. See also Archbishop Whately Kingdom of Christ Essay ii. init. and F, D. Maurice Kingdom of Christ i. Ὁ. 285 ἢ. These names represent (so far) a remarkable consensus. Among older English writers no one contends more powerfully for the church idea than William Law in his Letters to the Bishop
of Bangor ; see esp. Letter iii. 3 St. John ii, 23-25.
38 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
ye be converted, He said, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Man must have a fresh start: he must be built upon a new foundation : he must be regenerated, converted, if he is to be fit for sonship and for brotherhood. So Jesus Christ set Himself to give humanity a fresh start from a new centre, and that centre Himself. To do this He with- draws from the many upon the few. To the multi- tude He speaks in parables, ‘that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’ Only a few, whom He sees capable of earnest self-sacrifice, of perseverance, of enlightenment, are gradually initiated into His secrets. These are ‘the disciples.’ These He trains with slow and patient care to appreciate His Person. From the most ready of these He elicits, after a time, by solemn questioning a formal confes- sion of His Messiahship—a formal confession that He, the Son of Man, is also the Christ, the Son of the living God.* This thorough recognition of His claim gives Him something to depend upon. He has got down to the rock ; He can begin to build.’ ‘ Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona; and I say unto thee that thou art Rock-Man, and on this rock (the rock of this human character acknowledging My Divine Sonship
1 δύ, John 111, 3 ἢ, ; St. Matt. xviii. 3,
5 St. Matt. xvi. 16.
3 Holland Creed and Character pp. 46-49. All the idea of this para- graph is admirably expressed in the sermon ‘The Rock of the Church.’ ‘* Pity, infinite pity, He gave [the crowds]—but Himself He never gave; He could not commit Himself unto them. His work, His mission, His purpose on earth—how could they receive it? how could they understand it?. . . How can He build [the new house of God] on that loose and shifting rubble, on that blind movement of the crowd, so vague and so undetermined ?”
a The Foundation of the Church. 39
and Mission) I will build My Church.’ This gives us the clue to His method. All along Christ had had in view this foundation of the Church, and we see now what He had been waiting for. It was till He had won out of the hearts of His disciples that absolute devotion to His own Person, that complete acknowledgment of His claim, which would enable them to look away from all else and become the stable nucleus of a new society which was to represent His Name. Indeed, the more we study the Gospels, the more clearly we shall recognise that Christ did not cast His Gospel loose upon the world—the world which was so incap- able of appreciating it; that would have been indeed to cast His pearls before swine; but He directed all His efforts to making a home for it, and that by organ- izing a band of men called ‘out of the world,’ and consecrated into a holy unity, who were destined to draw others in time after them out of all ages and nations.’ On this ‘little flock’ He fixed all His hopes. He prayed not for the world, but for these whom God had given Him out of the world. These in wonderful ways He meant to link to Himself in an indissoluble unity, as the branches to the vine, that they might live as an organized body in the world, yet distinct from it—alive with His life, sanctified through His truth, enlightened by His Spirit. Christ then by His whole method declared His intention to found a Church, a visible society of men—which should be distinct from the world and independent of it, even while it should present before the eyes of all men
1$t. John xvii, and the whole of these last discourses.
(ii) His insti-
tution of
social sacra-
ments:
40 . Christian Ministry. [ CHAP,
the spectacle of what their common life might’ be- come.
Secondly, the intention of Christ to found -a social organization is apparent in the solemn cere- monies which He instituted as tokens of discipleship as well as channels of grace. The sacraments are social ceremonies. Baptism had been in Jewish tradi- tion the ceremony of initiation into the ancient Church. As used by John the Baptist, it had been used in distinct relation to the coming of ‘the king-
-/“dom. As adopted by Christ, it was no doubt meant
to admit into His society, the kingdom which had come, the Church of the new covenant.' And what- ever possible ambiguity attends the conception of baptism in this respect, is removed by the other sacrament. The Eucharist is nothing if not social. Its whole natural basis as a common meal implies a community. Christ, then, in making baptism and the Eucharist the sacraments of His kingdom, just as in making love of the brethren the characteristic of His disciples, emphasized His intention to attach men to Himself not as individuals but as members of a brotherhood.
1 Dr, Hatch calls this an ‘‘unproved assumption” (B. L. pref. sec. ed. p. xii). I should have thought that all possible doubt was set at rest by the parallel institution of the Eucharist. That at least is the sacrament of asociety. But I cannot understand Dr. Hatch expressing a doubt that baptism had the social significance. It was never an individual purification amongst the Jews (see Edersheim’s Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah i. pp. 272-274); it was always in connection with the covenant which was with a race. The baptism of a Jewish proselyte was his incorporation with the race—‘his new birth.’ See Sabatier La Didaché p. 84 f. (an excellent passage on the relation of Christian to Jewish baptism) ; Taylor Teaching of the Twelve Apostles p. 55 f.; and Edersheim ii. app. xii (on the antiquity of the practice). Cf. also 1 Cor. x. 2.
ὦ ἀνόμῳ. κατ ed
τ εν | Sa
1. | The Foundation of the Church. Al
Lastly, and perhaps most conspicuously, the inten- on tion of Christ to found a society is prominent in ‘°™si# His whole claim to be the Messiah. The Messianic king of the Old Testament is the centre of a Messianic kingdom ; the suffering Servant of Jehovah, by whose stripes men are healed, is no mere individual, but also the embodiment and representative of the chosen race.’ Christ, then, when He came as the Messiah, brought the kingdom. ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand ’—that is John the Baptist’s message, that is the first word of Christ’s preaching. But in Him it was more than ‘at hand.’ It had come wpon men; it was ‘among them.’* John the Baptist had been outside it, but now there were those who were inside it, and who, though they were but little, were ‘greater’ than John the Baptist on that very ac- count.* The kingdom had thus a definite limit in time because it was to be a visible institution and not a mere invisible association of good men. Christ had indeed to purify and elevate the conceptions of His disciples so that they might understand its spiritual nature and object; but though it was spiritual, though it was not adapted to the carnal wants of the Jews, though it was not ‘of this ar Stanton Jewish and Christian Messiah p. 122 f.
2 But only the jirst word, and then, too, with the addition given by St. Mark—zemdzjpwrar ὁ καιρός (Stanton l.c. p. 218).
3 St. Matt. xii. 28; cf. St. Luke xvii. 21. Mr. Stanton seems to be right in interpreting ἐντὸς ὑμῶν, in the midst of you. The kingdom of heaven, our Lord tells the Pharisees, is not to be found by close watching (παρα- τήρησις). It will not be manifest to those who wait merely on external observation. (Lo, here! or Lo, there!) For it is among you and ye know it
not. 4 St. Matt. xi. 11, 12.
<A
(The relation of the Church to the kingdom of God.)
42 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
world,’* yet it was to be im the world—‘a net to gather of every kind till the end of the world,’ a visible society, that is, in which evil and good should be mixed.? Christ then came to establish a ‘ king- dom of heaven’ or a ‘kingdom of God.’ What does this expression mean? It means an organized society of men in which the old barrier which sin had interposed between heaven and earth has been done away, in which Jacob’s ancient dream is a dream no longer, for ‘the angels of God ascend and descend’ upon the new humanity, and God and man are at one again. It is because Christ’s new society is thus heavenly that a divine sanction can attach to its legislative decisions: thus what they bind or loose on earth is to be bound or loosed in heaven, and whose sins they forgive are to be for- given, whose sins they retain to be retained.’ Is then Christ’s new society, the Church, simply identi- cal with the kingdom of God or of heaven? To
1 St. John xviii. 36.
2 St. Matt. xiii. 47. Cf. Stanton l.c. p. 220f. Add Matt, xxii. 2 (the Marriage of the King’s Son). ‘‘ Let us suppose,” says William Law (Letter iii. pp. 8, 9), ‘‘ that the Church of Christ was this invisible number of people united to Christ by such internal invisible graces, is it possible that a kingdom consisting of this one particular sort of people invisibly good should be like a net that gathers of every kind of fish? If it was to be compared to a net it ought to be compared to such a net as gathers only of one kind, viz., good fish, and then it might represent to us a Church that has but one sort of members, . . . If any one should tell us that we are to believe invisible scriptures and observe invisible sacraments, he would have just as much reason and Scripture on his side as your Lordship has for this doctrine. And it would be of the same service to the world to talk of these invisibilities if the canon of Scripture was in dispute, as to describe this invisible Church, when the case is with what visible Church we ought to unite.”
3 St. Matt. xviii. 17-20 ; St. John xx. 22, 23. I am not raising the question yet whether the gift in this latter passage is not given to the ministry. See later, chap. iv.
I. | The Foundation of the Church. 43
o
answer this question a distinction must be drawn in view of the double sense in which the kingdom is said to come. In one sense the kingdom is, already come; that is, it is established in spiritual power and all its forces are at work. But, as St. Augustin has expressed it, “non adhuc regnat hoe regnum ;” for it has yet to grow like the mustard, seed, to work its way like the leaven through all the institutions of the world, it has yet to bear its universal witness ‘to all the nations’ ;! only, so at last can the kingdom come in glory. Thus in one sense the kingdom already exists, in another sense it has yet to appear.” In the first sense, then, the Church is the kingdom of heaven, and St. Peter has promised to him the keys—not of ‘the Church,’ but of ‘the kingdom of heaven,’ which the Church is ; in the second sense, the Church prepares for the kingdom rather than is it. It represents it in this ‘age,’ and passes into it with the dawning of the ‘age to come.’ ὃ
1 St. Matt. xiii. 31-34 ; St. Luke xix. 11; St. Mark xiii. 10, etc.
2 All this is expressed in the double use of all the characteristic Gospel terms, as (1) of things already being enjoyed; (2) of things hoped for. We are sons, yet we ‘‘ wait for the adoption” ; we are redeemed, yet we wait for ‘the redemption of our bodies” ; we are saved, yet only in the future will ‘* our salvation draw nigh” ; it is now only ‘‘ nearer than when we believed.” Here in fact the kingdom is in power—not in glory or final fulfilment. But it is because the present Church is a simple anticipation of the Church as it is to be—the same society at an earlier stage—that even now it is called ‘heavenly.’ We have been “made to sit in heavenly places”: we have ‘‘ tasted the powers of the world to come”: the institutions of the Church are “the heavenly things”: and we ‘‘are come unto the heavenly Jeru- salem” (Eph. i. 3, 20; Heb. vi. 5, ix. 23, xii. 22). So Tertullian has been quoted as speaking of the Church on earth as ‘‘in heaven.”
3 Cf. Didache ix. 4: ‘‘Let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom.” Clem. ad Cor. 42: οἱ ἀπόστολοι . . . ἐξῆλθον εὐαγγελιζόμενοι τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ μέλλειν ἔρχεσθαι. Cf. Church’s
(The Church not exclu- sive.)
44 Christian Mintstry. | CHAP.
Christ, then, according to the evidence of the Gospels, founded a community of men, a Church, to be the pillar and ground of the truth which He came to bring, to be the household in which His stewards should dispense the food of God until He came again ;* and in the great forty days, when He spoke to His disciples of the things concerning the kingdom of God, He spoke to them as the first representatives of that visible society which was to be its earthly counterpart.
