fyxmil mramttg Jtatg THE GIFT OF .(jn/yvdL. Cccdim^......UMh\..... AJ2.^i7^ i7h Cornell University Library arW38900 The throne of the fisherman built by the 3 1924 031 752 292 olin.anx Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031752292 Cornell Catholic Union Library. THE THRONE OF THE FISHERMAN. Cornell Catholic Union Library. THE THRONE OF THE FISHERMAN BUILT BY THE CARPENTER'S SON, THE ROOT, THE BOND, AND THE CROWN OF CHRISTENDOM. BY THOMAS Wf^LLIES, K.C.S.G., AUTHOR OF "THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM"; "CHURCH AND STATE AS SEEN IN THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM"; " A LIFE'S DECISION"; "PER CRUCEM AD LUCEM, THE RESULT OF A LIFE" ; "JOURNAL IN FRANCE AND LETTERS FROM ITALY ". LONDON: BURNS & OATES, LIMITED. NEW YORK: CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO. 1887. TO HIS HOLINESS LEO XIIL, ON WHOM N.OW LIES THE CHARGE OF OUR LORD TO ST. PETER, IS iitmblg §thuntth THIS EFFORT TO TRACE ITS OUTCOME FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE TIME OF ST. LEO THE GREAT. Extraxit from Brief of His Holiness to the Author. To OUR DEAR Son, Thos. Wm. Allies, Secretary of THE Catholic Poor School Committee, London, LEO PP. XIII. Dear Son, HEALTH AND APOSTOLICAL BENEDICTION. We embrace with much charity, and joyously select for distinguished honour, men who to a skill and knowledge in studies of the highest import add a well- deserved reputation for piety and virtue, while they dedicate themselves to the service of religion. Now we are well assured that you, dear Son, are of approved piety and conduct ; and being of keen and active mind, are distinguished in the higher and more difficult branches of human knowledge, while you have gained great merit by earnest action and by esteemed writings on behalf of the Catholic Faith. On account of these deserts it is our pleasure to bestow on you a title of. great honour, in token of our exceeding goodwill towards you, and as an encouragement to you to advance daily in zeal for the Catholic cause. Desiring Vlll EXTRACT FROM BRIEF. then to shew you a special benevolence and distinction, and absolving you on this mere account from whatever sentences of excommunication or interdict or other ecclesiastical sentences, censures, and penalties, which in any way or for any cause you may have incurred, if haply you have incurred, and deeming you so absolved, We by Our Apostolical Authority in virtue of this letter make you a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, of the civil class. We institute, declare, and number you in the most dis- tinguished rank and roll of the aforesaid Knights. Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, under the Ring of the Fisherman, on the 13th day of No- vember, 1885, in the eighth year of our Pontificate. M. CARD. LEDdCHOWSKI. FULL TITLES OF WORKS QUOTED. The following works have been used by the Author, and being quoted by the name alone, the full title of them is here given :— The Greek and Latin Fathers generally quoted from the old Benedictine edition, sometimes from that of Migne. Newman, Cardinal, Arians of the Fourth Century, 3rd edition. „ Notes on St. Athanasius, 2nd volume. „ Causes of the Else and Success of Arianism. Hergenrother, Cardinal, Handbuch der allgemeinen Kirchen- geschiehte, 3 vols. 1876-1880. „ Photius, sein Leben, &c., 3 vols. 1867, Coustant, Epistolse Pontif. Eoman. Paris, 1721. Hefele, Concilien-geschichte, 7 vols. 1855, &c. Phillips, Kirchenrecht, 7 vols. 1845-1872. Eeumont, Geschichte der Stadt JJom, 3 vols. 1867-1870. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Eom, 8 vols. Niehues, Geschichte des Verhaltnisses zwischen Kaiserthum und Papstthum. Miinster, 1863. Tillemont, Histoire des Bmpereurs, 6 vols. Paris, 1690. „ Histoire Ecclesiastique, 16 vols. Paris, 1693. • Mohler, Patrologie. Eegensburg, 1840. „ Kirchengeschichte (Gams), 3 vols. Eegensburg, 1867. Arendt, Leo der Grosse. Nirschl, Lehrbuch der Patrologie und Patristik, 3 vols. 1881-5. Eiffel, Geschichtliche Darstellung des Verhaltnisses zwischen Kirche und Staat, &c. Mainz, 1836. Broglie, Due de, L'Eglise et I'Empire Eomain, 6 vol. 1856-66, Mansi, Sacrorum Concilionun nova et amplissima collectio : 1759. 31 vols. Matthieu, le Cardinal ArchevSque de Besan9on ; Le Pouvoir Temporel des Papes justifi^ par I'histoire. 1863. TABLE OF CONTENTS. — <±> — CHAPTEE I. The Witness of Eighteen Centuries to the See of Petek. PAGE The Throne of the Fisherman founded on three words, . i The first word, i The second word, 2 The third word, 2 Coinherence of the several charges contained in them, . 3 Effect of the three words through eighteen centuries, . . 4 They contain a direct divine institution, .... 5 The Church's recognition of the divine institution a second Factor, 6 One instance of such recognition to stand for all, . . 7 The council of Chalcedon and Pope St. Leo, ... 8 St. Leo's office as conceived hy himself, and as expressed by the council, 9 A third Factor, the Divine Providence, . . . .11 Action of this Factor between a.d. 325 and 600, . . .12 Further action in mediaeval times, . . . . -13 And in modem times, . . . . ' . . . .14 Exemplified in the most absolute of modern rulers, . . 15 Eemark on the conjunction of the three Factors, . . 16 The subject of this volume, the evolution of the three Factors, 19 The first period, 20 The second period, 20 The third period, 21 The fourth period, 22 The fifth period, 23 xii TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE The sixth period, ^3 The seventh period, . . ^4 The eighth period in which we hve, 25 Action of the three Factors in the diversity of the periods, . 26 Error frames its attacks upon isolated acts : truth con- templates the -whole evolution of history, . . .27 CHAPTEE II. Feom St. Petbe to St. Sylvestbe, No. i. The first General Council makes an epoch in itself, . . 29 How the subscriptions of bishops stand in the lists of the Council, Importance of the cause for which it met, . The period A. D. 29-325 a complete one with special cha- racteristics, . Aspect of the Church at the convocation of the Nicene Council, . Force of the emperor's recognition of the Council, The Council viewed as proof of the existence of a Christian people, The hierarchy exhibits the idea which made the people. The marvel which this people presented. The effect on the mind of Constantine, How the Church speaks of her own existence, The Council as a witness of the Church's previous history. Dearth of early Christian history, .... For which the Council in some degree makes up. The constitution of Church government at the time of the Nicene Council, ....... How the Apostles divided the earth, .... The episcopate universal, complete, subordinated, and one, The triple Petrine Patriarchate, ..... Other primatial sees, Great preponderance of St. Peter's authority in this hier- archy 52 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 40 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 SI TABLE OF CONTENTS. XUl PAGE St. Gregory the Great, on the See of Peter at Eome, Alex- andria, and Antiooh, 53 St. Innocent I. on the see of Antioch, . . . -54 The whole system of episcopal subordination, and unity re- cognised and sanctioned by the Council, ... 56 What this organic distribution of authority indicates, . . 57 St. Peter alone of the Apostles stands at the head of an episcopal line, -58 The meaning and range of the sixth Nicene canon, . . 61 What Pope Nicolas I. deduces from the three patriarchates, 63 Neither the Nicene nor any council gave its authority to the Roman church, 65 He quotes Pope Boniface I. to this effect, . ... 66 Exposition of the Nicene Constitution by Pope Boniface, . 67 In which historic fact and theoretic principle are united, . 69 r CHAPTEE III. Feom St. Peteb to St. Sylvbstbe, No. 2. Lesson as to the government of the whole Church given by the Nicene Council, 7 The hierarchy answers to the unity of the one Christian people, 72 Four bands of this unity : 1. Litterae formatse, . . . . . . -73 2. The system of mother and daughter churches, . 74 3. Provincial synods, . . . . . . '75 4. The universal recognition of the Primacy, . . 76 Growth of the hierarchy during a state of persecution, . 77 And of the Primacy in particular, 78 The ofi&ce of bishop maintained by the willing obedience of its subjects, 79 Which denotes its source from a power recognised by them, 80 This is even more marked in the Primacy than in the Episcopate, 81 XIV TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE The martyrdom of five successive Popes in eight years, . 82 The bishop of the second see called to account by the Boman bishop, 84 The emperor and the bishops equally acknowledge the Primacy at the cessation of heathen persecution, . . 85 Fixity and definiteness of functions in all the ranks of the hierarchy, .86 Key to the formation of the hierarchy suppUed by Leo I., 87 Testimony of Pope Innocent I. in the year 416, . . 89 Pope Julius in 342 sets forth the rule of tradition and custom, . 91 Claims the year before the council of Sardica what its canon gave to him, 92 His letter shews throughout the original Primacy and the Church's constitution, • < 93 The Pope specially the judge of the bishop of Alexandria, . 94 The Principate of Peter the fountainhead of " ecclesiastical rule," 95 Political circumstances of the time give this letter still greater force, 96 Connection between the letters of Pope Julius I. and Pope Clement I., ......... 96 Completeness of the hierarchy in fact and theory at the Nicene Council, . . 97 Exercise of the Primacy proportionate to the condition of the Church . . 98 How the Primacy was exercised in the first three centuries, 99 Connection between concentered authority and extent and complexity of dominion, 1 00 The Church's history without the Primacy inexplicable, . loi Infalhbility demanded and exercised in the first centuries, . 102 The Primacy in these centuries at once the Boot, the Bond, and the Crown of the hierarchy, 104 The parallel course of the Empire and the Church from the birth of Christ to Constantine, 106 St. Leo the Great on the Providence of God in bringing St. Peter and St. Paul to Eome, 109 TABLE OF CONTENTS. XV CHAPTBE IV. CONSTANTINE AND THE ChUECH. PAGE A new alliance of the State with the Church marks the contrast of this period with the Antenicene period, . ii6 Heathen persecution had hitherto protected internal autonomy . . -n? Which was a traditional system of doctrine, government, and daily Ufe, . 1 1 8 The tradition of St. Peter and St. Paul maintained at Eome especially, 119 Alluded to by St. Ignatius of Antioch, 120 Urged by Popes Anicetus, Stephen, and Liberius, . . 121 The same tradition followed by Alexandria and Antioch, . 122 Why the Primacy is latent in the period of persecution, . 123 Circumstances which mark the fifty years between the first and second General Councils, 124 They act together, but must be treated consecutively, . . 126 1. Constantine's position and design when he becomes sole emperor 127 He allies the empire with the Church, . . .128 Scope of his legislation, 129 The Christian hierarchy acknowledged in the extent to which it had grown up of itself, . . -131 Civil jurisdiction given to episcopal decisions, . -132 Constantine's idea of the relation between Church and State, 133 Which prevails from his time, 135 2. The form of Eoman sovereignty under Constan tine,. 136 The emperor held not an usurped but a legitimate power, -139 Which the chief Fathers expressly attest, . .140 All the military force in the emperor's hand, . .141 Civil office separated from military command, . . 141 The Consistorium Sacrum, 142 The emperor sole legislator and taxer, . . . 142 The bureaucratic nobility, . . . . .142 XVI TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE The empire of Constantine and that of the Eussian Peter identical 143 The pref ectiires, dioceses, and provinces of the empire, 1 44 Constantine exercises absolute power in the State, while he acknowledges a divine authority in- herent in the Church, . . . . -145 He sets in motion powers the action of which he cannot foresee, ....... 146 3. Movement of the imperial residence from Eome, . 147 4. Constantinople consecrated as Nova Eoma, . . 149 The emperor's withdrawal exalts the position of the Pope 151 5. The bishop of Byzantium becomes bishop of Con- stantinople, 152 His see becomes forthwith the most coveted see of the East, 153 And likewise the central field of heresy from the death of Constantine to Theodosius, . . . . 154 Eise of the " Eesident Synod," . . . . -155 6. The new connection between the emperor and the bishop of the city in which he resided, . . 156 7 . Degradation from their originaljank of other bishops, 1 5 8 CHAPTEE V. Constantine and his Sons, Julian, Valentinian, Valens. Constantine visits Eome, leaves it for good, and founds a new capital, . jQq Eecalls Eusebius of Niconiedia and Theognis of Nicsea to their sees, 162 Conduct of Constantine under influence of Eusebius, . . 163 How Eusebius manages to depose St. Eustathius of Antioch, . .164 How he attacks Athanasius, who is threatened by Con- stantine, ^ j5|. Athanasius refuses to attend a council at Csesarea, . . 167 TABLE OF CONTENTS. xvii . PAGE Constantme summons a council at Tyre to judge Atha- nasius 167 His instructions to the council, and the synod of Egypt's comment on it, . 168 Contrast between the council of Tyre and that of Nicaea, . 170 Athanasius attends it, and is deposed by it, . .170 Appeals to Constantino ; is banished by him to Treves, . 171 Constantino in the thirteen years of his sole government, . 173 The weapon devised by Eusebius against the hierarchy, . 173 How he led Constantino to infringe the hitherto subsisting order 174 Constantino's government in his last years a foretaste of all subsequent evils, 175 The three emperors, Constantino II., Constans, and Con- stantius," . 177 Eusebius of Nicomedia model of the court-bishop for after ages, 178 Athanasius returns, and is attacked by Eusebius, . -179 He flies for refuge to Eome, and is acquitted by the Pope in council, . 179 The Eusebians hold the council of the Encaenia at Antioch against him, 180 Letter of Pope Julius in defence of the old order of the Church, 181 Pope Julius moves the emperors to call the council of Sardica, 182 Its acts, and the retirement of the Eusebians to Philip- popolis, . 182 The question of the Church's unity and independence raised by these councils, 183 The East and West in opposite camps after the council of Sardica, iBj Persecution of orthodox bishops returning from Sardica by Constantius, 185 Athanasius returns in 346 after his second exile of six years, 186 Deplorable state of Antioch upon his visit there, . . .186 Constantius sole emperor in 350 : his person and character, 187 He is swayed by the Arian Valens, and by his Arian empress, 188 b xviii TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE Especially hates Athanasius '^9 Attacks him through the synod of Aries and that of Milan, 189 Tyrannises over the bishops at the council of Milan, . .190 His attack on Pope Liberius described by Athanasius, . 193 Theodoret describes how Liberius is banished by Oon- stantius, ^9^ The judgment of Athanasius respecting Pope Liberius, . 197 His dictum : the party of Arius have no king but Cffisar, . 198 Constantius drives Athanasius from Alexandria, . . .199 The night attack described by Athanasius, .... 200 The Alexandrians appeal to the emperor, who justifies the act, 201 Hosius denounces the tyranny of Constantius, . . .201 Athanasius declares the Church's independence of the emperor, 202 Is an outlawed fugitive during the remaining five years of Constantius 203 Is brought back in virtue of the decree of the apostate emperor Julian, 203 Later councils in the reign of Constantius, .... 204 St. Hilary describes the councils of his time, . . . 204 And St. Gregory of Nazianzum, 205 Constantius receives clinical baptism from an Arian bishop and dies of fever, 206 The twenty months of JuUan, 207 Four emperors in twenty-eight months, and division of the East and West, 207 Valentinian's upright government in the West, . . . 208 Valens oppresses the Catholics in the East, . . . 209 Athanasius is banished for the fifth time, but is soon restored, . 210 Basil writes that the sight of him would compensate for all evils, 211 Valens causes eighty ecclesiastics to be set adrift in a burning ship, . . . . . . . .211 After a tyranny. of eleven years he is burnt in a Thracian cottage, . . . . . . . . .212 Theodosius made emperor in the East by Gratian , . .213 His law of February 28, 380, 214 TABLE OF CONTENTS. XIX CHAPTBE VI. Feom Constantine at Nio^a to Thbodosius at Constantinople. PAGE Ecclesiastical retrospect of the period, 325-381, . . . 216 Alexandria and Antioch at Nicsea 217 The position of Eome in regard to them, . . . .219 Beginning of the Eusebian attack on the Church's constitu- tion, .......... 220 Heresy and schism at Antioch during fifty years, . ,220 Constantinople in Arian hands for forty years, . . .221 The five banishments of Athanasius and the sufferings of Alexandria, 223 What the banishment of bishops meant, . . . .226 Applied to the bishops of Antioch, Constantinople, Milan, Poitiers, 227 And to Pope Liberius 228 How this punishment exceeded any inflicted by heathens, . 230 St. Basil's cry of distress in 373 under the persecution of Valens, . . . . . - . . . . . 231 St. Gregory of Nazianzum on episcopal councils in his time, 234 And on the bishops at the council of Constantinople in 381, 235 His words express to the life the Arian tyranny, . . 236 Deterioration of the Eastern episcopate marked by these bishops, 237 The instrument by which Eusebius violated the Church's constitution, 238 The council of Constantinople in 381 received only as to its creed, not as to its canons, ...... 241 Development of the papal dignity in 325-381, . . 242-274 I. The splendour of Eome when visited by Constantius in 357. 243 Eome in the fourth century deserted by her emperors, 244 Still in Constantine's time the stronghold of heathen- ism, 245 Advance of the faith and decline of its opponents through the century, 246 Spiritual life advances as temporal power decays in Eome, 248 XX TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE 2. Arian action on the great Eastern sees and the Eastern episcopate, 249 Contrast in succession to the Eoman See, . .251 3. The Arian heresy in connection with the founding of Constantinople, 253 Arian servility and imperial domination, . . . 254 4. Synod of Aquileia a contrast to that of Constanti- nople, 256 Innovation in the third canon passed at Constanti- nople 257 Causes from which it sprung, 259 Every Byzantine emperor seeks to exalt his bishop, 261 The canon rejected by Alexandria, and unknown to the West, 262 St. Gregory of Nazianzum on the faith of Eome and Constantinople, 264 5. Church and State under Constantine, Constantius, and Valens, 265 6. Acts done in 330-380 against the Papacy which turned to its increase in influence, . . . 268 7. The frustration of Constantine's purposes in found- ing Constantinople 271 The greatest favour Constantine conferred on Eome was the leaving it, 273 CHAPTEE VII. Chubch and State under the Theodosian House. The Church advances by the defeat of heresy, . . .275 Her doctrine and her government built up simultaneously, 276 The difficulties of Theodosius, 277 He strives as a statesman to undo the evil wrought by heresy, .278 The imperial letter of 430 sets forth the union of the Empire and the Church, 281 And expresses the conviction both of emperors and Fathers, 282 Heretical emperors themselves not indifferent to truth, . 284 TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xxi PAGE In what capacity emperors convoked general councils, . 285 The letter explains the conduct and the legislation of the emperors from 380 to 430, 286 The statement as to the natural order of human society being based upon the appointment of God, .... 286 And as to the supernatural order embodied in the Church, . 287 The imperial power guardian of the union of the two, . . 287 Belief of the Christian hierarchy on this point, . . . 288 St. Augustine as its exponent, 289 His answer to Macedonius, 290 His larger answer to Count Boniface, 292 Actions of Jewish and heathen kings praised in Scripture, . 293 All things have their proper times, . . . . .294 Our Lord converted St, Paul by force, 296 Guests, first invited, then compelled, to the supper, . . 297 But one view in the laws of the two powers as to their union, 298 The transformation from the First to the Second Council, . 299 The Empire as.looked at by the Church, .... 300 The Church as looked at by the empire, .... 302 Their reciprocal attitude thus brought about, . . . 304 Different effect of this attitude produced in East and West, 305 Eise of the bishop of Constantinople, 305 Episcopate of St. Chrysostome and of Atticus, . . . 306 Of Nestorius, and the opposition of Alexandria in St. Cyril, 309 Position of the great sees at tha council of Bphesus, . -311 Striking recognition of the Eoman Primacy at the second Ecumenical Council, 312 Force given to this recognition by the temporal circumstance of the time, ......... 314 The point of authority reached by the bishops Proclus and Flavian, 317 The dress and surroundings of an Eastern Eoman emperor, 318 Internal administration of the diocese of Constantinople, . 319 The Church's independence acknowledged by the emperors from Constantine to Leo I., . . . . . .321 In the East the alliance between Church and State had pro- duced a State-made patriarch overshadowing the patri- archs of the original hierarchy, 322 XXU TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTBE VIII. Chuech and State and the Peimacy feom 380 to 440. PAGE Contrast of the Papacy based on the succession from St. Peter to the State-made patriarch 324 Loss of the papal letters from St. Clement I. to St. Julius I., 325 Letter of Pope Damasus to the bishops governing the East, 326 Series of decretal letters beginning with Pope Siricius, . 327 Letter to Himerius of Tarragona based on the person of St. Peter, 328 Whose authority as vested -in the Pope is acknowledged by St. Ambrose, 329 Universal authority claimed in the single letter of Anastasius, 330 Pontificate of Innocent I. : his various letters, . . -331 His action in the case of two African councils, . . -332 Which refer their judgment on a matter of faith to him, . 333 Eescripts of the Pope welcomed by St. Augustine, . . 335 Principate of the Apostolic See as understood by St. Augustine : 337 1. An authority including and corroborating acts of local councils, 338 2. Based upon the promises made in the Scriptures to St. Peter, 338 3. Who is set by Christ as form and beginning of the episcopate, ........ 339 4. It existed from the beginning, 34o 5. Acknowledged as not of ecclesiastical but divine institution, 340 6. The power indicated in its own nature supreme as a Principate, 341 Creation of the bishop of Thessalonica Apostolic Vicar over ten provinces 342 A personal relation renewed by each Pope at his accession and at the death of each vicar, ..... 344 The double process of decretal letters and establishment of vicariates parts of " the administration of Peter," . 345 The combination of faith and discipline in these letters, . 347 TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXUl PAGE The " compages " of the Church strengthened, . . . 348 Letter of Pope Innocent to the patriarch of Antioch, . . 349 The temporal condition of the empire in the reign of Theo- dosius, 351 Barbarian chiefs placed by him in Eoman commands, . -353 Civil condition of the Eoman city, 354 The place of the absent emperor filled by the present Pope, 356 Agony of the Western empire following the death of Theo- dosius 357 Capture of Eome in 410 a landmark, 359 It serves to render visible the City of God in the world, . 360 The- Eoman Primacy after the fall of the city as defined by Pope Boniface, 362 Contrast of the Eastern empire and its extent, . . . 364 PoHtical condition of things when the council is convoked at Ephesus, 365 General characteristics of the papal letters from Siricius to Sixtus ; 366 1. The point on which the whole papal authority is grounded, 366 2. An institution divine, not political, .... 370 3. Of spiritual, not of imperial descent, . . -371 4. Inherited from the preceding centuries, . . -372 5. Unaggressive and conservative, . . . -373 6. Has all the past of the Church at its back, . .374 7. Established on spiritual basis by the break up of the empire, . . . 375 8. Political prostration of the city of Eome, . -376 9. Spiritual power emerging from political ruin, . -377 The epoch of the second council in'43 1, . . . 378 What had passed between a.d. 325 and 431, , . 381 CHAPTBE IX. The Flo weeing op Pateistio Liteeatuee, No. i. The Nicene Council a great epoque, 383 From six points of view : XXIV TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE 1. The union of the two powers, 384 2. Freedom of the Church to meet in general council, 384 3. Freedom of the Papacy to exert its authority, . . 385 4. Freedom ah extra to all to preach the Gospel, . . 385 5. Public introduction of the monastic life, . . . 386 6. Heresy and schism in their action on the formation of doctrine, 387 The brilliant period of Greek hterature compared with that of patristic literature, 388 The Church more than renews a greater Hellas, . . . 390 And a greater Eome, 391 The patristic hterature possesses a unifying spirit of which the Greek, the Eoman, and the present literature is destitute, 392 An effect of heresy in promoting theology, .... 393 A contest for life or death, 394 Carried on through the fourth and fifth centuries from the preceding, 395 The faith passing from historical tradition into theology, . 398 Unity of the dogmatic struggle from Nicsea to Chalcedon, . 400 " The gates of hell shall not prevail," 403 The universal study of the Scriptures by Fathers at this time, whereby they sought support for the great ^tradition on which the Church had hitherto rested, .... 404 The ecclesiastical sense accounted the key to the meaning of Scripture, The triad of Egypt, Gaul, and Syria, . St. Athanasius, his life, character, and style, St. Hilary, his time of confession, and his work, St. Ephraem, his life and writings. His testimony to St. Peter's Primacy, . The triad of Cappadocia ; St. Basil, his life and works, St. Gregory of Nazianzum, .... St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, his catechetic doctrine, His words upon the Eucharistic Sacrifice, . St. Epiphanius, his life and witness, . St, John Chrysostome, his birth, life, and writings, 406 410 411 413 417 419 works. 421 423 424 426 427 428 gs, . 429 TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXV CHAPTEE X. The Floweeihg of Pateistic Litbeatueb, No. 2. PAGE St. Ambrose elected bishop when a catechumen, . .432 His daily hfe described by St. Augustine, .... 434 The wide range of his influence and his writings, . . 435 St. Jerome : his life, writings, and opinion of contemporaries about him, 437 The conversion, life, and works of St. Augustine, . . 44° St. Cyril of Alexandria : his time, character, and works, . 446 Theodoret : his life and works, 447 The works of St. Leo postponed to the treatment of his government, 449 What the Tradition was from which the Fathers entered on the study of Scripture, 449 The principles of interpretation in the schools of Alexandria and Antioch, 452 Illustrated by Diedorus of Tarsus and his pupils Theodore and Chrysostome, • 454 Theodore, St. Chrysostome, St. Augustine, three parallels, . 458 Number of Scriptural commentators, . . . . -459 Treatises on Christian doctrine and catechesis, . . . 