We must not suppose that the institution by Christ of a Church with a definite limit and an ex- clusive claim is a narrowing of His love.” The claim which the Church makes on every man simply cor- responds to his moral needs as Christ interprets them. It is because He loves all that He established a Civitas Dei, wide enough for all, in order to their spiritual recovery. The Church would indeed represent a narrowing of the divine love if any were by Christ’s will excluded from it. But it is open to all. And as there are those to whom ‘the gospel of the kingdom’ has never come, or never come with its true appeal, so we are assured that God’s purpose is larger than
Advent Sermons Ὁ. 70: The kingdom of God ‘‘ has its witness, its repre- sentatives in the universal Church of Christ. Nothing can be an adequate representation of that invisible kingdom of God ; it extends, even on earth, beyond even the bounds of the universal Church, But His Church is the designated and appointed recognition of His kingdom.” Ib. p, 72: The Church is ‘‘the religious body which He has called into being, to be the shadow and instrument of His kingdom.”
1 St. Luke xii. 41, 42.
2 See Holland Creed and Character serm. iv. ‘ The Secret of the Church, esp. pp. 59, 60. ‘* God’s love in Christ found itself limited. .. . How? Not by the Church, but by the crowd, by the block of blind and heedless ignorance.”
I. | The Foundation of the Church. 45
His Church on earth.’ There are last in the know- ledge of God who shall be first in His acceptance, because they practised all they knew.
(8) When Christ speaks to St. Peter of the founda- @) zvidence tion of the Church, it is still in the future. The Church only receives its commission to all nations after His Resurrection. It comes into actual cor- porate life only with the Pentecostal gift. Thus, in the Acts of the Apostles, the Church goes forth for the first time a visible community, vitalized by Christ's Spirit, to be the representative on earth of the risen and ascended Lord.?
That Christianity in the Acts is represented by a community, there can surely be no doubt. The souls “who were added” at Jerusalem ‘“ continued steadfast in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship.”
They were members of a society more or less organ-
1 See esp. St. Matt. xxv. 31f. Cf. Dr. Pusey’s Responsibility of Intellect in Matters of Faith p. 44 [ed. 1879]: ‘‘In those ever-open portals there enter that countless multitude whom the Church knew not how to win... or, alas! neglected to win them... . In whatever hatred, or contempt, or blasphemy of Christ nurtured, God has His own elect, who ignorantly worship Him, whose ignorant fear or longing He Who inspired it will accept.”
2 «To [the Church] alone,” says Prof. Milligan (Resurrection of our Lord, second thousand, p. 218), ‘‘as the representative of the Risen Lord, is the power entrusted by which [His] work may be successfully accomplished. We know that this can be done by no other means than the agency of the Spirit ; and it would seem that the gift of the Spirit is bestowed only through the Church as the organ upon earth of the Risen and Glorified Lord in heaven, We dare not indeed restrain the power of the Almighty ; but what we have to do with is His plan; and of that plan what has now been said appears to be one of the most striking characteristics. . . . It appears to be the teach- ing of the New Testament that, as it is the prerogative of Christ in His glorified humanity to bestow the Spirit, so it is only through the Church, as the representative of that glorified humanity, that the influences of the Spirit are communicated to the world.” He emphasizes earlier the visible unity which the Church was meant to have as the representative of the Risen Christ (p. 204).
(γ) Evidence of St. Paul’s Epistles.
46 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP,
ized. ‘They had all things common. Salvation was in the community ; “the Lord added” to them “ day by day those who were being saved.”’ As the new religion spread over Galilee and Samaria it was still “the Church.”* “The Church at Antioch,” where Christians got their new name,’ is the same society extending itself to a new city. So when St. Paul went abroad, he founded “Churches” to prepare men for the kingdom.* And the local Churches are but branches of one stock. Behind the Churches is the Church represented by the Apostles. This is the truth which is impressed on the narrative of the Apostolic Conference with its authoritative direction to the Churches—“ It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.”*® This is only the exhibition in act of the authority given by Jesus Christ to His society over its members, to bind and to loose with heavenly sanction.
(y) The picture presented in the Acts is the same as that of which we become spectators in St. Paul’s Epistles. He writes to “ the Church of God which is at Corinth,” and that Church is undoubtedly a visible body, containing good and bad members alike. It is a ‘‘temple of God,” but a temple which sin can
1 Acts ii. 41-47.
2 Acts ix. 31: “ The Church through the whole of Judaea and Galilee and Samaria had peace.” The baptism of the eunuch is an act of an exceptional character.
8 Acts xiii. 1; xi. 26. On the significance of the exact form Christiani see Simcox’s Harly Church History p. 62: on the analogy of Herodiani, Pompeiani, etc., it suggests, not the disciples of a school, but the ad- herents of a leader or king.
4 Acts xiv. 22, 23; xv. 41; Xvi. 5. 5 Acts xv. 28.
1. | The Foundation of the Church. 47 destroy ;' a chosen people, but one like that of the,
y /
fi. Ser
old covenant, capable of like failure ;* it is “the body |
of Christ” through sacramental participation in His life, but there may be “schism in the body.” * St. Paul then conceives of the local Church as a visible community of mixed character, but with un- mistakeable limits. The distinction between ‘those within’ and ‘those without’ is very marked.* But each local Church is only one representative of the Church which is general. St. Paul governs each particular Church in accordance with the evangelical tradition of truth and life, which is common to all and to which he is himself subject.” He passes back imperceptibly, without any break in thought, from the Churches to the Church ;° the Church in fact simply (as far as this world is concerned) consists of the Churches. Thus, when in the Epistle to the Ephe- sians he is drawing out the spiritual significance of the Church as “the body of Christ, the fulness of Him who filleth all in all”—when he is declaring it to be one, in virtue alike of the one life which it
=) t OOre ἍΝ Τῆς 2 1 Cor. x. 1-13.
3 1 Cor. x. 16; xii. 12-28. It is of course plain why the imperfections of the Church are dwelt on in connection with the local societies: they are naturally matters of specially local concern and local treatment.
4 1 Cor. v. 9-13; cf. xiv. 23; 2 Cor. vi. 14f. Of course the brethren ata particular place, as at Rome, when St. Paul wrote his Epistle to ‘the saints’ there, may not yet have been completely organized into a local Church. That was, as it is now, a work of time. Buta Christian, as such, is a member of the Christian society, and, unless in exceptional circumstances, of an organ- ized local Church.
δχ Cor. xi. 2 “the traditions”; 1 Cor. xv. 3; 2 Thess. iii. 6; 1 Cor. vii. 17 “‘So ordain I in all the Churches”; Gal. i. 7, 8 ‘‘ Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any other gospel . . . let him be anathema.”
δ 1 Cor. xii. 28, xv. 9; Gal. i. 13.
oR »
48 Christian Mintstry. [CHAP.
derives from Christ by the communication of the Spirit, and of the one truth which ‘apostles and prophets’ delivered from Christ, and of the love which binds, or ought to bind, its members in one’ —he is indeed describing the Christian society “from an ideal point of view;” that is to say, he is de- scribing all that the Church potentially is, as when we too proclaim the Church ‘one, holy, and catholic.’? Nevertheless it is the visible, actual Church of which he is speaking,’ the Church to which Christ gave visible officers—‘ some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,’ for the building up of the body of Christ into an ever more perfect unity. This visible organi- zation or hierarchy belongs plainly to a visible society, —exactly that same society which St. Paul similarly describes in his Epistle to the Corinthians as “the body of Christ,” even as part of Christ,* the Church in which ‘‘God set first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers,”’ that is the general community which is
1 Eph, iv. 3-16: It is ‘one body’ in virtue of the ‘one Spirit’ whose indwelling is Christ’s indwelling; it holds ‘one faith’ (the ‘one faith’ mentioned in between the ‘one Lord’ and the ‘one baptism,’ both objective, must be objective too). It ought to live, therefore, in the unity of love (ver. 3), but the ‘bond of love’ is a duty which may be neglected. The inward unity of life, though dependent on outward facts (e.g. ‘one baptism ’), is a reality, whether recognised in practice or not.
2 The Church has never yet so developed all the fulness within her as to exhibit herself in her full catholic glory and holiness as the ‘ bride of Christ.’ She is potentially more than she is actually. Potentially catholic,
for example, she still leaves outside her fold the mass of Oriental peoples.
3 See Pfleiderer’s account of the Epistle to the Ephesians (Pazlinism. ii. PP. 190-193).
4 ©The Christ’ consists of the head and the members (1 Cor. xii. 12).
5 1 Cor. xii. 27-28. This passage (vv. 12-28) about the body of Christ, taken with such passages as Gal. iii. 27 (‘‘baptized into Christ”) and 1 Cor. x. 16,17 (about the Eucharist), seems to me to contain all the truth that
ener”
1. | The Foundation of the Church. 49
locally represented in the Churches of Corinth and Ephesus.’ St. Paul then means by the Church “a visible society or aggregation of societies.”
It is sometimes argued that St. Paul could not have believed in salvation through the Church, because this contradicts his doctrine of the justifying effect of individual faith.” But in fact there is no such con- tradiction. The Christian life is a correspondence between the grace communicated from without and the inward faith which, justifying us before God, opens out the avenues of communication between man and God, and enables man to appropriate and to use the grace which he receives in Christ. There is thus no antagomsm, though there is a distinction, between grace and faith. Now grace comes to Christians through social sacraments, as members of one ‘spirit- bearing body.’ “ΒΥ one Spirit are we all baptized into one body”; ‘we being many are one bread
Church doctrine not inconsistent with justifi- cation by faith ;
is developed in the Epistle to the Ephesians ; nor can I see that there is any-, . thing in the expression—‘‘ the Church, the pillar and ground of the truth ””
(x Tim, iii. 15), which might not have occurred in the Epistles to the Ephe-
sians or to the Corinthians.
1 Dr. Hatch calls it an unproved assumption that ‘‘ the Church of which
St. Paul speaks as the body of Christ, ‘the fulness of Him which filleth all in all,’ be really, as the Augustinian theory assumes it to be, a visible society, or aggregation of societies ” (B. L. pref. sec. ed. p. xii). His view appears to coincide with that of Bishop Hoadley, who was Law’s opponent. The Bishop held ‘‘as the only true account of the Church of Christ,” in general, that it was ‘‘the number of men, whether small or great,” who were sincere Chris- tians—i.e. the invisible society of the elect. This, he held, is what St. Paul calls the Church. ‘It cannot be supposed,” he pleads, ‘‘that a man’s being of the invisible Church of Christ is inconsistent with his joining himself with any visible Church;” but the first is essential, the second is voluntary. Law deals with trenchant power with this utterly unscriptural distinction between the ‘ universal invisible’ and ‘ particular visible’ Churches (Letter iii. p. 6 f.). 2 Pfleiderer Hibbert Lectures lect. vi. ‘D
50 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP,
and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread.” Thus the doctrine of the Church as the household of grace is the complement, not the con- tradiction, of the doctrine of faith. Faith is no faith if it isolates a man from the fellowship of the one body, and the one body has no salvation except for the sons of faith. Ignatius then with his strenuous insistence on churchmanship can rightly, so far, “claim to be a good Paulinist.”* In fact St. Paul’s teaching about the Church is given nowhere with more practical force than in the Epistles to the Corinthians, which belong to that very group of Epistles in which he fights the battle of faith. And both principles are brought into play by him to vindicate against Judaism the catholicity of the Gospel. Christianity is a catholic religion, he argues in his earlier Epistles, because it appeals to a faculty as universal as human nature —the faculty of faith: men are justified by nothing of national or local observance like the Law; “ it is one God Who will justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith.” Christianity is catholic, he argues again in effect, in the Epistles of the first captivity, because the Person of Christ is a catholic, a universal Personality ; “‘by Him were all things created—by Him and for Him—and in Him all things have their consistence.” Therefore also His redemptive power transcends all local, national distinctions ; “ He hath made both (Jews and Gentiles) one . .. in one body.” For the unity of that body, in which on the basis of faith the Gospel offers sancti-
1 Pfleiderer ic. p. 262; Ignatius ad Phil. 8.
1. | The Foundation of the Church. 51
fication to mankind, is by its very essence as the body of Christ universal in its capacity. But these two grounds of catholicity are correlative, not antagonistic. Once again, if there be such a thing as liberty in nor with the law or a “law of liberty,” * the obligations of church ‘ert’; membership and the authority of a common rule of truth are not in any way antagonistic to the freedom of the spirit. The good citizen, whether of the earthly or heavenly city, is free im the law by being at one with the spirit of the law. Here again the same St. Paul held to both sides of the antithesis, which is represented by authority and freedom, by fellow- ship and individuality. The doctrine of the Church is indeed only one but agree.
to the
expression of a principle as broad as human society Prineple ot
—the principle that man realizes his true self only rors by relation to a community, that “he is what he is only as a member of society.” Aristotle said of old that “the society (the city) is prior to the individual” —prior, that is, in idea, because it is essential to his being really man, because man is by his very essence “a, social animal.”* By isolating himself he hinders, he narrows himself, he perishes: by merging himself in the larger whole, he realizes his true individuality and his true freedom. So when God sent redemption upon the earth, He sent it in a community or kingdom. Fellowship with God is to be won through fellowship with His Son, but that not otherwise than through
1 St. James i. 25. 2 On the Greek idea of the πόλις see Newman Politics of Arisiotle i. p. 560: ‘‘a strongly individualized unity, which impresses its dominant ideas upon its members ; etc.’
Two miscon- ceptions of the growth of the Church.
1. That it developed out of pre- vious indi- vidualism,
52 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
fellowship with His Church. ‘That ye may have fellowship with us”—that is why St. John writes his Epistle \—“ and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” Nor are we to sup- pose that this association is only a temporary and painful expedient—that we are to submit to be one body for a while in order to live a more separate and isolated life hereafter. No, as the life of perfected humanity? is presented to us in the vision of the Apocalypse, it is the life of a city indissolubly one. It is the life of the one bride of Christ, the one humanity, whose white robes are the distinctive, yet coincident, “righteousnesses of the saints.” *
Now that we have brought this investigation to a
conclusion, we are in a position to repudiate two ways of conceiving the development of Christianity.
1. It has been represented * as if at the first stage we must conceive of Christians rather as individual believers who were led to unite in local associations. This is accounted for by the “tendency to associa- tion,’ characteristic of the Roman empire of that date. But association was not at first “a fixed habit ;” it was not ‘universally recognised as a primary duty ;” it did not “invariably follow belief.”
11 St. Johni. 3. “ Manifeste ostendit B. lohannes quia quicunque societa- tem cum Deo habere desiderant primo ecclesiae societati debent adunari’ (Bede, quoted by Westcott in loc.).
2 I am not wishing to deny that St. John is representing the Church as she now is. Cf. Milligan The Revelation of St. John p. 228. But it is certainly a picture of what she will not only be, but be wholly and manifestly, hereafter.
3 Rev. xix. 8.
4 By Dr. Hatch (8, L, p. 29 f.), if I can understand him rightly. Dr. Sanday interprets him otherwise (Hapositor, Jan. 1887, p. τὸ n}).
1.| The Foundation of the Church. 53
Afterwards the local associations succeed in so assert- ing themselves over individual Christians that adhesion to a community ceases to be voluntary; a man is no Christian unless he belongs to one. This is the state of things which the Ignatian letters were intended to promote. Still, however, Christians might be supposed to unite in Churches how and where they pleased. But later “this free right of association” vanishes ; each Church with its bishop and presbytery asserts itself as the exclusive local “ark of the covenant.” All who would be within the pale must belong to this one and none other. This is the successful conten- tion of Cyprian. Still later these authoritative local Churches grow into closer and closer combination. The idea of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith, due to St. Irenzus,’ had already formed a bond of union under a common authoritative Creed. Now, the Churches become one great confederation of societies in a unity which found expression in ecumenical councils with their common authority.’ Gradually, meanwhile, the hierarchical gradations amongst the various bishops develop on the lines of the imperial system.
Now this mode of conceiving the progress of Chris- <s theory, tianity is in direct violation of the evidence. The "°°" only evidence produced for the supposed first stage which preceded obligatory association consists in the fact that the earliest church teachers found it neces-
1 Hatch B. L. pp. 103-106. 2 Jb. p. 96: ‘Its first elaboration and setting forth was due to one man’s genius,”
* 10. pp. 97, 175-189.
54 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
sary to preach the duty of association, “if not as an article of the Christian faith, at least as an element of Christian practice.”* This is evidenced by the warning in the Epistle to the Hebrews against forsak- ing the Christian assemblies ;* by St. Jude’s denun- ciation of those who “‘separate themselves” ;* by the passages in the Shepherd of Hermas* about those who “have separated themselves” and so “lose their own souls.” What do such utterances really go to prove ? A separatist tendency on the part of those who had been Christians °—a sin of schism, denounced like any other sin. But the idea is nowhere discernible that every Christian was not, as such, a member of the Church, bound to the obligations of membership.’ Schism is a sin in Scripture’ as really as in Ignatius’ letters. Next, the supposed right of free association into Churches never existed. No doubt the tendency to association in the Roman empire made (as has been said) for the spread of the Christian Church. It made the idea of a Church easier to men’s minds. But more than this the facts of the case will not allow us to grant. Christ Himself constituted the Church and gave it its authority, so that it came upon men as a divine gift, with a divine claim, through the apostolic preaching. “Jesus,” says Mr. Stanton, ‘‘ never speaks
1 Hatch B. L. p. 29. 2 Hebrews x. 25.
8. St. Jude 19. 4 See above, p. 22.
5 That they had been members of the Church is quite plain in the passages quoted from Hermas.
ὁ Of course he might find himself in an isolated position away from church privileges, as may happen to-day.
7 The ‘heretic’ is the man of self-willed, separatist tendencies (Tit. iii. 10). Cf. St. Jude 19; St. Matt. xviii. 17.
1. | The Foundation of the Church 55
of the kingdom as something which men could con- stitute for themselves; it must come to them.”? From the beginning of Christianity it came to men and took them up, one by one, out of their isolation and alienation from God into its holy and blessed fellowship. It was never a creation of their own by free association. The idea is a figment. From the first each local Church with its organization repre- sented the Divine will for man’s salvation in one body. Those who would share what Christ came to give must be added to it. Once added to it, they must remain in it, obedient children of the divine mother, loyal citizens of the city of the saints. Thus Cyprian’s vigorous condemnation of schismatics who broke off from the Church at Carthage or in Rome in- volved no new principle at all,’ nothing that was not implied in Ignatius’ cry—‘ one altar, one Eucharist, one bishop ” °—or in Clement of Rome’s remonstrance with the schismatical party at Corinth. Nor was the Catholic Apostolic Faith an idea originated or substantially developed by Irenaeus, though he gave it a new and powerful application. Irenaeus is any- thing rather than a genius who originates. This idea of the universal authoritative tradition of the Christian faith, as it made possible in a later epoch the general councils, as it inspired Clement in Alexandria quite as much as Irenaeus in the West, so in earlier days
1 Jewish and Christian Messiah p. 218.
2 The Eastern Churches which were at first inclined to accept Novatian would have accepted him as the bishop of Rome, not as one among a number. The question was ; simply who was the bishop. See further in chap. iii.
3 ad Phil. 4.
56 Christian Ministry. [CHAP.
it made possible the ‘Catholic Epistles,’ and was present in the Church since men first rallied to the apostolic doctrine. Whatever development there was, then, from the day of Pentecost till the Council of Chalcedon did not touch the truth of the visible Church or aggregation of Churches, which it always presupposed, nor the corresponding obligation of mem- bership in it: it presupposed the doctrine of the visible Church with its threefold unity in the life which it derived from its Head, Christ, in the truth of the apostolic tradition, and in the fellowship and inter- course of love.
2, That the 2. It remains to point out that this idea of the
lore." Church, known as Catholicism, was not the creation
we’ of western influences and cannot historically be identified (as is sometimes’? done) with Romanism. Was there, then, nothing new in that western concep- tion of the Church which was finally expressed in the medizeval papacy? Novelty there undoubtedly was, but it was not in any sense the doctrine of the visible Church. What then do the facts of history allow us to describe as Catholicism and what as Romanism ?
but there is Church unity in the New Testament is expressed
an original
doctrineof primarily in such metaphors as those of the body Church
1 Harnack Texte u. Untersuch. ii band. heft 2. p. 105.
? See for this idea, in a curiously unhistorical shape, Allen’s Continuity of Christian Thought pp. 100-105. Cf. Harnack’s Dogmengesch. i. pp. 362-371 (Katholisch ἃ. Rémisch); also Renan’s Hibbert Lectures. The latter assumes in support of his theory that St. Luke’s writings (p. 132), the ‘Preaching of Peter —the basis of the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions (p. 134)—and probably the Pastoral Epistles (p. 163) derive from the Roman Church and represent its ideas. At least the Pastoral Epistles, like the Ignatian (p. 170), exhibit what is characteristically the Roman temper !