46° Defence against Judaism, . . . , . . .461 Exposure of heathenism, 461 Praise of the cloistral and virginal life, . . . .462 Point of time at which the virginal and monastic life ap- peared as a public factor, 463 The Fathers practised and praised it solely for its spiritual beauty, 465 Its political and social importance upon the fall of the empire, 467 The virginal life described by St. Anthony, .... 468 And by St. Athanasius, 469 Masters of the eremitic and cloistral life, .... 470 The mystical life, Markarius and the so-called Dionysius, . 470 Histories of Eusebius, Sozomen, Socrates, Theodoret, Eufinus, ~ 471 XXvi TABLE OF CONTENTS. FiGE History of heresies, by Theodoret, Epiphanius, Philastrius, Augustine, 47^ The treasure of letters left by the Fathers, . . . .472 The verses of St. Gregory of Nazianzum, .... 473 Prudentius compared with Claudian, 474 His encomium on the Eoman Peace preparing the way for Christ 475 His prayer for Eome in the hymn to St. Laurence, . . 476 His hymn describing his own life, 477 His description of Eome on the feast of her two patrons, . 478 St. Eulalia buried " under the feet of God," . . . 480 Sixty unnamed martyrs, whose names are known to Christ, 480 Concurrence of Prudentius, Claudian, and Eutilius, as to the position of Eome, 481 Eeumont on the attachment to the Eoman empire, . .481 The whole intellectual movement from Nicsea to Chalcedon, 482 Ideas magnified in the Church, corrupted and lost in heresy, 485 Development as described in the fifth century, . . . 487 Vincent of Lerius gives a picture of the Church's course down to his time, . 487-491 CHAPTBE XI. St, Leo the Geeat. The times at St. Leo's accession, a.d. 440, . . . .492 Political circumstances in the West, ..... 493 And in the East 495 Ecclesiastical circumstances and position of the Pope, . 498 The Council of Ephesus in 431 when held was the first ecumenical council after the Nicene, .... 493 Definite acknowledgment by it of the Primacy, . . . 499 Leo elected Pope during his absence in August, 440, . . 501 His sermons and letters acts of a ruler who knows not fear, 503 They indicate his supreme authority, 504 He speaks in Latin as Athanasius or Kasil speaks in Greek, 505 TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXvii PAGE He exposes in a few lines the Nestorian and Eutychean heresies, Authority with which he writes to the patriarch of Alex- andria, Position of Proclus and Flavian as archbishops of Con- stantinople, ........ Butyches starts his heresy at Constantinople under Flavian Who invites St. Leo to terminate the heresy by his letter, The great dogmatic letter of St. Leo, .... The council called the Latroeinium shews the absolute need of the Primacy, ..... Appeal of Theodoret to Pope Leo, Leo rejects the decrees of the Council and annuls it, Theodosius II. supports the Council and Dioscorus, And dies suddenly by a fall from horseback, Marcian and Pulcheria succeed and support the Pope, Leo accepts the convocation of the council of Chalcedon by Marcian, Acts of the council of Chalcedon^ .... Eecognition of the Primacy in its synodical letter, The 9th, 17th, and 28th canons attempted to be passed, What was aimed at in these canons, .... The legates reject them : they are passed under protest. The Pope's consent to the canons solicited, . The Pope refuses : his reasons given, .... Annuls the canons in his letter to the empress Pulcheria, The emperor accepts St. Leo's decision, and the canons are expunged, . Eecapitulation of what passed at Chalcedon, The PriTQacy exercised by Leo, between his saving Eome from Attila and Genseric, .... What was the salvation wrought by Leo, . The days of Leo, The Primacy under Leo is become the Church's centre of gravity and of life, ....... Internal causes leading to this, ..... The Eoman bishops in the strain of the Arian heresy. Again, in the Pelagian heresy and the Donatist schism, XXviii TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE Again, in tlie Nestorian heresy, 539 Again, in the Eutychean heresy, . . . • ■ -539 External events co-operating with the same result, . . 54° Loosening of imperial power in the West, tension in the East, 541 The bishop of Constantinople exalted as the emperor's tool 542 And is put forth in the East as a balance to the Pope in the West, "543 The imperial power unequally matched by the patriarchates, 544 St. Leo exercised no power but what his predecessors claimed, ... 546 What St. Leo did for his own and all succeeding time, . 547 THE THRONE OF THE FISHERMAN. CHAPTEE I. THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTOEY THEOUGH EIGHTEEN CENTURIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETEE. A.D. 29. Uoifiaive TO, -Trpo^aTd fiov. Se STiepherd of My Sheep. A.J). 1880. The Sacred Majesty of the Supreme Pontificate. Zeo. XIII. Allocutio, W. Aug. At this moment a power exists in the world which goes back in undisputed succession for eighteen centuries and a half. Its origin was in this wise. A Man was walking attended by twelve other men in that mountain region under Hermon and Lebanon, which looks down upon the land of Judea. The men were disciples of One who called himself by the mysterious title " Son of Man," and He asked His disciples, " Whom do men say that the Son of Man is ? " They answered, " Some say that He is John the Baptist, others that He is Elias, others that He is Jererdias, or one of the prophets". Then the Man said to His disciples, "But whom say you that I am ? " And one of the disciples thereupon answering said, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 2 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTOEY THROUGH living God ". Then the Man, turning to him who had answered His question, not only for himself, but for the whole company of twelve, said to him ; " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona ; because flesh and blood have not revealed it to thee, but my Father, who is in heaven. And I say to thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will buUd my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I wUl give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven." A year had passed away, and the same Man was sitting at table with these same twelve men. The time of His, passion was instant, and in view of it He had instituted the rite in which He created the chiefs of His kingdom, and He spoke to them of the kingdom which He was disposing to them, described the nature of its rule, and indicated the character of the person who should exercise it. And then, singling from among the Twelve the same one of His disciples as in the instance just recorded. He said to that one: " Simon, Simon, be- hold Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee, that thj- faith fail not, and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren." On the same night, the Man who had thus twice con- ferred a special charge on the same disciple was taken by the Chief Priest of his nation, delivered over to the secular power, and put to death by the procurator of EIGHTEEN CENTUEIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETER. J the Eoman emperor, as one who claimed to be king of the Jews. After dying on the cross, He was buried, but His disciples said that He rose again and appeared to them. And in one of these appearances, as seven of the chief were fishing in the Lake of Galilee, they saw Him standing on the shore. And He called to them,. and invited them to dine with Him. And after the dinner He said to the same disciple whom He had twice before distinguished in the company of his brethren by giving him a singular charge : " Simon, son of John,, lovest thou Me more than these ? " He saith to Him,. "Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee". He saith to him, " Feed My lambs ". He saith to him again, " Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me ? " He saith to Him, "Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee". He saith to him, "Be Shepherd over My sheep ". He saith to him the third time, " Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me ?" Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, "Lovest thou Me?" And he said to Him, " Lord, Thou knowest all things ; Thou knowest that I love Thee ". Jesus saith to him, " Feed My sheep ". Many men of many nations in many times have written on these three words, and they have written more volumes on them than the letters which they contain. Here we will only say that in them has been found to dwell a living spirit which binds together and interpenetrates them all, so that the power indicated by one of the words dwells also in each. The images which express the power vary, but the variation serves to 4 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTORY THEOUGH complete the idea of the thing iDdicated. Each of them involves the other two : the charge promised or bestowed in each is equal in its range to that contained in the other two. Each is indispensable, and all are indivisible. If the office which is contained in any one of the three were severed and bestowed on another person, the effect would be to create a rival and antagonistic power. In short, there is in them a true coinherence ; and that which is especially the test^ of orthodoxy in expressing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is found to belong to the creation of the Primacy as instituted by the sole act of the Church's Founder for the government of his king- dom, and expressed in the three several investments or charges. Accordingly, the effect accomplished by these three words, which are likewise one, corresponds to the mysterious grandeur of the institution which they convey. The Lord of all power formed in them a new sovereignty, the reflex of His own Person. And never have words been spoken on earth which have had a greater and more continuous efficacy. Through the eighteen centuries and a half they have never been silent ; they have never ceased to work upon the hearts of men ; and their working has not diminished, but in- creased with each succeeding age. And now, as in all past centuries, they draw men from all parts of the earth before the chair of a man like themselves, save that in him they recognise the bearer of a singular com- ■ ' See Card. Newman, Athanasms, xi. 72-4. EIGHTEEN CENTURIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETER. 5 mission, the holder of an unrivalled dignity, the Euler, the Confirmer, the Shepherd of His brethren, and all this because he is the successor of him who was so made by that "Son of Man," the Christ, whom he had himself confessed to be " the Son of the Living God ". This power, then, thus existing, after an unbroken succession of eighteen centuries and a half, claims to have in the eyes of all those who believe in " the Son. of Man," as " the Christ, the Son of the Living God," a direct divine institution. It is not of men, nor given by men, but it stands at the head of the Christian religion as founded by the author of that religion, as founded moreover to be its support and bearer : for the Kock precedes the structure which is built upon it ; and the Shepherd exists before the flock which he gathers into the fold ; and the Confirmer is prior to those whom he confirms. In all this we see not a power which ascends from below, but a power which comes from above : which comes complete and entire from One in whom all power is seated. In virtue of the commission bestowed in these three words, and in virtue of that alone, we behold a single man the fountain of mission throughout the whole world to one Episcopate, which diffuses the same doctrine, and exercises the same priesthood in the perpetual daily offering of the same sacrifice, and has done so con- tinuously without break, without faltering, " unresting, unhasting," from the Day of Pentecost to the present day. That one man speaks a word : bishops from all the world listen to it ; attend upon him ; fill the most ■6 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTORY THEOOGH august temple in tlie world .with their presence, in which they who in their civil condition speak naturally the languages of the north and south, the east and the west, renew the Pentecostal miracle by uttering in one voice and language what they believed with one faith con- cerning " the Son of Man," who is "the Christ, the Son of the Living God," and concerning the power which He has set up on earth, and to which they bear witness by their coming. This is that " sacred majesty of the Supreme Ponti- ficate " which rests upon the Divine Institution as its sole origin. But that which is the chief factor of this power which we are contemplating is not the only one. The Church's recognition of this divine institution is a second and distinct factor. I speak to those who believe that there is in the world "the Catholic and Apostolic Church," as they believe that there is the one God, Creator of heaven and earth : who believe that this Church has traversed eighteen , centuries and a half of human history with an organic unity, a steadfast and unchangeable doctrine, an unin- terrupted life : as being, in short, the Body of Him who grows through the ages from His first coming to redeem His world until His second to judge it and reward it. This Church's recognition, therefore, of a Power is a factor in the maintenance of that Po-^er distinct from the divine institution on which it primarily rests. Such recognition does not create it, but bears witness to it, as already created. Such is precisely the demeanour of EIGHTEEN OENTUEIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETEE. 7 the great councils of the Church, which have met during these eighteen centuries and a half, towards the See of Peter. They declare, and the Church, by their mouth, declares, that Peter speaks in that See, that perpetual Peter who is doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven, and bearer of the keys, and shepherd of the sheep, and con- firmer of his brethren. The Church does not make him all this in declaring him to be this. He who made him this is the Maker of the Church herself. She is only recognising the voice of her Lord in the person of His disciple as her Lord has made him. And here I content myself with quoting a single in- stance of such declaration, because it seems to me to fulfil all the conditions which the most exacting critic could impose for the establishment of its value, that is, its convincing force, to all those who believe in the Church and her Maker. I take, therefore, a point in history, the middle of the fifth century. At this point the Church had passed through three centuries of persecution, the upshot of which was that the great world-empire, by the voice of the remarkable chief who was her head, acknowledged her to be the divine kingdom of Christ upon earth. She had, moreover, passed through a hundred and twenty- five years, four full generations of men, in which the empire, through the perverse conduct and misbelief of the son or successors of the very man who had acknow- ledged her paramount dignity as the kingdom of Christ, had sufifered what was, in fact, a most grevious persecu- tion, that in which a large number of her own bishops. 