I. ] The Foundation of the Church. 57
of Christ or the Vine with its branches. What primarily constitutes the unity of the Church is the life of Christ derived to its members by His Spirit. The Church is one on account of the spiritual pect bs which makes her the temple of God or the ‘ Christ- bearer.’ None the less the Church is an external reality, a visible society; for the principle of the Incarnation, which governs the Church, links the inward to the outward, the spiritual to the material —there is ‘one body’ as well as ‘one Spirit.’ Spiritual gifts are given by sacraments, and sacra- ments are visible and social ceremonies of incorpora- tion, or benediction, or feeding. Thus the Christian’s spiritual privileges depend on membership of a visible society ; but the visible society exists not as an instru- - ment of external secular authority, but as the divine home of spiritual edification, for the ‘building up of -
the body of Christ, for the perfecting of men into #4 75
one—into the unity of the life of God.! Therefore the instrument of unity is the Spirit; the basis of the unity is Christ, the Mediator; the centre of the unity is in the heavens, where the Church's exalted Head lives in eternal majesty—human, yet glorified. If it be the case, as Ignatius taught (and of course that is still an open question in this discussion), that a
1 St. John xvii. 23. It is characteristic of the scriptural and fundamental idea of church unity that it should be a progressive thing, progressing with a spiritual advance ; not an external thing once for all imposed. See St. John as above, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians iv. 13 εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον. See also on the Shepherd of Hermas, above p. 21. The unity of the Church becomes constantly closer as the barriers which sin interposes between man and God, and so between man and his fellows, are removed. Sin, on the other hand, tends to mar the unity by ‘schisms’ which may be more or less pronounced.
58 Christian M inestry. [ CHAP.
bishop is an essential element of the organization of each visible Church, then he will be the centre and symbol of local unity; but, as the local Church exists only in order to bring men into relation to Christ and to the redeemed humanity which Christ is gathering to Himself in the unseen world, so the catholic Church, the society which each local Church repre- sents, has its centre of unity in Christ.’ Only (so to speak) the lower limbs of the body of Christ are on earth. The Church is a society in the world, but not wholly in the world, nor existing for the world’s ends. Thus the primary importance of its organization is local. Each local Church exists to keep open (so to speak) the connection of earth and heaven; to keep the streams of the water of life flowing ; to maintain and teach and protect the creed which moulds the Christian character. Of course the Christian Churches have a necessary relation to one another. They con- stitute together one body; they maintain one tradi- tion, and the test of it is found in their consent ; they exhibited, they ought still to exhibit, an unbroken fellowship. At the same time each has a relative independence,’ for the authority over all is that of a common tradition, of which the witness lies in the general consent (as expressed most fully in a general council), coupled with the canon of Scripture.* Such is the conception of the Church as existing for the
1 See the passage from Ignatius quoted before (p. 24) with the Bishop of Durham’s comment.
* As St. Cyprian emphasized. See in chap. iii.
3 So the rule of faith is formulated by Irenaeus, i. to. 1, 2, and iii. 1-5, Tertull. de Praescr. 27-36, Vincent. Commonit. 2, 9, 20, 23, 29.
1. | The Foundation of the Church, 59
ends of ‘grace and truth,’. which can be justly described as Catholic.’
Enough has been said to enable us to indicate by distinct from contrast what may historically be called its Roman moiteation development. The'scriptural and catholic concep- tion admitted of development—in this sense, that, ‘saving the original principle, the relations between the different Churches admitted of elaboration as facilities for communication increased under imperial recognition, or as the authority of the common tradi- tion was forced into prominence by the disintegrating effects of Gnosticism and other heresies. But the Roman development gave a new colour to the idea of the Church, not indeed by the introduction of any wholly novel element, but by distorting the idea of its function and unity. It has been already noticed how the Roman Church inherited the imperial con- ceptions of empire and government. The injunction—
“ Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento, Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos ”—
might have been spoken to the popes as well as to the emperors. At Rome, then, to a slight extent
1 On this conception of the Church see a typical passage in St. Augustin Enarr. in Psalm. Ps. lvi. 1: *‘ Quoniam totus Christus caput est et corpus
. caput est ipse salvator noster, passus sub Pontio Pilato, qui nunc postea quam resurrexit a mortuis, sedet ad dexteram Patris : corpus autem eius est ecclesia; non ista aut illa, sed toto orbe diffusa; nec ea quae nunc est in hominibus qui praesentem vitam agunt, sed ad eam pertinentibus etiam his qui fuerunt ante nos et his qui futuri sunt post nos usque in finem saeculi. Tota enim ecclesia constans ex omnibus fidelibus, quia fideles omnes membra sunt Christi, habet illud caput positum in caelis quod gubernat corpus suum ; etsi separatum est visione, sed annectitur caritate.” Cf, the excellent account of the Church in Mr. Mason’s 716 Faith of the Gospel ch. vii. 88 9, 10 and ch. viii.
60 Christian Ministry. { CHAP.
perhaps even from Victor's days—to a more palpable extent from the fifth century, the idea of the Church becomes in a measure secularized. The Church be- comes a great world-empire for purposes of spiritual government and administration. The primary con- ception of her unity becomes that of wnity of govern- ment, the sort of unity which most readily submits itself to secular tests and most naturally postulates a visible centre and head: the dominant idea becomes that of authority. All the needs of the early medizval period tended to add strength to this tendency, for what the world wanted was above all things order, discipline, rule. Thus the conception of government tends to overshadow earlier conceptions of the Church’s function even in relation to the truth. Compare the Roman Leo’s view of the truth with that of the Alexandrian Didymus or Athanasius, and the con- trast is marked. Both the western and eastern writers insist equally on the truth of the Church dogma; but to the eastern it is the guide to the knowledge of God, to the western it is the instru- ment of authority and of discipline. Once again, the over-authoritativeness of tone which becomes charac- teristic of the Roman Church makes her impatient of the more slow and laborious and complex methods of arriving at the truth on disputed questions which belonged to the earlier idea of the ‘rule of faith.’ The comparison of traditions, the elaborate appeal to Scripture, these methods are too slow and sometimes (as the revelation in this world is incomplete’) yield no 1 Of. 1 Cor. xiii. 9-12.
1. | The Foundation of the Church. 61
decisive result : something is wanted more rapid, more imperious. It is no longer enough to conceive cf the Church as the catholic witness to the faith once for all delivered. She must be the living voice of God, the oracle of the Divine will. Now, as the strength and security of witness lies in the consent of indepen- dent testimonies, so the strength of authoritative, oracular utterance lies in unimpeded, unqualified centrality, and Christendom needs a central shrine where divine authority speaks.
Thus an essentially different idea of the Church’s function finds expression in the general councils and in the papacy. At least a differently balanced idea of the function of the episcopate finds expression in the catholic conception of the bishop as securing the channels of grace and truth and representing the divine presence, and in the Roman conception of an - external hierarchy of government centering in the papacy. The conflict between the two conceptions begins perhaps even in the days of Victor or Stephen ; it bears fruit in the Great Schism and in the further schisms of the Reformation. Of course the Roman doctrine of church unity does not annihilate the other and older conception. The bishop remains still in the Roman Church what he was from the beginning, but another idea has been superadded, and it is this superadded idea which differentiates the Romanized from the primitive and undivided Church, With this superadded conception we shall not be further
1 It is not suggested that the Roman claims were more than one among several causes of these schisms.
62 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP. 1.
concerned in this argument. We have only to do with the fundamental doctrine of the visible Church as the body of Christ, which is inseparably associated with the doctrine of the faith and the sacraments, and which we are now in a position to assume was a con- ception held from the first, and which runs up for its primary authority to the will of Christ the King.
CHAPTER IL APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION.
JESUS CHRIST, we are now in a position to assume, founded a visible society, which, as embodying God’s new covenant with men and representing His good- will towards them, was intended to embrace all mankind. As that society has existed in history, it has exhibited a more or less broad and marked dis- tinction between clergy and laity, priests and people, pastors and their flocks. Such a distinction would,
Did Christ institute a ministry?
it may be argued, inevitably grow up on the same.
principles which regulate the division of labour in other departments of human life. The question then arises: Is the Christian ministry simply, like a police force, a body which it has been found advantageous to organize and may be found advantageous to re- organize? Did Christ in instituting His society leave it to itself to find out its need of a differentiation of functions and develop a ministry, or did He, on the other hand, when He constituted His society, constitute its ministry also in the germ? Did He establish not only a body, but an organized body, with
a differentiation of functions Anaprensed upon. it from
the beginning? “ “ | Py; It may be urged that the former alterriative is
The idea not improbable ;
64 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
more in accordance with what we should expect,’ for it will exhibit the Christian ministry as of a piece with the ordinary products of social evolution. Such a presumption might be met in a measure, antecedently to the question of historical evidence, by the considera- tion that founders of great institutions, where they successfully observe and correspond to the conditions of their time, are able, to a certain degree at least, to anticipate the results of evolution and impress upon their foundations from the first an abiding form.’ But it is a more satisfactory consideration that the Church is naturally of a piece with the Incarnation, the fruits of which it perpetuates, and that, as was pointed out in the last chapter, has a finality which belongs to its very essence. It is not that the re- ligion of Christ, as final and supernatural, has no progress or development in it; it is not a code of rules covering all possible occasions of the future. But it is a religion which in its principles and essence is final,—which contains in itself all the forces which the future will need; so that there is nothing to be looked for in the department of religion beyond or outside it, while there is everything to be looked for from within. This essential finality is expressed in the once for all delivered faith, in the fulness of
1 As by Hatch B. L. pp. 17-20.
2 This is conspicuously the case with Islam. Mahommed incorporated pre-existing elements of Arab and Jewish belief—of the Christian faith also in a debased form; it may be said with truth that there was no originality in the theology of Islam. But its founder incorporated the elements that came to hand into a book, and on the basis of his book founded a religion which with its motives, its institutions, its obligations was a new thing in the world and yet had a remarkable completeness ab ovo. That is to say, it was as complete as its fundamental idea would allow of its being.
ἘΠ Apostolic Succession. 65
the once for all given grace, in the visible society once for all instituted ; and it is at least therefore a ‘tenable proposition’* that it should have been ex- pressed in a once for all empowered and commissioned ministry.
That it is much more than a ‘tenable proposi- tion ’—that it is a proposition which states a fact of history—it will be the business of succeeding chapters to show. What it is proposed to do now is to clear but the prin.
3 cows ae ok . ciple of the up the zdea of the Christian ministry—to explain ministry
must be rst ex-
what is meant by it, and why it is a reasonable idea piained, —before we go on to test, with as rigorous a criticism as can be applied, its basis in history.
Why adopt such a method ? it will be said. Why explain first what you are going to look for, and then proceed to look for it? Why not let the principle, whatever it may be, emerge simply from the facts ? The answer is perhaps a twofold one. First, that the method here proposed corresponds to the method by which we actually in most cases arrive at convic- tions. We do not start afresh; we take the tradi- tional belief, the traditional position, and test it. This is the normal method of human progress. If the traditional belief will not bear the light of facts, ' it has to be modified, or even reversed ; we have to go through the process which a modern writer calls ‘the correction of our premises.’ But we give, and rightly give, a prerogative to an accepted position, so far at least as to start from it. Secondly, it may 1 See Hatch B. L, [sec. ed.] pref. p. xii, where the coherence of ideas ig
recognised. E
66 Christian Ministry. | CHAP.
be answered that the method of hypothesis is one of the most normal methods of scientific inquiry. The scientific investigator is not asked to approach the facts without antecedent ideas, without anticipations, without desires; to ask this of him in the field of nature or of history is, in most cases, to ask an impos- sibility. What we have a right to expect is that the ~ facts shall be looked at with severe impartiality and be allowed their legitimate weight to support, or con- travene, or modify the original hypothesis. And further, the scientific investigator, when he makes public demonstration of the results of his investiga- tions, is not expected to re-enact all the process he has himself gone through. He asks the right question at once ; he propounds at once the right hypothesis, and proceeds to verify it. That is what it is proposed to do here. There have been several theories—or, to speak more accurately, modifications of one theory—of the Christian ministry, which, as having more or less authority in tradition, have some prerogative claims to be examined, but which will not, as they are, stand the verifying test of facts. Underlying them there is a theory that will. There is, that is to say, a number of more or less perverted conceptions of what. the Christian ministry has always essentially meant, as well as a true one. In what follows an attempt will be made to distinguish the true idea from its perversions.