8 THE CONTINTTOUS WITNESS OF HISTOEY THROUGH seduced by Court favour and worldly interests, sur- rendered or compromised her most sacred and cardinal doctrine, the Godhead of her Founder. And in these four generations she had witnessed the perpetual decline in political power and influence of that great city, mother of so many daughters, the original seat of the world- empire, and the queen of its provinces, until Eome actually fell under a barbarous invader, and the rulers of the empire created by her ceased to inhabit her walls. The Church had, likewise, in this time produced the most illustrious of her ancient fathers, Ambrose, Jerome, Hilary, and Augustine in the west : the great Athana- sius, Basil, also the great ; the two Gregories, the peer- less orator whose eloquence became attached to his name, as his greatness afterwards was to the conquering Charles ; Cyril also, the special doctor of the Incarna- tion. And last of all, worthy for his power of word and force of doctrine, to be ranged with these, but eminent above them all as speaking from the See of Peter, the great St. Leo. That age, beginning with the Nicene Council, and ending with St. Leo himself, is conspicuous among all the ages of the Church, even to the present day, for the learning, ability, fervour, and success of the Church's great writers. They were the blessings which God gave to His Church as the fruit of its first great Council : in them the Son of God manifested that divine power which the Council had proclaimed to belong to Him. If there be, then, any voice which the student of the ancient Church may recognise as carrying with it the EIGHTEEN CENTURIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETER. 9 collective testimony of the first four hundred years, it is the voice of the Council of Chalcedon. That Council beheld the Church presided over by the most eminent man who, from the time of the Apostles, had filled the See of Peter : the man also who has put forth in language so definite and lucid the power which his See then exercised as the See of Peter, that there is no possibility of mistaking his meaning. St. Leo^ had written to the bishop of Thessalonica, in the very act of giving him authority over metropolitans and bishops, "that the structure of our unity cannot completely cohere unless the bond of charity bind us into a solid mass " ; for as "we have many members in one body, but all the members have not the same office, so, we being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another ". It is the connection of the whole body which makes one soundness and one beauty ; and this connection, as it requires unanimity in the whole body, so especially demands concord among bishops. For though these have a common dignity, yet have they not a general jurisdiction : since even among the most blessed Apostles, as there was a likeness of honour, so was there a certain distinction of power, and the election of all being equal, pre-eminence over the rest was given to one. From which type the distinction also among bishops has arisen ; and it was provided by a great disposition that all should not claim to themselves all things, but that in every province there should be one whose sentence should be considered the first among his ^Ep. xiv. c. 11. 10 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTORY THROUGH brethren. And others, again, seated in the greater cities, should undertake a larger care, through whom the direction of the universal Church should converge to the one See of Peter, and nothing anywhere disagree from its head. Thus St. Leo conceived and expressed his office. When, five years after this expression of it by him, the great Council met, it not only spoke of St. Peter " as the rock and foundation of the Catholic Church, and the basis of the orthodox faith," but addressed St. Leo him- self as " the very person entrusted by the Saviour with the guardianship of the vine," " whose anxiety is to preserve in unity the body of the Church," and who, " as a head, presided over them as members ". Thus the largest Council of the ancient Church recognised that St. Leo was not only successor of St. Peter, but that his conception of his office as St. Peter's successor was true and legitimate, and that conception is exactly the same with what, after the lapse of fourteen hundred years, is in practice carried out now. It is useless for my present purpose to repea.t a testi- mony which every great Council affords, and which can be seen drawn out with the utmost accuracy, and with the appeal to the invariable tradition of all the preced- ing centuries in the last Council, that of the Vatican. The point, therefore, on which I am treating, that the recognition of the Church is the second factor in the existence of St. Peter's See, and its function in the whole body, I conceive to be sufficientl}?^ established. For if the synodical action of a General Council addressed EIGHTEEN CENTDEIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETEE. II to the Pope himself, which attests the rights of his See, and the position which he occupied as successor of St. Peter, cannot be trusted as expressing the mind of the Church in the whole preceding period, then neither can the attestation of that same Church to any doctrine, however sacred and primary, be accepted. It is not open to any one to take the Council's witness as to the Person of Christ, and to reject it as to the Primacy which Christ instituted. Or, at least, any one who so acts shows that he bends the facts of history to meet his private wishes ; that he follows the Church and the Fathers when they bear witness to what he likes, but deserts the Church and the Fathers when they bear witness to that which he is resolved for other reasons, by an act of private judgment, not to accept. From the divine institution of the Primacy, which is its first factor, and of the Church's recognition of it, which is the second, I pass to a third, which is distinct from both. I mean the action of the First Agent both of doctrine and of life working through His Providence in a vast connection of times and of peoples. A great writer ^ has alluded to " that concen- tration of the Church's powers which history brings before us ". He adds : " The progress of concentration was not the work of the Pope : it was brought about by the changes of times and the vicissitudes of nations ". Let us take one out of manifold instances. From the Day of Pentecost to the decree of toleration hy Constantine, a period of 284 years, the. Church was ' Card. Newman's letter to the Duke of Norfolk, 1875. 12 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTORY THKOUGH in a state of either active persecution, or at least repres- sion — material, social, and intellectual, — such, as the power of the civilised world could exert against it. Its Episcopate grew up in a condition of large autonomy, which defined the action of each see, wherein great isolation was produced by distance when locomotion was difficult, and common action interfered with by the sleepless jealousy of a hostile civil power ; wherein, like- wise, another jealousy, that of the Eastern mind against Western domination, was perpetually at work ; wherein^ still more, the extreme jealousy of the Roman State suspecting anything like a polity, whUe it would act against any single bishop in his see, would be incom- parably more opposed to the primatial action of one, the bishop of the capital. These causes did actually jirevent the assembling of any meeting of bishops more extensive than provincial councils. We find at the end of this epoch the Egyptian church, under the bishop of Alexandria ; the Eastern churches, under the see of Antioch ; the churches of Western Asia Minor, under the see of Ephesus ; the African churches, with Car- thage at their head, as it were, great and powerful members of the Christian body. They do not obscure the Primacy of Eome, but they form an equipoise to it, holding vigorously to their several traditions and their local habits, a strong instance of which is afforded by the Ephesine province in its time of celebrating the Easter festival. This is the state of things at the era of the Church's peace. Go on a similar period of three hundred years, and what do we see ? The same writer- EIGHTEEN CENTDlilES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETEE. 13 says : "It was not the Pope's fault that the Vandals swept away the African sees, and the Saracens those of Syria and Asia Minor, or that Constantinople and its dependencies became the creatures of imperialism". And certainly we may add that it was no fault of the Pope that the ruthless sword of the false prophet and his successors well-nigh exterminated the Alexandrine and Antiochene churches. But it is a fact that the Kalifate of the false prophet conspired, by its very construction, as well as its violence, to aid the Petrine monarchy ; and that as the great anti- Christian religion seized upon the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean, the Pastorship of Peter united the north and the west against it. Thus, the churches of Alexandria and Antioch, coeval with that of Eome, and having Peter for their founder ; those also of Africa and Asia Minor, which all were the chief columns of episcopal autonomy, at the same time that they were illustrations of the hierarchical order in the Church, of which St. Peter's See was the crown and complement, all disappear before the beginning of the mediaeval Church, and leave Eome alone in her original greatness. The second and third sees, with their de- pendent metropolitans and bishops, almost vanish ; the first towers at a still loftier eminence over those which remain. And of what ensued when that mediaeval Church had begun, the same writer proceeds to say : " Nor was it the Pope's fault that France, England, and Germany would obey none but the author of their own Christianity, 14 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTORY THEOUGH or that clergy and people at a distance were obstinate in sheltering themselves under the majesty of Eome against their own fierce kings and nobles or imperious bishops, even to the imposing forgeries on the world and on the Pope in justification of their proceedings. All this will be fact, whether the Popes were ambitious or not ; and still it will be fact that the issue of that great change was a great benefit to the whole of Europe. No one but a master, who was a thousand bishops in himself at once, could have tamed and controlled, as the Pope did, the great and little tyrants of the middle age." Again, to come nearer to our own times, there was a great monarchy, the most splendid which arose at the termination of the middle age, in the country which, as it was most completely moulded into a nation, was the stronghold of nationalism in its modern form. And in that country the sovereign, reducing aU the powers of the State well-nigh into his single person, had woven so skUfuUy a net round the divine power of the Church that it was fettered in all its action by the civil power. Not only did the sovereign bestow its bishoprics, but he imposed in countless instances superiors upon its reli- gious houses ; and the Pope himself was not free to communicate with the very prelates to whom he had himself given spiritual jurisdiction. Thus Peter in that realm seemed to be fast bound in chains of gold. Even his doctrinal decrees had to wait for their promulgation on the placet of the government. So it went on for a century and a-half, when suddenly that prodigious fabric EIGHTEEN CENTUEIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETEK. 1 5 of pampered and presumptuous despotism fell to the ground, dragging with it in its ruin, as it seemed, for a time, the. divine fabric itself, whose ruler it had enlaced with countless ligatures. But, behold, within ten years a conquering chief picked up, as he said himself, with the point of his sword, the crown of Clovis which lay on the ground, and applied himself to the Pope to restore the fallen church. And this was done, at the request of the civil ruler, the despot of all others most jealous of spiritual power, by the exercise on the Pope's part of that spiritual power in a degree of which the preceding centuries bad seen no adequate example. It was not the Pope's doing that Napoleon eradicated Gallicanism, nor that a Corsican upstart, th6 very antithesis of Charlemagne, accomplished what Charlemagne would never have attempted to execute. But, once more, there is an action of Divine Provi- dence, if possible, still more striking. The very man who had called forth this extreme exercise of spiritual power