Any one who undertakes to vindicate for any Christian truth or institution its claim to perman- ence or authority—its claim, that is, to be an integral part of the Christian revelation—is confronted on the
I. | Apostolic Succession. 67 threshold of his undertaking with a difficulty. The
idea or institution has been abused, or overlaid with what exaggerates or disfigures it. He has to attempt what makes a considerable claim on mental patience, to draw distinctions between the abuse of a thing and its use, between the permanence of a thing in its fundamental principle and its permanence with the particular set of associations which in this or that epoch have clustered round it. This is remarkably true of the institution of the Christian ministry and the associated idea of the apostolic succession. It is because its
perversions have caused
maintained, though not perhaps with very much truth, misnnaer- that superseded elements of Judaism survived and aie: discoloured more or less the conception of the ministry
in the Church: it is much more certain that in the early Middle Ages this, with every other Christian institution, ran a great risk of becoming incrusted with associations left by the dying forms of paganism.
' Again, the ambition of the clergy and the spiritual apathy and ignorance of the mass of the laity have
led to its assuming false claims and a false prominence. Feudal and other passing forms of political society have adopted it and more or less perverted it to their
own ends, so that, when their day was over or their support withdrawn, it has been left with its hold on human life weakened, because its true nature was overlaid and forgotten. Once again, it has lived in
the security of uncritical epochs and based its claims
on careless statements, and the steady rise of an exacter examination of facts has seemed to shake its foundations.
68 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
Thus the conception of the ministry needs purging before it can be vindicated.’ ‘There is a short way,” says St. Cyprian, “for religious and simple minds to lay aside error, or to find and elicit the truth. For, if we go back to the head and origin of the divine tradition, human error ceases: the real nature of the
1 The learned Oratorian Morinus, in his work de Sacris Ordinationibus (A.D. 1686), offers a good example of a Christian student purging an idea in order to vindicate it. At the time when he wrote there were several false conceptions current on his subject. Notably, it was held that the essential ‘matter’ (or rite) of ordination lay in the ‘tradition of the instruments,’ i.e. the giving to the ordinand the characteristic vessels of his ministry. This scholastic doctrine had gained expression in a formal papal decree, though Morinus does not mention this. Eugenius tv. had written thus in his De- cretum de Unione Armeniorum (the decree which affirmed the doctrinal basis of union with the see of Rome for the benefit of the Armenians, who were seeking reunion at the time of the Council of Florence a.p. 1439): ‘‘Sextum sacramentum est ordinis, cuius materia est illud per cuius tra- ditionem confertur ordo, sicut presbyteratus traditur per calicis cum vino et patenae cum pane porrectionem. Diaconatus vero per libri evangeliorum dationem. . . . Formasacerdotii talis est: Accipe potestatem offerendi sacri- ficium in ecclesia pro vivis et mortuis, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti: et sic de aliorum ordinum formis prout in pontificali Romano late continetur” (Labbe Collect. Concil. xviii. p. 550). Here, it will be seen, there is no mention at all of the laying-on of hands, and this represented for some centuries the authoritative doctrine. The absence of the porrectio instrumentorum, with the accompanying words, from our ordination of priests had been made the standing objection against the validity of our orders (cf. Estcourt Question of Angl. Ord. pp. 260-1). This was due, as Morinus remarks (p. iii. ex. i. 1. 1), to the fact that the ‘‘ doctores scholastici” were ‘‘Graecarum ordinationum ignari et antiquae Latinorum traditionis incuriosi.” He was at pains to make an appeal to antiquity. He investigated and reproduced in his work types of early Oriental ordinations from ancient Greek and other Eastern mss, and demonstrated the absence of the ceremony in question from these rites. Yet Oriental ordinations were confessedly valid, He then reproduced the earliest types of Western ordi- nations from Latin mss, and demonstrated that in the West the ceremony with its accompanying words was a later addition unknown in the first thousand years of the Church’s history. He then asserted the principle that only that could be essential which had been the practice both in East and West and the constant practice from the first, i.e. the laying-on of hands with accompanying prayer. Thus he purged the tradition. It is the frank inquiry which characterizes his work, and his genuine belief in historical evidence and its value as a corrective of current teaching, which has given his work the high place among works on ecclesiastical subjects which it deservedly holds,
II. | | Apostolic Succession. 69
heavenly mysteries is seen, and whatever was hid in darkness and under a cloud is opened out into the light of truth. Ifa canal which used to give a copious supply of water suddenly fails, men go to the fount to find the reason of the failure—whether the water has dried up at the spring, or has been intercepted in mid- course; so that, if this happened through a defect in _ the canal preventing the flow of the water, it may be repaired and the water gathered for the supply of the city's wants may reach them in the abundance and purity with which it left the fount. This is what, on the present occasion, the priests of God should do, keeping the divine precepts, so that, if the truth in any matter has been weakened or impaired, we may go back to the original of our Lord and His Gospel or to the apostolic tradition, and let the principles of our action take their rise there, where our order has its origin.” ἢ
Whether the idea now to be expounded repre- sents ‘the original of our Lord’ and the ‘ apostolic tradition,’ will be the question afterwards. We take it now only as an hypothesis, and it is this. Let it be me idea of supposed that Christ, in founding His Church, founded srecession of also a ministry in the Church in the persons of His Apostles. These Apostles must be supposed to have
1 Hp. \xxiv. to.
2 <*By the Church on earth,” says Méhler (Symbolism pt. i. ch. 5 § 36), ““ Catholics understand the visible community of believers, founded by Christ, in which, by means of an enduring apostleship, established by Him and appointed to conduct all nations, in the course of ages, back to God, the works wrought by Him during His earthly life for the redemption and sanctifica- tion of mankind are, under the guidance of His Spirit, continued unto the end of the world.”
70 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
had a temporary function in their capacity as founders under Christ. In this capacity they held an office by
its very nature not perpetual—the office of bearing
the original witness to Christ’s resurrection and mak- ing the original proclamation of the Gospel. But underlying this was another—a pastorate of souls, a stewardship of divine mysteries. This office insti- tuted in their persons was intended to become per- petual, and that by being transmitted from its first depositaries. It was thus intended that there should be in every Church, in each generation, an authorita- tive stewardship of the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ and a recognised power to transmit it, derived from above by apostolic descent. The men,
1 See Pearson Determinatio Theol. i (in his Minor Theol. Works i. pp. 283, 284, and quoted by Dr. Liddon in A Father in Christ [sec. ed.] pref. pp. x-xii): ‘‘ Ordinem episcopalem fuisse in ipsis apostolis institutum ac-per successionem ab ipsis propagatum. Ad hanc assertionem explicandam sciendum est, concessam fuisse apostolis duplicem potestatem, temporariam unam et extraordinariam, ordinariam alteram diuque permansuram. Prior potestas duplicem respectum habuit, ad Christum et ad ecclesiam. Respectu Christi facti sunt apostoli peculiares testes resurrectionis eius: respectu domus Dei facti sunt lapides in fundamento, h.e. ad praedicandam fidem haud prius_revelatam, ad fundandas ecclesias, ad colligendum populum Deo instituti et instructi. Posterior potestas erat regendi ecclesias iam fundatas, praedicandi verbum fidelibus collectis, administrandi sacramenta populo Dei, ordinandi ministros ad ecclesiastica munia, peragendi omnia ad salutem Chris- tianorum necessaria. Quod erat in iis temporarium, id erat pure et peculia- riter apostolicum ; quod autem erat ordinarium et perpetuum, idem erat in eisdem proprie episcopale. Acceperunt totam potestatem a Christo: quic- quid erat in eis personale, cum ipsis mortuum est; quicquid erat omnibus ecclesiae temporibus necessarium, ipsorum, dum viverent, manibus transmis- sum est. Dixit Christus apostolis ‘Sicut misit me Pater, ita et ego mitto vos.’ Sicut ipse habuit a Patre mandatum docendi populum et ministros ad hoc necessarios necessaria auctoritate instructos deputandi, ita et apo- stoli habuerunt idem officium et mandatum cum eadem potestate ministros eligendi et ita successive usque ad consummationem saeculi continuata suc- cessione. Est itaque apostolus episcopus extraordinarius, est episcopus apostolus ordinarius ; atque ita episcopatus fuit in apostolis a Christo insti- tutus, in successoribus apostolorum ab apostolis derivatus.”
τῇ
11. | Apostolic Succession. 71
who from time to time were to hold the various offices involved in the ministry and the transmitting power necessary for its continuance, might, indeed, fitly be elected by those to whom they were to minister. In this way the ministry would express the representative principle. But their authority to minister in what- ever capacity, their qualifying consecration, was to come from above, in such sense that no ministerial act could be regarded as valid—that is, as having the . i q bn security of the divine covenant about it—unless it m0» J,0%¢ was performed under the shelter of a commission, μέ: ὃ, ΤᾺ received by the transmission of the original pastoral Ὁ ἢ ογονέ; εἰς - authority which had been delegated by Christ Him \ dhs. @ fs self to a2 Apostles. τρῷς 72 ἜΣ ~ th Sate This. 1s ‘what is understood by: the apostolic suit! ΩΣ
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77 that Ahi fe
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72 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
the earth,” which man offers for the divine accept- ance, “receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but Eucharist made up of two things, an earthly and a heavenly.”’ ‘‘God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life.” In each of these cases we have the material offered from below and the empowering consecration from above. It is just these two elements, then, that are present to con- stitute the ministry. Those who are to be ordained are, like the Levites, the offering of the people; but they receive, like Aaron and his sons, their consecra- tion from above.”