in the Pope, drunk with success, and conceiving that aU things were lawful to one who had ridden over the necks of kings and confiscated kingdoms, turned against the Pope, dethroned him from the possession of his own city, beld him in captivity, encompassed him with ignominies. And when the successor of Peter threatened to use spiritual arms against him, " What does the Pope mean," said he, " by the threat of excom- municating me ? Does he think the world has gone back a thousand years ? Does he suppose that the arms will fall from the hands of my soldiers ? " Within two 1 6 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTOKY THROUGH years after these remarkable words were written, the Pope did excommunicate him, in return for the confis- cation of his whole dominions, and in less than four years more the arms did fall from the hands of his soldiers ; and the hosts, apparently invincible, which he had collected, were dispersed and ruined by the blasts of winter. On which the same writer says : " Gregory was considered to have done an astounding deed in the middle ages, when he brought Henry, the German emperor, to do penance and shiver in the snow at Canossa ; but Napoleon had his snow-penance too, and that with an actual interposition of Providence in the infliction of it ". These are but specimens in the course of eighteen centuries, exhibiting that action of the Prime Agent which I have termed the third Factor in the Primacy of the Pope. The eighteen centuries are full of them. Here I take only sufficient to make my meaning plain. This continued action of the Divine Providence over a number of ages, amid the most diverse peoples, an action in the several instances not foreseen, not desired by the Popes themselves, often accompanied by great calami- ties to the Church, exerted in circumstances which the Popes themselves have done their utmost to prevent, yet removing impediments to the full action of the Primacy in its proper sphere ; this is to be taken into account as superadded to the Divine Institution, and to the Church's recognition of it as Divine. On the conjunction of these three Factors I make two remarks. The first, that nothing can be more EIGHTEEN CENTUKIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETER. 1/ opposed to the notion that the Primacy, as regards its origin, is an usurping power, and, as regards its exercise, is a grasping power, than the fact of its result being the common effect of these three agents. The second is that no greater security for the authenticity of such a creation as the Apostolic See can be afforded than the concurrence of the three Factors in producing the result. Let us take a parallel case.-^ The sense of sight' conveys images to the mind, by means of which it exercises its inherent power of generalising. Another sense, that of touch, exercised in like manner, cori'oborates the conclusions which the former sense had drawn. Thus the two senses, sight and touch, are joint guarantees for the facts from which, again, a- multitude of different minds draw conclusions, and these, when noted and arranged, go to frame a science. I select the science of astronomy, wherein the fact of gravitation being once discovered enables the observer to foretell, as the result of a long series of calculations, the motions of the heavenly bodies. Thus he foresees that a small body, such as the moon, will cover at a particular moment the main disk of the sun, and produce, for the space of a minute, in particular regions of the earth, an annular eclipse. Or, again, he foresees the precise periods when the most beautiful of planets, twice in the course of a hundred and ten years, will ^Cf. Duke of Argyll, Unity of Nature, p. 64. " Througliout the whole of this vast series (of animal life) the very life of every creature depends on the unity which exists between its sense-impressions and those realities of the external world which are specially related to them," &c. 2 1 8 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTORY THEOUGH enter to our sight, in a certain zone of the earth, as a small dark spot upon the disk of the sun ; and the moment of its ingress and egress, after being calculated beforehand with the utmost nicety, will serve to measure the distance of the earth in describing its orbit round the sun, which itself is to be the unit of measure for the vastness of that universe revealed by the telescope to human eyes. A man would be deemed devoid of reason who refused credence to the science, which is attested by the exact fulfilment of the times specified in such observations. But would not the reason be equally blind which could contemplate persistently these three Factors of the Church's Primacy, first its Divine Institution, resting upon the words and acts of the Founder of the Christian faith ; secondly, the recognition of it by the continued testimony of the Christian people, from the earliest time ; and thirdly, the action of the Divine Providence, through a long series of times and nations, supporting it in the most unexpected ways : who could view it, I say, as a result of these three, and then fail to acknowledge it? Such blindness would be equivalent to asserting that the astronomer who had calculated the exact moment of a solar eclipse, or of a transit of Venus over the sun, had no ground for his calculations. It is true that the similitude in one important point fails to convey the force which the concurrence of the three just named Factors is calculated to produce on the mind. For the motions of the heavenly bodies, when the facts summed up in the word gravitation were EIGHTEEN CENTURIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETEE. 1 9 once ascertained, are stable and unchanging. Still the foretelling them is sufficient to prove the reality of the science which connotes them, and the trustworthiness of the senses upon whose testimony the science must rely to obtain its facts. But the result of the three Factors above-mentioned, repeated through a long series of ages, and a sequence of the most unforeseen changes affecting nations and governments, arts and human conduct, and the interminable maze of human successes and defeats, arising from actions which themselves, are free, — such a result which yet is ever issuing in the maintenance of a power such as naturally could not subsist for a single generation, this, I say, constitutes a proof in support of the origin, the exercise, and the authenticity of this power, which gives, in those three respects, a certainty far beyond that of the science to the reflecting mind and unprejudiced will. My subject, then, in the following pages is how three constituents — the first, a Divine Institution on the part of the Founder of the Church ; the second, the life of faith in the Church, that is the recognition by the Church of her Lord's action ; and the third, the external world in the hands of the Divine Providence, which is the guidance of Him who made and maintains both world and Church — elucidate and support each other, and thus] produce a common result through the eight great periods which have hitherto constituted the history of the Church in the eighteen centuries and a half as yet traversed by her. This common result I call " The Throne of the Fisherman, built by the Car- 20 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTORY THROUGH penter's Son," by wMch I mean the continuous and the ever-increasing influence and work of St. Peter's See, as the instrument by which the Divine Kingdom is begun, propagated, and maintained. I divide the eight periods as follows : — The first is that from the Day of Pentecost, a.d. 29, to the Nicene Council in 325. This is the period in which the Church contends for its existence as the Divine Kingdom with the enmity of the heathen State, em- bodied in the greatest of the world-empires which has hitherto existed. It is fitly terminated by the recogni- tion in the Council on the part of the heathen State that the Christian Episcopate constituted a kingdom bearing a doctrine, having its own unity and essential independence in its three constituents of priesthood, teaching, and jurisdiction. The second period lasts from the Nicene Council to the Episcopate of St. Leo the Great, and the fall of the Western Eoman empire. It embraces on the one hand the action of the Eoman State towards the Christian Church after recognising its divine authority ; and on the other hand the spontaneous and emphatic acknow- ledgment of the Eoman Church's " Superior Principate" by the whole Episcopate during the period of its greatest Doctors. The Pope, as the supreme holder of the Church's Priesthood, Teaching Office, and Jurisdiction, comes into complete prominence, while the empire still subsists in unbroken power and dignity ; and the East gives its testimony to the Papacy in the person of Pope Leo by the voice of its most EIGHTEEN CENTURIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETEE. 21 numerous Synod, the Fourth General Council, held at Chalcedon. The advance in power and influence which fell to the Eoman See in the period which runs from Pope Sylvester to Pope Leo is one of the most remarkable events in history. It was made while the empire still existed in force, and during that first time of the Church's liberty from heathen persecution, which ran between the empire's recognition and the age of barbarian inunda- tion. Nor can any outward change be greater than the condition of the Church such as it was from the Day of Pentecost to the peace of Constantine, and its condition more especially from the time at which Constantine became sole emperor to the fall of the Western empire. The third period lasts from the fall of the Western empire to the proclamation of Charlemagne as head of a renewed empire by Pope Leo IIL in 800. In this period old Rome perishes, as St. Gregory I. describes the perishing which went on before his eyes ; and by the single force of the][divine Primacy the Eome reduced by the Gothic war, by its re-conquest under Justinian, and by the Lombard settlement in Italy to a mere provincial city, which was not even the capital of the province in which it lay, is raised to be the capital of a new Christendom by Leo's crowning the head of the Teuton invaders to be sovereign oL the Christian people which was in process of making out of these invaders. In this period also the Eastern empire is crippled. There rises an internecine struggle between 22 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTORy THROUGH a new anti-Christian religion and the Christian faith, in which a great portion of the Eastern Church is laid waste and destroyed. The wandering of the nations in the West is succeeded by their settlement in the conquered provinces. It is the rise of a new state of things in the accession of a great sbvereign who seems for a time to restore the majesty of the Eoman name. This is a period with characteristics of its own, as dis- tinct as those of the two preceding periods, while the power exhibited by the Primacy is as striking as in either of them. The change of the world between A.D. 476 and 800 is vast in every point of view. I mark the fourth period as dating from the com- mencement of Charlemagne, as Emperor of the Eomans, in 800, to the decision of the question of Investiture under Calixtus II. in 1122. This period includes the creation of Christian Europe, a beginning of Christendom as a community of Christian States civilly independent, but joined in unity of belief over against four great enemies — (1) the Eastern imperial despotism, the perpe- tual fosterer and ultimate head of schism ; (2) the spuri- ous Mahometan theocracy founded on force; (3) barbaric violence of nations yet in process of formation, and the corruption of manners mixed with it ; and (4) the perpe- tual strain of the Western imperial power, coveting the absolute power of the old Eoman monarchy, which had its root in heathenism, which the Christian faith had sought to tame, and had really checked and reduced within bounds. In aU this the Divine Primacy is seen working in a EIGHTEEN CENTUEIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETEE. 23 world very different as to its moral forces and gravita- tion from the world in either of the former periods. The fifth period I mark from Pope Calixtus II. to Pope Boniface VIII. It is the completion of Christian Europe : a group of nations educated out of barbarism by the Church, in which the civil polity of each was based upon the religion of the Cross.| |A conquest of Christian principles as to government, but an imperfect conquest, the age indeed of faith, but scarcely that of love. The skill of the artificer certainlyJwas not want- ing, but Vero e che forma non s' accorda Molte fiate all' intenzion dell' arte, Perohe a risponder la materia k sorda. — Dante, Faradiso, i. 127. The matter was still barbaric, Christianised but not thoroughly digested. This new Christian Europe was cut out of the Teutonic rock, firm indeed and grand, but rough likewise and angular ; and here the Eoman Pontiff both formed the design and laid the blocks, but the defective will of the subordinate masons marred the workmanship. The sixth period I give from Pope Boniface VIII. in 1303 to the conclusion of the Council of Trent in 1564. Its device is Christendom in combat with an ever ad- vancing material wealth, and a parallel advance in the corruption of discipline, the efi'ect of which is seen in the great schism of the West. And this intestine struggle, which upheaves Christendom, proceeds until' at length the vast fabric, reared with divine wisdom on one part, and the labour of so many nations on the 24 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTORY THROUGH other, is rent by the intractable and conflicting elements "which had been embraced, but not fused nor tempered to Christian perfectness. This period is fitly closed by that great Council of Trent, larger in the field of doc- trine which it traversed, more thorough in its efiects than any which preceded it. Accordingly, from it springs a reformation of manners, an elucidation and harmonising of doctrine ; in short, a new age of Christian learning, which, in its results, more than recalls the splendours of the most prolific Christian antiquity. The seventh period I count from the Council of Trent to the French Eevolution. Its character is, on the one hand, the defection of nations from the Christian faith, and from the bond of Christendom which is the result of that faith ; while,' on the other hand, the great Council is succeeded by a century during which the Church's discipline is purified, her inward life is strengthened, her doctrine is built up and perfected by a vast array of learned writers which no previous age could show.'^ But in the second portion of this period, all the elements of evil which have marred the Church's action and partially defeated her influence during two centuries, at length came to a head, and by attempting to overthrow the Christian faith itself in the greatest of the Christian family of nations, cast the world back into a new heathenism. Great powers of destruction are let loose. Not only is the empire, begun in Charlemagne, after a ' As an illustration of this, reference may he made to Backer's history of authors belonging only to the Company of Jesuits, and again to Hurter's Nomen- clator Literarius. EIGHTEEN CENTURIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETER. 25 long secularisation, finally swept away, but the union between the spiritual and the civil authorities, of which that empire was the symbol and seal, is vehemently shaken throughout the whole Christian world, and with it the civilization which was the fruit of that union risks being changed into the corrupt civilization of the old heathen world. This great convulsion marks the entrance of the eighth era, a new and greater as well as a more formidable one, in the midst of which we stand and of which the Vatican Council betokens the character. If the Church ceases to be the Church of the old Koman empire and the head of an European Christendom, it is that she may become the Church of the four quarters of the world and the head of a truly ecumenical Christendom. As an earnest of this we have beheld a scene to which past times offer, no parallel. In the great hall, under the noblest dome in the universe, which receives her Fathers, the princes of her provinces come from India and from China, from America and Africa. It is a glory which Nicea and Chalcedon did not see ; which the Lateran also under one of the greatest Popes was not given to enjoy, for the world to which Innocent III. spoke was narrow in com- parison with the world which the word of Pius IX. called ■around him. It is the seed-time of future conquests. It is the building of the wall wherein the mason works with the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other, but in which the glory of the later temple is to exceed that of the former. For so the Divine Builder constructs His work, causing the impediments which hinder its 26 THE CONTINUOUS WITNESS OF HISTOKY THEOUGH advance to strengthen and mature the ultimate result, SO that the rent which tore Europe asunder shall end in uniting the world. My intention is to give eight distinct pictures of the action of the Holy See in these several epochs. The concurrence of the three Factors, the Divine Institution, the Church's recognition of it, the action of Providence ruling the events of the outer world, will be shown equally in all. The variety of circumstances in these epochs is so great as to make a marvel of that action of the Holy See, resulting as it does from three constituents, which persists in them all. For instance, how vast the dis- similarity between the first period of persecution by the civU authority of the empire, in which the Primacy was founded, and the second of establishment in the same em- pire, when it was indisputably recognised. Again, between the second of an establishment in an empire which tried to be Christian, and that third condition of ruin, dissolu- tion, and isolation through the inroad of barbarian hordes, destitute in themselves of cohesion, but hurling their wild force on the degenerate empire : when the Primacy on these troubled waters laid the foundation of a new sj)iritual kingdom. Again, between the education of barbarians, which made Christian kings out of raiders and pirates in the fourth period, and that great and terrible contest with wealth and internal corruption of manners and discipline in the sixth period. • Again, what a con- trast between the Europe which was led in crusades by the Popes against the false prophet in the fifth period, and the Europe which could listen to teachers of moral EIGHTEEN CENTURIES TO THE SEE OF ST. PETEE. 2/ corruption and intellectual negation, such as Voltaire and Eousseau, springing up in its own bosom, during the seventh. And finally, the eighth period in which we live is one wherein the world, which from the time of Constantine had acknowledged its safety to lie in union with the Church, has turned almost completely against the Church ; and the City of God in the midst of nations, corrupt and hostile, burns like the fiery bush in the desert. The action of the Holy See in all these periods has been necessary, has been incessant, has been deci- sive, and moreover a particular action of the Divine Providence upon human affairs has been requisite in each of them to maintain it. It is customary with anti- Catholic writers to deal separately with these periods, or, rather, to view the events contained in each, not as forming parts, of one connected history, but as isolated events, and to attack the Holy See in each of them by singling out abuses as if they had destroyed the society in which they were tolerated. But these writers are never found to consider the cumulation of proof which the persistency of its action throughout them all exhibits, nor the power of that action for good. It is as if a French historian were to direct his whole attention to point out and exaggerate the private faults committed by individual kings of France, while he disregarded the action of the monarchy in forming out of antagonistic fragments a great realm, and giving it cohesion and unity. But this illustration aff"ords no adequate parallel to the action of the Papacy. The one is the force of an institution in 28 THE CONTINUOUS "WITNESS OF HISTOKY, ETC. a single State, whereas the continuance of such a power as the Papacy through so vast a range of centuries, amid changes of race, manners, and tempers so multiform, and upon a crowd of nations, is an instance which gives the full force of Cicero's words, supplying the Christian expression of " God " for the heathen one of " nature " ; " Opinionum commenta delet dies ; Dei judicia con- firmat ". That it lasts throughout them all ; that in each and all of them it forms the centre, bond, and crown of the Divine Kingdom, in which it acts as the sun in the solar system, — these are proofs of its divine institution to which the course of earthly empires supplies no parallel. It has shown itself to be the Eock through the 1850 years in which Peter has fed the flock of Christ. FROM ST. PETEK TO ST. SYLVESTER. 29 CHAPTEE II. FKOM ST. PETEK TO ST. SYLVESTER. There is scarcely, in the long history of the Christian Church, a point of time to be found at which the king- dom of Christ appeared before the world in greater grandeur than at the convocation of the first General CouncU. They who, for ten generations, had been treated as the outcasts of the earth, in whom the Eoman ruler had persistently persecuted the members as he had begun by crucifying the Head, upon the charge of usurping Caesar's sovereignty, were now invited by Caesar to meet in his palace, and to exercise there, as free agents, the most sacred functions, for the maintenance of which they had so long suffered. He appeared before them as the Church's sword and shield, not interfering with their deliberations, not himself either making with them or subscribing their decrees, but proclaiming them when made as laws of the empire, and declaring repeatedly, with the official voice of the empire's head, that God spoke in His bishops, and a divine inspiration^ had guided their judgments.^ ^ Hefele, Condlien-geschichte, i. 420. — i. 258. 2 Socrates, Sist., i. 9, gives Oonstantine's letter to the Church of Alexandria, in which he says : " That which has commended itself to the judgment of three hundred bishops cannot be other than the doctrine of God ; seeing that the Holy 30 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. The bishops who sat in this Council were 318, a number which speedily became very famous, and as to which St. Ambrose first, and after him many others, compared the servants of God at the Council with the servants of Abraham in his battle with the kings. Of the 318, five only came from the Latin provinces of the Church, and all the rest from the Eastern. Among them were eminent confessors of the faith, who had suffered in the last and greatest persecution : such as Potamon, bishop of Heraclea in Egypt, who had lost an eye ; Paphnutius, of the Upper Thebais, who had both lost an eye and been maimed in the knee, and was renowned for his miracles, as were also Spiridion of Cyprus and James of Nisibis ; Paulus of Neocsesarea, lamed in both hands by the hot irons of the emperor Licinius ; Leontius of Csesarea, endued with the gift of prophecy ; and St. Nicholas of Myra. " Some." says the contemporary historian Eusebius, "were distinguished for their wisdom, others for ascetic life and endurance, others as sharing both these qualities.* There were those who were honoured for the length of their days, others in the bloom of youth, some that had but just attained episcopal rank. To all of them the emperor bad ordered abundance of provision to be supplied day by day." " Not a few," adds Theodoret, " were eminent Spirit dwelling in the minds of such men has disclosed to them the divine will ". And in the circular letter sent round to all Churches, preserved by Eusebius, Life of Gonstantiiie, iii. 20, he says : " Receive then with all willingness this truly divine injunction, and regard it as the gift of God. For. whatever is determined in the holy assemblies of the bishops is to be regarded as indicative of the divine will." FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 31 for apostolic gifts, and many bore the marks of Christ on their body."^ The acts of the Council have not been preserved ; only its creed, its canons, and its synodal letter ; but the subscriptions remain in several lists, all of which preserve one order. The first signature is that of Hosius, bishop of Corduba, and of the two Eoman priests, Vitus and Vicentius, legates of the absent Sylvester, bishop of Eome ; then the two Eastern patriarchs who were present, Alexander of Alexandria, and Eustathius of Antioch ; Makarius, bishop of Jerusalem. Then follow the signatures of the other bishops, province after province, so that the metropolitan is always followed by his suffragans. " To each group of subscriptions," says Hefele, "the name of the ecclesiastical province is also expressly prefixed : only in the case of Hosius and the two priests this is wanting. They subscribed first, and without the naming of any diocese. That, in his case and theirs, no province was prefixed to their subscription points to the fact that they acted not in any particular capacity, as representa- tives of a particular Church, but as Presidents of the whole Synod, and that we have to recognize in them the TTpoeSpoi of Eusebius. The analogy, likewise, of the other General Councils speaks for their presiding, specially of the Ephesinian, where also, outside and before the other legates who came from Italy, a bishop of very great dignity himself, Cyril of Alexandria, as in ^ Eusebius and Theodoref 32 FBOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTEK. this case Hosius, acted as Papal Legate."^ So, again, at the Fourth Council, the Emperor Mariean, accompanied by the Empress Pulcheria, when he attends, assures the bishops, " We have wished to take part in the Council for the purpose of confirming the faith, not of exercising any authority, after the example of the religious prince Constantine":^ words which, coming from the mouth of an Eastern emperor, absolutely exclude the notion, whi(;h some uncatholic writers have attempted to set up, that Constantine either presided at the Council or named its presidents. The importance of the cause for which they met equalled the grandeur of the meeting itself. The occa- sion was the denial of the Godhead of the Son by Arius ; and the decision of the Council proclaiming in its creed that the Son is of one substance with the Father was received throughout the world as the voice of the whole Church, though all the bishops present from the Western half of the Church were but five. But the legates of the Pope presided over the Council, gave their subscrip- tion at the head, and its decrees were transmitted to the bishops of the West by Pope Sylvester, according to the canon ^ of the Church at that time, which forbade councils to be held and decrees to be passed save with the consent of the bishop of Rome, who occupied the 1 Hefele, Condlicn-geschichte, i. 36, 37. See also, Mehues, Kwiserfhum tend Papstthwm, p. 255, for the position of the Eoman Legates in the five extant lists of subscriptions. 2 Quoted by Eiffel, p. 394, from Acts of the Council, vi. p. 466. 5 See the last paragraph of Pope Julius' letter, a.d. 342, with respect to the church of Alexandria : for the general rule, Socrates, ii. 17, and Sozomeu, iii. 10. FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 33 see " wherein," to use the words of the Council of Aries, held in the year 314, " the Apostles (Peter and Paul) sit for ever, and their blood without intermission bears witness to the glory of God".