It is a matter of very great importance—as will appear further on—to exalt the principle of the apostolic succession above the question of the exact
1 Tren. iv. 18. 5.
2 In the Dissertation on the Christian Ministry, appended to his com- mentary on the Philippians, (on which see Appended Note A,) Dr. Light- foot maintains that the priests of the Old Testament were only the ‘‘dele- gates of the people” —‘‘the nation thus deputes to a single tribe the priestly functions which belong to itself as a whole” (Dissert. pp. 182, 183). Surely ‘dormitat Homerus.’ His reference is to the laying-on of hands ‘by the people upon the Levites (Numb. viii. 10). But whatever significance this act had, it had surely nothing to do with the ordination of the priests, the sons of Aaron. These had been consecrated to their office ‘‘ before this laying-on of hands upon the Levites took place, and with far different ceremonies, by Moses himself, without any intervention of the people whatever” (Willis Worship of the Old Covenant p. 112). Thus, if the Levites represent the self-consecration of the people, the ‘lay-priesthood,’ (Numb. viii. 10-20,) Aaron, who is to ‘“‘ offer the Levites before the Lord” (ver. 11)—Aaron, to whom, with his sons, God is said to have ‘‘ given the Levites as a gift to do the service of the children of Israel” (ver. 19)—Aaron, and his sons the priests, represent the ministers of the covenant instituted by God Himself, whose prerogative was so jealously guarded, even against the sons of Levi, ‘in the matter of Korah’ (Numb. xvi). ‘‘ Moses himself, as the representative of the unseen King, is the consecrator” (Dict. Bible, s.v. PRIEST, ii. Ὁ. 917). [Iam speaking of the whole Old Testament, as the writers of the New Testament knew it, without discussing the question of the date of different portions of
the Law.]
1. | Apostolic Succession. 73
form of the ministry, in which the principle has expressed itself, even though it be by apostolic order- ing. What is meant is this: the apostolic succession has taken shape—how uniformly the next chapter will show—in a threefold ministry, consisting of a single bishop in each community or diocese with presbyters and deacons, the bishop alone having the power of ordaining or conferring ministerial authority on others, the presbyters constituting a ‘ co-opera- tive order’ which shares with him a common priest- hood, and the deacons holding a subordinate and
supplementary position. But this is rather the out-
come of a principle than itself a principle, at any rate / Wiis
a primary or essential principle.’ No one, of whatever part of the Church, can maintain that the existence of what may be called, for lack of a distinctive term, monepiscopacy is essential to the continuity of the Church. Such monepiscopacy may be the best mode of government, it may most aptly symbolize the divine monarchy, it may have all spiritual expe- diency and historical precedent on its side—nay, more, it may be of apostolic institution: but nobody could maintain that the continuity of the Church would be broken if in any given diocese all the presbyters were consecrated to the episcopal office, and governed as a co-ordinate college of bishops without presbyters or presbyter-bishops.? A state of things quite as abnor-
1 See Church Principles, by W. E. Gladstone, pp. 244, 245, 252, 253.
2 «The things proper to bishops,” says Bishop Bilson (Perpet. Govt. of Christ’s Church ch. xiii), ‘‘ which might not be common to presbyters, were singularity in succeeding and superiority in ordaining.” But of these two things the latter is really that which forms the vital distinction between the orders.
74 Christian Ministry. [CHAP.
mal as this existed for many centuries in the Celtic Church of Ireland. Something equivalent to this very arrangement has been commonly believed in the West to have existed in the early Church.
Why was the violation of the ordinary arrange- ment of the ministry regarded in these cases as a matter of only secondary importance? Because the principle of the apostolic succession was not violated. There have always (it is here supposed) existed in the Church ministers, who, besides the ordinary exercise of their ministry, possess the power of trans- mitting it; they may, so far, be one or many in each community ; but, when they ordain men to the holy offices of the Church, they are only fulfilling the func- tion intrusted to them out of the apostolic fount of authority. “There are other ministers, again, who have certain clearly understood functions committed to them, but not that of transmitting their office. Should these ever attempt to transmit it, their act would be considered invalid. For this is the church principle: that no ministry is valid which is assumed, which a man takes upon himself, or which is merely delegated to him from below. That ministerial act alone is valid which is covered by a ministerial commission received from above by suc- cession from the Apostles. This is part of the great principle of tradition. ‘ Hold the traditions,” reiter- ates the Apostle. The whole of what constitutes Christianity is a transmitted trust—a tradition which may need purging, but never admits of innovation, for ‘nihil innovandum nisi quod traditum’ is a
:
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II. | Apostolic Succession. 75
fundamental Christian principle. For instance, the truth revealed in Christ is adequate to all time. It is fruitful of innumerable applications and adap- tations to the new wants of each age. It may need setting free and purifying from accretions from time to time, but not more. What breaks the tradition is heresy——the intrusion, that is, of a new and alien element into the deposit, having its origin in personal self-assertion. This conception of heresy is involved in the very idea of a revelation once for all made. Now, what heresy is in the sphere of truth, a viola- tion of the apostolic succession is in the tradition of the ministry. Here too there is a deposit handed down, an ecclesiastical trust transmitted; and its continuity is violated, whenever a man ‘takes any honour to himself’ and assumes a function not com- mitted to him. Judged in the light of the Church’s mind as to the relation of the individual to the whole body, such an act takes a moral discolouring. The individual, of course, who is guilty of the act may not incur the responsibility in any particular case through the absence of right knowledge, or from other causes which exempt from responsibility in whole or in part; but judged by an objective standard, the act has the moral discolouring of self-assertion. The Church’s doctrine of succession is thus of a piece with the whole idea of the Gospel revelation, as being the communication of a divine gift which must be received and cannot be originated,—received, moreover, through the channels of a visible and organic society; and the principle (this is what is here emphasized) lies at
76 Christian Mintstry. [CHAP.
the last resort in the idea of succession rather than in the continuous existence of episcopal government— even though it should appear that this too is of apo- stolic origin, and that the Church, since the Apostles, has never conceived of itself as having any power to originate or interpolate a new office."
Its import- It will be easy to see that the existence of an ance
apostolic succession serves several important ends. (asa bond (i) It forms a link of historical continuity in a of union
ina spiritual society intended to be universal and permanent. Nations have many bonds of union. There is the unity of blood and language and common customs: there is the unity of a common government over men inhabiting a common territory. Such bonds of union are lacking to a universal spiritual society such as the Church claims to be. Embracing all peoples and languages, admitting and consecrating the greatest varieties of local custom and taste, inhabiting no com- mon territory but spread over all the earth,’ how should the Church preserve or exhibit its identity and continuity as a visible society without some such
1 The words of the Anglican Art. xxum1. are: ‘‘ Non licet cuiquam sumere sibi munus publice praedicandi aut administrandi sacramenta in ecclesia, nisi prius fuerit ad haec obeunda legitime vocatus et missus. Atque illos legitime vocatos et missos existimare debemus, qui per homines, quibus potestas vocandi ministros atque mittendi in vineam Domini publice concessa est, in ecclesia cooptati fuerint et asciti in hoc opus.”
2 We know how familiar a boast this is with early Christian writers. Cf. e.g. Ep. ad Diognet. 5: ‘‘ Christians (of the ‘new race’ which has just come into the world, c. 1) are distinguished from the rest of mankind neither by land, nor by language, nor by customs. They have neither cities of their own, nor exceptional language, nor remarkable mode of life. But inhabiting Greek or barbarian cities as the lot of each determined, and obeying the local customs in dress and food and general conduct of life, the character of their own polity which they exhibit is everywhere wonderful and confessedly strange.”’ Cf. Iren. i. 10. 2.
II. | Apostolic Succession. 77
instrument and evidence of succession as is afforded by the ministry as traditionally conceived? No doubt it may be urged, and with partial truth, that the real unity of the Church lies in the Spirit, which lives in her, and the truth she holds and teaches ; but that truth was committed to a society, as what Iren- -aeus calls “its rich depository,’* and that Spirit has a body—and how can the outward organization, which enshrines and perpetuates the inner life, main- tain or exhibit its identity without some such bond as the apostolic succession of the ministry affords ?? (ii) The ministerial succession serves the end of (iyas aectar-
ing men’s
impressing upon Christians that their new life is a onthe gifts . . . 5 . . . f i t; communicated gift, and from this point of view it is” ”
naturally associated with the sacraments. A Chris- tian of apostolic days was taught by St. Paul to look back to the day of baptism as the moment of his incorporation into the life of Christ.» He had received the gift of the Spirit by the laying on of apostolic hands.* He was fed with the Body and Blood of Christ through the ‘effectual signs’ of
bread and wine.® This sacramental method went to
1 Tren. iii. 4. 1: “ quasi in depositorium dives.”
2 For an interesting statement of the function of the episcopal succession from this point of view, see F. D. Maurice’s Kingdom of Christ pt. ii. ch. iv. $5; also Gladstone Church Principles ch. v. esp. pp. 193, 194: “1 it were attempted to insist on succession in doctrine as the sole condition of the essence of a Church, any such proposition would be self-contradictory, inasmuch as that which would be thus perpetuated would not be a society at all, but a creed or body of tenets.” What is required is “succession of persons,” as well as ‘* continuous identity of doctrine.”
3 Gal. iii. 27; Rom. vi. 3; 1 Cor. xii. 13.
4 Acts viii, 17-20, xix. 6; cf. Rom. i, 11.
5 1 Cor. x. 16, 17. I do not see how it is possible to deny that the New Testament does attach inward gifts to external channels, i.e. is sacramental.
78 Christian Ministry. | CHAP.
impress upon his mind the idea of his dependence upon grace given from without. ‘True, this grace given from without could only be appropriated, incorporated, used, by the inward faculty of faith. This is the Christian principle of correspondence. As, when Christ was on earth healing men’s sickness, the ‘virtue which went out of Him’ could only be liberated to act in effective power on those who had ‘faith to be healed,’ and thus men’s faith made them whole, though the means of their healing was the virtue of Christ’s body which came from without ; so is it with His permanent spiritual agency. He saves in virtue of an inward faith but by the instru- mentality of a gift given from outside. This outward bestowal of grace was no peculiarity of the apostolic age, though the symbolic miracles which at first called attention to it passed away. It is impossible to deny that the early Christians, in East and West, believed in the sacraments as the covenanted channels of grace. It is, indeed, part of God’s condescending
1 I may refer, in confirmation of what is said above, to the way in which the Fathers, at the end of the second century, emphasize the sacramental principle as of a piece with the principle of the Incarnation against the Gnostic depreciation of what is material. See a vigorous passage of Tertul- lian (de Resurr. Carn. 8), emphasizing how, at each stage of the spiritual life, the inward gift is mediated through the material body—and that, of course, implies through a material sacrament. ‘‘As the soul is attached to God, it is the flesh which enables it to be united. The flesh is washed that the soul may be cleansed : the flesh is anointed that the soul may be consecrated ; the flesh is marked with the Cross that the soul may be pro- tected : the flesh is shadowed with the imposition of hands that the soul may be illuminated by the Spirit: the flesh is fed with the Body and Blood of Christ that the soul may feed upon the fatness of God.” Cf. de Bapt. 2, quoted on p.179. This is no advance upon the principle of Irenaeus. To Irenaeus the bread and wine are consecrated to become the Body and Blood of Christ, and so to impart eternal life even to man’s body (iv. 18. 5): ‘‘the mixed cup and the bread which has been made receives the word of God,
+ tata
— a eee
11. | Apostolic Succession. 79
compassion that He should thus embody in visible form His divine gift. So is it made most easily intel- ligible and accessible to the ignorant.t| So was it most easily and forcibly impressed on men that Christ had come, not merely to show them what in any case they are if they will be true to themselves, but to make them what apart from Him they cannot be.
and the Eucharist becomes the Body [and Blood] of Christ, and the substance of our flesh grows and gains consistence from these. How, then, can they say that our flesh is not susceptible of the gift of God, which is eternal life —our flesh, which is nourished by the Body and Blood of the Lord, and which is His member” (v. 2. 3). Irenaeus’ contemporary at Alexandria, Clement (as there can, I think, be no doubt, though his exact view of the Eucharist is hard to grasp or state) certainly believed that the sacraments convey to us the life and being of Christ ; cf. Paed.i.6. This would appear in Dr. Bigg’s references B. LZ. pp. 105, 106. But we may go back earlier. The simple account, which, earlier in the second century, Justin Martyr gives of the meaning of the Christian sacraments (Apol. i. 61, 65-67), carries conviction that Irenaeus and Tertullian are stating no new doctrine. We go back to the beginning of the century, to Ignatius, and we find the same stress on the sacraments in the earliest stage of controversy with Gnosticism. ‘‘ The heretics,’ he writes (ad Smyrn. 7), ‘‘ abstain from the Eucharist and prayer, because they confess not that the Eucharist is the Flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, which by His goodness the Father raised up. They, therefore, who speak against the gift of God die by their disputing.” [Dr. Lightfoot would interpret this in the light of Tertullian’s ‘‘Hoc est corpus meum: id est figura mei corporis.” But Tertullian’s language about the Eucharist as a whole makes it quite certain that he believed it to be a real gift of the Flesh and Blood of Christ, and not merely a figure. The sacraments are ‘figures,’ ‘symbols,’ ‘types,’ ‘signs,’ but they are ‘effectual signs,’ they effect what they symbolize.] The earliest language about baptism also is very emphatic in making it the instru- ment of the new birth and its accompanying purification. See Hermas Vis. iii. 3, Sim. ix. 16, and Barnabas Hp. τι. The only early Christian writings which seem to take a low view of the sacraments are very Judaic, e.g. the (Ebionite) Clementines and the Didache, which, though not Ebionite, has no hold on the doctrine of the Incarnation and of the grace which flows from it.
1 It is instructive to contrast in this respect Christianity with Neo- Platonism. Communion with God—oneness with God—was regarded by the philosophers as attainable only through intellectual self-abstraction from the things of sense and.an ecstatic rapture possible but to a very few ‘select’ natures. In the Church it was believed to depend upon a simple act, possible to the most ignorant. ‘‘ Take, eat; this is My Body.” ‘‘He that eateth My Flesh dwelleth in Me, and I in him,”
80 Christian Mintstry. [CHAP.
“ Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you.” *
Aristotle represented man as ‘ self-sufficient ’"— not indeed as an individual, but as a member of an organized society, the city of Greek civilization. If he needed to come into contact with God, that was rather at the circumference of his life and as the remote goal of its highest efforts. Christianity, on the contrary, represents man as fundamentally and from the first dependent upon God. It proclaims that man’s initial step of true progress is to know his utter, his complete dependence,—that the essence and secret of all sin is his claim to be independent, to be sufficient for himself. Thus Christ, when He came to restore men to their true selves and to God, did all that was necessary to emphasize that their restoration must be by the communication of a gift from outside, which they had not and could not have of themselves. This is the essential message of Chris- tianity, and is what differentiates its whole moral scheme from its very foundations. But in the second part of the Aristotelian position Christianity recog- nises a divine truth, of which man had never lost his hold: man still must realize his true being in a society, the city of God. Only in the divine house- hold of the Church can he be fed with his necessary portion, the bread of life.
1 F. W. Robertson (Sermons, 2d series, pp. 55, 56) attempts to make baptism merely an announcement of what is, instead of a creative or re-creative act: but this is to do violence to the whole body of Scriptural and ecclesias- tical language. The Church is the ‘new creation,’ and the sacraments are ‘ practica’ or ‘ efficacia signa.’
IL. | Apostolic Succession. 81
Yet if it be important to impress upon men’s minds, permanently and persistently, as a part of a catholic system, their dependence upon gifts bestowed from outside, it must be admitted that there is no way of making. the impression more effective than by the institution in the Christian household of a steward- ship, which should represent God, the giver, dis- tributing to the members of the divine family their portion of meat in due season ; and it is quite essential that such stewards should receive their authorization by a commission which makes them the repre- sentatives of God the giver, and not of men the receivers. “It is the doctrine of the ministerial suc- cession by commission from the Apostles, which makes, and which alone makes, this required provision for representing to us, along with the matter of the revelation, and as needful to its due reception, this lively idea of its origin.” ?
(iii) The apostolic succession seems to corre- ‘iti)as meet.
ing the moral needs of
spond, as nothing else does, to the moral needs of the those who ministers of Christ’s Church.? ‘“ How shall they preach,” said St. Paul, “except they be sent?” He himself had been sent by an immediate mission from Christ as direct, as visible (so he believed) as that which empowered the other Apostles. When he exhorts Timothy to make “ full proof of his ministry,” it is by recalling his mind to an actual external com- mission received, with its actual and accompanying gift. ‘“ There is not in the world,” says Bishop Taylor, 1 Gladstone Church Principles p. 208.
2 See Dr. Liddon’s sermon 716 Moral Value of a Mission from Christ. Ἐ
82 Christian Ministry. [CHAP.
“a greater presumption than that any should think to convey a gift of God, unless by God he be appointed to do it.”* Such appointment or com- mission, to be valid, must be of an authority—not unquestioned, indeed, for St. Paul’s was questioned, but not justly open to question, as representative of Christ. Men are needed for -Christ’s ministry who have ready wills and clear convictions, men, that is, with a sense of vocation; but they must be also men of humility, distrustful of their own impulses and powers, like the prophets of old. The very thing that such men need is the open and external com- mission to support the internal sense of vocation through all the fiery trials of failure and disappoint- - ment, of weariness and weakness, to which it will be subjected—nay, to be its substitute when God’s inward voice seems even withdrawn—maintaining in the man the simple conviction that, as a matter of fact, ‘a dispensation has been committed to him.’
_ The idea of the apostolic succession is, then, we may claim, in natural harmony both with the moral needs of men and with the idea of the Church. Such a succession of ministers would serve, as nothing else could serve, both as a link of continuity in the society, and as an institution calculated to represent to men’s imaginations the dependence of the Christian life upon God’s gifts, and as a means for supplying a satis- fying commission to those called to share the ministry.
On the other hand, objections are raised against it which may best be considered before we approach 1 Ductor Dubitant. in his Works [ed. 1822] xiv. p. 26.
II. | Apostolic Succession. 83
the discussion of the historical evidence, especially as the consideration of them will serve to put more clearly before our minds what the exact concep- tion is which is to be subjected to the test of history.
The most important of them may be summarized under five heads :—
(1) the doctrine of the apostolic succession is sacerdotal :
(2) it postulates—what is so incredible—that bad or unspiritual men can impart spiritual gifts to others :
(3) it is incompatible with the true ideal of liberty :
(4) the chances against its having been actually preserved are overwhelming :
(5) it is exclusive in such a sense as to be fatal to its claim.
(1) ‘The doctrine of the apostolic succession is (@<ttis | 0
sacerdotal.’ This we admit in one sense and deny in another. It is necessary for us in fact to draw a dis- tinction between what we regard as legitimate and what as illegitimate sacerdotalism.' For the term is associated historically with much that is worst, as well as much that is best, in human character. Priesthood has been greatly abused. But must not the same be said of liberty or of State authority? Must not it be said of religion itself, in common with all the greatest and most ennobling truths? What would become of us if we should agree to abandon every idea and
1 Dr. Liddon University Sermons, 2nd series, p. 191: “ΑΔ formidable word, harmless in itself, but surrounded with very invidious associations.” See the whole passage.
sace
The minis- terial priest- hood, how- ever, is not vicarious
84 Christian Ministry. [CHAP.
institution which has become corrupt, or been exagger- ated, or made to minister to ambition and worldli- ness? Life would be a barren thing indeed! There is surely no better task for the wise man than to set himself to vindicate the truths which lie behind per- sistent and popular errors and abuses—to the reality and power of which, indeed, the very popularity and persistence of the abuses bear witness.
The chief of the ideas commonly associated with sacerdotalism, which it is important to repudiate, is that of a vicarious priesthood.’ It is contrary to the true spirit of the Christian religion to introduce the notion of a class inside the Church who are in a closer spiritual relationship to God than their fellows. “If a monk falls,” says St. Jerome, “a priest shall pray for him ; but who shall pray for a priest who has fallen?” Such an expression, construed literally, would imply a closer relation to God in the priest than in the consecrated layman, and such a conception is beyond a doubt alien to the spirit of Christianity. There is “no sacrificial tribe or class between God and man.” “Each individual member [of the Christian body] holds personal communion with the Divine Head.” The difference between clergy and laity ‘“‘is not a difference in kind”® but in function. Thus the completest freedom of access to God in prayer and intercession, the closest personal relation to Him, belongs to all. So far as there is gradation in the
1 See Maurice Kingdom of Christ ii. p. 216. 2 Dr. Lightfoot Dissert. on the Christian Ministry p. 181. 9 Liddon /.c. p. 198.
π.] Apostolic Succession. 85
efficacy of prayers, it is the result not of official position but of growing sanctity and strengthening faith. It is an abuse of the sacerdotal conception, if it is supposed that the priesthood exists to cele- brate sacrifices or acts of worship in the place of the body of the people or as their substitute. This con- ception had, no doubt, attached itself to the ‘ massing priests’ of the Middle Ages. The priest had come to be regarded as an individual who held, in virtue of his ordination, the prerogative of offering sacrifices which could win God’s gifts. Thus spiritual advan- tages could be secured for the living and the dead by paying him to say a mass, and greater advantages by a greater number of masses. Now this distorted sort of conception is one which the religious indolence of most men, in co-operation with the ambition for power in ‘spiritual’ persons, is always tending to make possible. It is not only possible to believe in a vicarious priesthood of sacrifice, but also in a vicarious office of preaching, which releases the laity from the obligation to make efforts of spiritual apprehension on their own account. But in either case the conception is an unchristian one. The ministry is no more one of vicarious action than it is one of exclusive knowledge or exclusive spiritual relation to God. What is the truth then? It is that butrepre. the Church is one body: the free approach to God in the Sonship and Priesthood of Christ belongs to men as members of ‘one body,’ and this one body has different organs through which the functions of its life find expression, as it was differentiated by the act
86 Christian Ministry. [CHAP.
and appointment of Him who created it. The recep- tion, for instance, of Eucharistic grace, the approach to God in Eucharistic sacrifice, are functions of the | whole body. ‘ We bless the cup of blessing,” “we break the bread,” says St. Paul, speaking for the community : “ we offer,” “we present,” is the language of the liturgies.* But the ministry is the organ—the necessary organ—of these functions. It is the hand which offers and distributes; it is the voice which consecrates and pleads. And the whole body can no more dispense with its services than the natural body can grasp or speak without the instrumentality of hand and tongue. Thus the ministry is the instru- ment as well as the symbol of the Church’s unity, and no man can share her fellowship except in accept- ance of its offices.