^ St. Athanasius, present at this Council as Deacon of the Alexandrine patriarch, and the ablest of all in setting forth the doctrine which formed'" the subject of its chief deliberation, proclaimed it to be "a pillar and standard of victory against every heresy ". St. Leo declared that its laws would last to the end of the world. The Eastern Christians so honoured it that Greeks, Syrians, and Egyptians had each a special feast to com- memorate yearly the 318 Nicene bishops. "The list," says Tillemont, " would be endless were one to attempt enumerating the witnesses to the rank of the Nicene Council; and in all centuries no one, except a few heretics, has spoken of this holy assembly save in terms of the highest veneration." ^ Thus for the first time after three hundred years the Church of Christ met in General Council, and solemnly proclaimed its faith in the Godhead of that Lord from whom it had begun to be, and in whose power alone it subsisted : wherein the heresy which denied the Head gave occasion to the Body to appear before the eyes of all men manifest to sight and touch. This point of time is for ever memorable, but like- wise there is no portion of the Church's history which forms a more complete period with special character- •■ Synodal letter of the Council of Aries to Pope Sylvester in 314 : the greatest Council before the Nicene. " Hefele, i. 421 3 34 FKOM ST. PETEK TO ST. SYLVESTER. istics than that which commences with the day of Pentecost and terminates with the conversion of the Emperor Constantino, as seen in the great recognition of the Christian kingdom, betokened by the convocation at his request of the first General Council. Of course this period, as the time of the Church's beginning, when its faith was first preached and its spiritual government planted through the whole Eoman world and beyond it, when by a divine birth it sprung from the womb of the Jewish synagogue, when it fought its first fight with imperial paganism, possesses a singular interest and importance. There must be within its range every- thing, at least in germ, which can afterwards arise. All the Church's faith, all her government, all her divine power, all her claim over individual man and over human society, must be there at least potentially, if not in actual exercise, just as the power shown in the Nicene Council of determining the doctrine of the God- head of Christ covers every possible determination of doctrine which the Church can make. Of the many aspects, presented by the Church in this period I am about to choose one in particular, and in doing so I shall consider the period, for better elucidation of the subject, as if it were one day of the divine government, and review it looking backwards from its termination. The aspect under which I shall regard it is the action of St. Peter's See in the period ended by the Nicene Council. And first the outcome of this whole period is that at its termination the Church appears as a hierarchy con- sisting of a priesthood, a teaching and a jurisdiction FKOM ST. PETER. TO ST. SYLVESTKR. 35 possessed in solidarity by that hierarchy, and a people yielding it spontaneous and complete trust and obedi- ence. The hierarchy therefore bears in itself the autho- rity and the doctrine of Christ. It is a Body corporate which offers sacrifice, teaches, and rules over the souls and bodies which . belong to it in the name of Christ. The conversion of Constantine consists in the fact that he owns Jesus to be the Christ, the Saviour of the world* and owns this hierarchy to be His kingdom on earth, within which the Christian people lives and works. Strictly speaking, he is not yet a Christian, for he is not baptised. But his^ causing the Church to meet in General Council by moving the spiritual authority to convoke it, by authorising its members, the prelates, who are his civil subjects, to attend it, by even placing the public posts at their disposal for this purpose, and when they meet by receiving them in his palace and support- ing them bounteously, by appearing before their assembly as one who, albeit he is the Eoman emperor holding in his single person the whole legislative, judicial, and administrative authority of the Eoman empire, yet receives the decision of this Council as the voice of God — all this action of his makes the most com- ^ Eufinus, E. i. 1 : "Sermo usque ad aures religiosi principis, quippe qui omiii studio et diligentia curaret qua nostra sunt, pervenit. Turn ille ex sacerdotv/m, sententia apud urbem Nicoenam episcopale concilium convocat." Pope Damasus, who was himself of man's estate at the convocation of the Council, says it y/as held by direction of the Eoman See. At a Synod of 93 bishops, held probably in the year 369 (see Hefele, i. 714), that Pope, Valerian of Aquileia, and the other bishops wrote to the Eastern bishops ; in their letter the words occur : "Majores nostri CCCXVIII. episcopi, atque ex urbe sanctissimi episcopi urbis Eomse directi, apud Nicseam confecto conoilio hunc murum adversus arma diabolica statuerunt. — Migne, vol. xiii. p. 348. 36 FKOM ST. PETER TQ ST. SYLVESTER. plete recognition of the Church as the kingdom of Christ, and of her hierarchy as the government of that king- dom which a Eoman emperor could give. And this it is which in spite of errors in government and defects in personal conduct, such as appear especially in his later years, after this Council, have conferred on the name of Constantine,^ as the first Christian emperor, an imperish- able and even unique distinction. Further, the meeting of a General Council is the proof of another very wonderful fact, which one may call the great work accomplished in these three centuries. The act is this, and I call it very wonderful because when Augustus three hundred years before was ruling the same empire which Constantine ruled, in the time when Virgil sung of him that he should restore the golden age to Latium and stretch his empire to the confines of Asia and Africa, no glimpse of such an event was appa- rent to poet, philosopher, or ruler. That event is, that a singular people had come into existence and was spread through all its cities and provinces, a people the whole mind of which was ruled by the idea of the Church's unity as the Family, the House, the Fold, the Kingdom, and finally the Body of Christ. It formed but a part of the population, taking one here and another there, according to no visible rule of selection, embracing at once learned and ignorant, rich and poor, young and ■" Of. St. Ambrose in his sermon on the death of Theodosius, 40 : "Cui licet baptismatis gratia in ultimis constituto omnia peccata dimiserit, tamen quod primus imperatorum credidit, et post se hereditatem fidei prinoipibus dereliquit, magni meriti locum reperit." The striking testimony of St. Ambrose to the baptism of Constantine on his deathbed is to be noted. . FfiOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 37 old, the master or his slave, even those who had been corrupt and those who had been pure in their previous life ; and where it was most numerous, no doubt, only a minority belonged to it. It was scattered through great distances. It spoke many languages. It was composed of many races. Its rulers as a whole had never before met together, had never seen each others' faces. Its books were few, and multiplied only by laborious and costly transcription. It had no newspapers, and loco- motion was slow and toilsome. Notwithstanding all these impediments, the idea which occupied in chief the mind of this Christian people was the sense that it was one, the sense of the unity of Christ's kingdom on earth. The hierarchy is the realisation of this idea. The Christian people, however locally scattered, was knit together by its one Episcopate. The Family, House, Fold, Kingdom, and Body of Christ are expressed in the sacerdotal, doctrinal, and jurisdictional power which our Lord set up, which in its whole and evsry derivation came from His own Person, from the Body crucified on Calvary, the same Body in which He gave the paschal salutation, "Peace be with you," on the following Easter day. This triple power was possessed by every bishop, not as an independent ruler, but in the solidarity of the Episcopate. This Episcopate was seen acting as a whole in the Nicene Council. The distribution of power within the Church is subordinate to the capital idea of the Church herself, as that which possesses this triple power : a power which depends on her unity and is conditioned by it, because it is the power of one Person, the' God-man. 38 -FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. If we reflect that what we call in one word the Eoman ■empire was not a nation like to any of the great nations "which now make up the Christian world, but a vast con- federacy of most dissimilar races and peoples, held down as well as held together by the force of successive con- quests, which stretched over hundreds of years, under the dominion of one city alien in temper and spirit from many of its subjects, the formation of this one people in its bosom will exhibit something of its marvellous charac- ter. That such a jointing together of the most dis- similar materials as the empire presented should exist at all was a great wonder in the eyes of Kome's most philo- sophic historian.-^ The work, says Tacitus, speaking by the mouth of a Roman general in the convulsion which followed Nero's death, was the fruit of Rome's practical wisdom, valour, and discipline exercised through eight hundred years. He viewed with dismay the prospect of its disruption : a dismay amply justified when four hundred years after he spoke the disruption came. What then was the marvel that by the sole power of per- suasion, against every material interest, a people was seen to arise through the vast extent of this confederacy, a people stretching from Newcastle in the North to Babylon in the East, from the deserts of Atlas to the Scythian steppes, a people one in heart and mind, in belief and conduct, in spiritual government and manners ? ^Tacitus, Hist. v. 73, Speech of Cerialis : "Pulsis, quod Dii prohibeant, Romanis quid aliud quam bella omnium inter se gentium existent ? Octingen- toram annorum fortuna disciplinaque compages hseo oonvaluit, quse convelli sine exitio convellentium, non potest." FROM ST. PETEE TO ST. SYLVESTER. 39 And in speaking of this creation we must remember also that from the times of the Apostles themselves — whose letters are full of exhortations against false teachers — the Church encountered the whole force of heresy, solely by the superior power of unity and the attraction of truth which made itself felt in her own bosom. Her Fathers have drawn up lists of the most divers opinions, which they called heresies, in order to mark that they were the offspring of human choice, not of divine authority, and which in every generation dur- ing this period of persecution sought either to draw away her own children from her fold, or to pervert the minds of the heathens who were approaching her. From three sources especially a fertile crop of errors sprang up : from Judaic opinions or prejudices, from notions derived out of Greek philosophy, and again from Eastern religious systems. Amid all these the Church held on her way, propagating her faith, and maintaining her government by the sole power of the divine Word in her ; and she, who was subject to every force of material repression from the Gentile empire and society in the midst of which she was rising, could use no such force against false brethren, or half believing converts, or im- postors who professed to be Christians, whilst they held a thousand varying fancies of their own. And it was noted that heathen persecution did not light upon heretics. A secret sympathy made the world which hated the Church take part with them as the Church's most dangerous enemies, and its own best friends and most efl&cient allies. 