1 1 Cor. x. 16. It is remarkable that Hugh of St. Victor (Swmm. Sentent. tract. vi. 6. 9, quoted by Morinus de Sacr. Ord. p. iii. ex. v. 1. 4) gives as the current reason for denying that heretics or schismatics could consecrate the Eucharist the fact that in the Eucharist the priest speaks for the whole Church: ‘* Aliis videtur quod nec excommunicati nec manifeste haeretici con- ficiunt [corpus Christi]. Nullus enim in ipsa consecratione dicit offero, sed offerimus, ex persona totius ecclesiae, Cum autem alia sacramenta extra ecclesiam possint fieri, haec nunquam extra, et istis magis videtur assenti- endum.” The idea of the representative character of the priesthood in the ministry of the eucharistic sacrifice finds beautiful expression in the prayers (ascribed traditionally to St. Ambrose) which are used in the West as a Preparatio ad Missam: ““ Profero etiam,” the celebrant prays, ‘‘(si digneris propitius intueri) tribulationes plebium, pericula populorum, captivorum gemitus, miserias orphanorum, necessitates peregrinorum, inopiam debilium, desperationes languentium, defectus senum, suspiria iuvenum, vota virginum, lamenta viduarum.” He is the mouthpiece of the needs of ‘all sorts and conditions of men.’ As the necessary mouthpiece for the expression of these needs in the eucharistic celebration, the representative priest is in a certain sense a go-between, a mediator. Thus this same prayer has earlier these words: ‘‘quoniam me peccatorem inter te et eundem populum tuum medium esse voluisti, licet in me aliquod boni operis testimonium non agnos- cas, officium saltem dispensationis creditae non recuses, nec per me indignum eorum salutis pereat pretium, pro quibus victima salutaris dignatus es esse et redemptio.”
IL. | Apostolic Successton. 87
Why is this conception unreasonable? The people onthe of Israel of old were ‘‘a kingdom of priests, and an οἷς holy nation” (Exod. xix. 6). But that priestliness which inhered in the race had its expression in the divinely ordained ministry of the Aaronic priesthood."
The Christian Church is in an infinitely higher sense “a royal priesthood, a holy nation.”* But why should that priesthood exclude, and not rather involve, a itis not
inconsistent
ministry through which it finds official and formal ex- with the
general priesthood,
of
pression—and that not by mere expediential arrange- ment, but by divine ordering?*® Take the notion of the general priesthood of all Christians as it finds expression, for example, in Justin Martyr in the earlier part of the second century.4 __
“ Just,” he says, ‘as that Joshua, who is called by as taugnt
by Justin, the prophet (Zech. iii. 1) a priest, was seen wearing
filthy garments ... and was called a brand plucked out of the burning because he received remission of sins, the devil also, his adversary, receiving rebuke, so we, who through the name of Jesus have believed as one man
1 It is maintained without any adequate ground (Dict. Bible 5, v. PRIEST- HOOD) that the Levitical priesthood was the substitute in a sense for the general priesthood, instead of its expression—that the special priesthood was appointed because the people refused to realize the priesthood which belonged to them all—so that it was in this sense a pis aller, a δεύτερος πλοῦς. There is no evidence for this. The same chapter which recognises the general, recognises also a special priesthood (? of the first-born), Exod. xix. 22-24,
2 βασίλειον ἱεράτευμα, I Pet. ii. 9. βασιλεία, ἱερεῖς τῷ θεῷ, Rev. i. 6. St. Peter is quoting and St. John referring to the words in Exodus.
3.1 do not wish to press the argument too far. Single Christians are often spoken of as ‘ priests,’ and not merely as belonging to a priestly race. This is natural enough. For undoubtedly all Christians have an individual union with God and freedom of approach to God, which (so to speak) individualizes that in them which can be rightly called priesthood. I only use the argument to prove this—that a ministerial priesthood is in no contradictory relation to a general priesthood.
4 Dial. ς. Tryph. 116, 117.
88 Christian Ministry. [ CHAP.
in God, the Maker of all, have been stripped through the name of His First-begotten Son of the ‘ filthy gar- ments’ of our sins; and being set on fire by the word of his calling are the genuine high-priestly race of God, as God beareth witness Himself, saying that ‘in every place amongst the Gentiles men are offer- ing sacrifices acceptable to Him and pure, and God receives from no man sacrifices, except through His priests. So, then, of all the sacrifices through this — name, which Jesus the Christ delivered to be made, that is (the sacrifices) at the Eucharist of the bread and of the cup, which in every place of the earth are made by the Christians, God by anticipation beareth witness that they are acceptable to Him.”
Here is indeed a vivid consciousness of the priest- hood, which belongs to the Church as a whole’ but finds expression in a great ceremonial action—the Eucharist—an action which belongs not to the in- dividual but to the whole body, and is celebrated by the “ president of the brethren.” " How, then, is this priesthood interfered with, if we should find reason to believe that Christ Himself ordained ministers of this mystical action—such as did actually exist in Justin
1 It should be noticed that the idea of priesthood always seems to involve that of ‘approach to God on behalf of others.’ The Christians are high priests on behalf of the world. They are the ‘‘soul of the world” (Zp. ad Diognet. 6). They can plead effectually, so the apologists urged, for the empire and mankind (Tertull. Apol. 30). This function of the Church St. Paul presses on St. Timothy. The Church is not to confine her intercessions to her own body—‘‘I exhort that prayer, etc. be made 707) all men,” ‘‘for God will have all men to be saved ;” ‘ He is the Saviour of all men,” though ‘*specially of them that believe” (1 Tim. ii. 1-4; iv. 10).
2 προσφέρεται τῷ προεστῶτι τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἄρτος καὶ ποτήριον (Apol. i. 65). He
offers the prayer and Eucharist, and the people say Amen. This ‘ president’ is no doubt the bishop. So Harnack (Hxpositor, May 1887, p. 336).
a ὡς
II. | | Apostolic Succession 89
Martyr’s days—to be the mouthpieces of the Church in its celebration ?
No one, again, is more identified than Irenaeus trenaeus, with the principle of the apostolic succession. He regards it undoubtedly as of the essence of the Church.
Her mark, her character, is “according to the suc- cessions of the bishops.” * Yet he does not hesitate to say that in some sense “every just man is of the priestly order,” and “all the disciples of the Lord are priests and Levites”—that is, they have the freedom of the old priesthood, not its ministry.” If it be said that Irenaeus is admittedly ‘unsacerdotal,’ that is, that he does not apply the term priesthood to the Christian ministry,’ it may be pointed out, further, that writers, who confessedly are sacerdotal in their anaiater
writers.
conception of the ministry, still continue down into the Middle Ages to speak also without hesitation of the general priesthood.* For the official hierarchy
1 iv. 33. 8: ‘‘ character corporis Christi secundum successiones episco- porum.”
2 iv. 8. 5 and v. 34. 3; see Lightfoot Dissert. p. 252. The point in both passages is that our Lord in justifying the conduct of His disciples when they broke the Sabbath (St. Matt. xii. 1-5) claimed for them and for David in virtue of their righteousness the freedom of priests, ‘who profane the Sabbath and are blameless.’ Again, inasmuch as, like the Levites, our Lord’s disciples had ‘no inheritance,’ they could, like the Levites, claim support. Thus ‘‘ they were allowed when hungry to take food of the grains.” In both cases the priesthood which belongs to good men or disciples lies in a certain freedom, not in any power of ministry.
3 See further in chap. iii. I have endeavoured there to point out that the idea of a gradual growth in sacerdotalism in the early Church hardly corre- sponds to the facts. There is a change rather in language than in principle.
4 Thus Origen (for whose admittedly sacerdotal view of the ministry see further in chap. iii.) in some passages ‘‘ takes spiritual enlightenment and not sacerdotal office to be the Christian counterpart to the Aaronic priesthood ” (Lightfoot Dissert. p. 255); cf. in Ioann. i. 3: ‘‘ Those who are devoted to the divine word, and are dedicated sincerely to the sole worship of God, may not unreasonably be called priests and Levites according to the differ-
90 Christian Ministry. | CHAP.
offered no bar to its recognition, provided that the general priesthood was not supposed by those church-
ence in this respect of their impulses tending thereto. . . . Those that excel the men of their own generation perchance will be high-priests” (Light- foot’s trans.) ; see also in Lev. iv. 6, vi. 5, ix. 1, 8, xiii. 5. He uses such language, however, with qualifications ‘‘ secundum moralem locum,” ‘‘ secun- dum spiritalem intelligentiam,” (in Zev. i. 5, ii, 4, ix. 6, xv. 3) ie. he draws a distinction between the moral and ministerial sense of priesthood ; see Dr. Bigg’s note, B. DL. p. 215 note?. He adds that ‘‘in Num. ii. 1 . . « priests, virgins, ascetics are said to be in professione religionis. in Iesu Nave xvii. 2 shows that there was a strong tendency in Origen’s mind to restrict the language concerning the priesthood of the Christian to those ‘ religious.’” So also among the scholia on the Apocalypse ascribed to Victorinus of Petau (but not by him in their present form) occurs the fol- lowing on c. xx: ‘‘ Qui enim virginitatis integrum servaverit propositum et decalogi fideliter praecepta impleverit . . . iste vere sacerdos est Christi et millenarium numerum perficiens integre creditur regnare cum Christo et apud eum recte ligatus est diabolus.”
For a recognition of the general priesthood among later sacerdotal writers, cf. Leo the Great Serm. iii. 1: ‘‘ut in populo adoptionis Dei, cuius universitas sacerdotalis atque regalis est, non praerogativa terrenae originis obtineat unctionem, sed dignatio caelestis gratiae gignat antistitem.” Serm. iv. 1: ‘In unitate igitur fidei atque baptismatis indis- creta nobis societas et generalis est dignitas, secundum illud beatis- simi Petri. . . . Vos autem genus electum, regale sacerdotium.” August. de Civ. Dei xvii. 5. 5: ‘‘Sacerdotium quippe hic ipsam plebem dicit, cuius plebis ille sacerdos est mediator Dei et hominum homo Christus Iesus.” Quaest. Evang. ii. 40. 3: ‘*‘Sacerdotium vero Iudaeorum nemo fere fidelium dubitat figuram fuisse futuri sacerdotii regalis, quod est in ecclesia, quo consecrantur omnes pertinentes ad corpus Christi summi et veri principis sacerdotum. Nam nunc et omnes unguuntur quod tunc regibus tantum et sacerdotibus fiebat, . . . ipsi nondum accepto baptismatis sacra- mento nondum spiritaliter ad sacerdotes pervenerant.” See the same idea in a collect of the Gelasian Sacramentary (Bright Ancient Collects p. 99). Hence we get a priesthood ascribed, as by St. Irenaeus, to each Christian (though of course as a member of the one body) in virtue of baptism and unction. St. Jerome (adv. Lucifer. 4) writes: ‘‘sacerdotium laici id est baptisma.” So Isidore of Seville (de Hecl. Off. ii. 25) writes: ‘‘ Postquam Dominus noster