40 FEOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. But to none of these was Constantine attracted. It was the one organised Christian Church which alone he acknowledged. It was the double fact of its unity in doctrine and government which he admired. It was the fact of the great Christian people which he beheld, and which subdued the proud mind of the Eoraan ruler to humble belief in the power of the crucified God. For Constantine was nearly the last of a series of able mili- tary captains who began to rise in the second half of the third century, and saved by their energy the Eoman .empire from dissolution. The whole course' of his life, up to the time when the imperial power was centred at last in his single hand, which took place in the year preceding the Nicene Council, led him to appreciate the enormous difficulty of maintaining unity of government in a frame so composite. And proportionate to this sense of the difficulty which civil government in so un- evenly tempered a mass presented, was his admiration of that spiritual power which had created before his eyes the Church's spiritual unity, that is, the Christian people. The first expressions of Constantine to the Christian Church, his frank homage and profession of obedience to her laws and dictates, betoken this admira- tion. There can be no doubt that the service which he expected from the Church in maintaining the unity of the empire by the unity of her doctrine, discipline, and government, was one great motive which moved him to become a Christian, and not only so, but to make the empire, so far as in him lay, Christian also. He wished to communicate to the civil power, which seemed FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 4 1 ready to fall to pieces under his hand, that tenacity of life, that unity of purpose, that most simple yet wonder- ful constructive skill, which the Church's history for three hundred years presented to him. And he greeted Pope Sylvester with awe as the chief Bishop of such a power. He bestowed upon him the Lateran palace, which originally belonged to the Plautian family, was confiscated by Nero, and then belonged to his empress, Fausta ; and he began, within the precincts of the palace, a church, dedicated to the Saviour, the world-famous Lateran Basilica. Thus, out of the palace of a dis- tinguished Roman family, sprung the Patriarchium of the Eoman See, which to the beginning of the fourteenth century, continued to be the proper residence of the Popes ; whilst the, church constructed by Constantine became the Mother Church of Christendom. And no less at the opposite north-western end of Rome rose at the request of Pope Sylvester, by Con- stantine's hand, over the bones of the Fisher of Galilee, the Basilica with double aisles, and ninety-six pillars, partly of Parian marble and partly of granite, which became the centre of devotion to all the Christian world. And the emperor showed his personal homage to St. Peter by the gift of a coffin of gilded brass, covered with a cross of the purest gold as long as the cofiin itself, bearing the words : " Constantine Emperor and Helena Empress. This dwelling a royal court surrounds, bright with equal lustre." The dwelling being the coflSn, and the court the church ; and the first Christian emperor built the shrine of the chief Apostle on the 42 FBOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. spot where his predecessor, Nero, had exposed Christians to the foulest outrage, and near where the nightly- oriental mysteries of Cybele continued to pollute the earth. ^ Such were the outward actions of the emperor towards the papacy, while his inward thought was to infuse the unity ^ of the Christian Church into the Eoman state, when he had made it Christian. By this we may- judge of the greatness which that achievement of the Church conveyed to his mind.^ But its greatness is attested by the Church herself, for immediately after the confession of Almighty God Himself in the Creed, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and the confession of what the Second Person has done in becoming incarnate for us, and the con- fession of the Third Person as proceeding from both ; the Church confesses her own existence, as the special work of the Third Person, to be one, holy, catholic, and- apostolic for ever. Thus, in the order of divine truths which make up the Christian inheritance, next to the being of God and the Kedemption itself, stands the being of the Church. The fact which struck with such force the mind of the first Christian emperor is to the Christian mind all through the ages second in rank only to the Being of God and the Passion of God, being their chief result as concerns us, and as such is put in the ^ Keumont, i. 637-8 ; Gregorovius, i. 92. ^ See the picture of this unity given from the letter to Diognetns, in Forma- tion of Christendom, vol. i. 218-23 ' Eeumont, i. 615, well expresses his purpose : " Er hoffte den Staat durch das Christenthum zu retten ". FROM ST. PETEK TO ST. SYLVESTER. 43 mouth of her children as their daily confession, the ground of their hope and perseverance, the oath by which they are enrolled as soldiers in the Christian "warfare. In the review, then, of the first three centuries, we come first of all to the exhibition of the Church herself as the kingdom of God, which is contained in her recog- nition as such under Constantine. And thus I am brought to the special function of St. Peter's See in accomplishing this existence of the Church as the king- dom of God during this period. We possess in the hierarchy, as it is presented to us in the Mcene Council, a testimony of incomparable value to the history of the Church in the centuries pre- •ceding it. The value of the testimony is heightened by the fact that we have no continuous and detailed history •of Christian things in those times. They who search the earliest extant history, for instance, that of Eusebius, published in the year preceding the Council's convoca- tion, will have to lament how bare and scant are its notices of the most important events and institutions, iow very little in detail is recorded concerning the labours and preaching even of the Apostles. Of St. Paul we know most, and this is due to his own letters and St. Luke's epitome of some apostolic acts. Yet from these not a tithe of the work done in this one Apostle's ministry, from his conversion to his martyr- dom, can be drawn. And to this knowledge authentic history adds very little indeed. Concerning nine of the Twelve " whose sound went out into all the earth, and 44 FROM ST. PETEE TO ST. SYLVESTER. their words to the end of the world," and who helped to build up so vast a structure of churches in many various lands, we know next to nothing. No history could equal in interest an authentic and detailed record of the apostolic preaching during the first seventy years. But we possess none. The first twelve chapters of the Acts gives us a sketch of St. Peter's guidance of the infant Church at Jerusalem : concerning the remaining deeds which filled up his long pontificate of thirty-eight years no detailed history exists. We may estimate the loss thus sustained by a single contrast. The planting of the Anglo-Saxon Church, with the chief incidents be- longing to it, has been recorded for us by one of its earliest sons, and the providence of God has allowed his record to come down to us. And it is enough to shew how absolutely identical the Church in which Bede lived and laboured in the eighth century was in all its doc- trines, sacraments, and discipline with the Church of the nineteenth. But no Bede exists for the history of the Church during the hundred years following the Day of Pentecost ; nor for the next century ; nor for the third. We have only preserved for us certain acts and incidents, such as the succession of bishops in the three great patriarchal Sees, and in that of Jerusalem ; fragmentary accounts of persecutions and martyrdoms ; visits of bishops to Eome ; here and there a letter ; a heathen historian's scornful reference to a "huge multitude" who gave up their lives for the faith at Eome in the time of St. Peter and St. Paul (but for which the mo- dern spirit of denial would have reduced to insigni- FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 45 ficanee that first persecution altogether). Such notices as these make up all that we know of the Church's his- tory before the peace of Constantine. Christian writers were few in those times. Missionaries rather laboured and suffered than wrote. Men of leisure and learning there were none, at least among Christians. But, like- wise, the greater persecutions of the third century de- stroyed many records, and particularly the local records of their martyrs made by their own churches, for which, in the Koman Church, special provision was made by appointing from the beginning a notary for each of the seven regions. It seems that no acts of the proceedings in the Nicene Council were compiled by its authority. We have only three documents of it, its creed, its twenty canons, and its synodal decree, with various lists of the subscriptions to it. Most precious, therefore, is the knowledge concerning the hierarchy of the Church which the meeting of this Council conveys to us, because that hierarchy gives us the result of the whole period of three centuries as to the government which had grown up in the Church from the time of the Apostles, by their in- stitution, in which they carried out the commands of their Lord. " For neither," says Tertullian,^ a witness writing 130 years before the Council, " did they choose to bring in anything of their own arbitrament, but faith- fully gave over to the nations the discipline which they had received from Christ." And another, the personal friend of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the third successor of St. Peter, says " the offerings and liturgic acts Christ 1 Tertullian, di Prm. 6 ; St. Clement, i. 40-44. 46 FEOM ST. PETEE TO ST. SYLVESTER. commanded to be performed with care, and not to be done rashly or in disorder, but at fixed times and seasons. And where and by whom He would have them performed He himself fixed by His supreme will, that all things being done with piety according to His good pleasure might be acceptable to His will." But espe- cially, he adds, they established by express order of our Lord the succession of bishops. Thus the Nicene hierarchy emerges from the waters of the persecution like a great pyramid from the midst of a lake, being the visible embodiment of those divine communications made to the Apostles in the great forty days from His Resurrection to His Ascension, as they were realised to human life through ten generations of men at the cost of lifelong labours, trials, watches, martyrdoms innumerable. We have here in its collected mass the work thus accomplished, the government by which the Church had taken possession of the earth, when "instead of her fathers children were born to her, whom she had made princes in all lands ". Nothing here was the effect of court favour ; nothing of human ambition. It is the Church's free development of her own powers ; her execution of her Lord's purpose, inspired by Himself; the words of His mouth carried into act. A palace has been built, not in a night by magic powers, but in three hundred years, by the un- wearied toil of numberless masons, all instinct with one purpose. Often and often they have not only toiled, but cemented the work with their blood. We cannot trace each portion of it as it was built up part by part, FEOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 47 which it might have been granted us to do ; but the completed temple we are allowed to see, and, what is more, it stands for all generations to come. The Twelve,^ with Peter at their head, divided the earth, and their mode of division lasts good unto the end. The}'' divided it in this wise : The intention of the Apostles uniformly carried out by them, and proclaiming by this uniformity that it was the command of their Lord, was, after the foundation of the Church in Jerusalem and the lapse of the pre- scribed time of priority for offering the divine kingdom to the acceptance of the Jews, to plant it in the great cities of the Eoman empire. There were three of prominent rank : Eome, the seat of the empire itself, and up to the time of the faith's promulgation holding in herself "the secret of empire";^ Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, a place of vast commerce, and of immense mental activity as common ground between the East and West, as also the adopted country of a great Jewish population ; and Antioch, the capital of the East, and the seat of the most important military 1 Mamaohi, vol. i. 313-4, thinks the time when the Apostles left Jerusalem cannot he absolutely determined ; it is impossible to reconcile the twelve years which some have supposed to have been assigned by our Lord for preaching to the Jews with other parts of history, such, e.g., as Peter's sitting for seven years at Antioch. But he thinks that it cannot be denied that the Apostles, before their separation, met and determined together on the mode of imparting Christian doctrine, so that there should be complete agreement in what was to be professed and practised. 2 "Evulgato imperii arcano posse principem alibi quam Romse fieri. " — Tacitus, Sis. i, 1. This secret was divulged in the convulsion following Nero's death, when a general commanding in a province became emperor by the choice of his- soldiers rather than by election of the Senate at Rome. 48 FEOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. command in the Eastern portion of the empire. Now, the Apostle Peter was the first bishop of Antioch, and the first bishop of Eome ; and scarcely had he begun to plant the Church in Rome when he sent his disciple Mark to found the Church in Alexandria. In like manner the Apostle Paul founded bishops' sees in Ephesus, in Philippi, in Thessaloiiica, in Corinth, in Athens, in Crete, and other places. That the other Apostles did the like in the countries wherein they laboured as missionaries, there is no doubt. ''^I do not dwell on this, because I have only to deal with the result as it is apparent at the Nicene Council. The first General Council meeting in 325 shews the Church every- where on the earth governed by bishops. This episcopal government has four qualities which it is important to note when we are regarding the hierarchy itself, as it bears upon the creation of the Christian people. It is universal in extent ; it is complete in character ; it has subordination in its members ; while the whole body of rulers is one. It is universal in that it covers the whole ground which the Church herself occupies, so that there are no outlying territories in which no bishop rules. As a government it is complete, because it is uniform, com- plete, and entire in itself, comprising in every case the priesthood, diaconate, and inferior ranks of clergy, with the faithful people, whether they be few or many ; possessing and exercising for these the fullness of the sacraments, the same order of worship and discipline. So far as this, each diocese is a whole. But no one diocese stands by itself. There is likewise subordination FROM ST. PETKK TO ST. SYLVESTER. 49 between the several dioceses. Every bishop belongs to a province, in which there is a metropolitan ; and as the bishop has a council of presbyters in his diocese, so the metropolitan has a council of bishops co-extensive with his province. Nor does the subordination stop here. For many metropolitans again are under the bishops of the more important cities. And, finally, there is a supreme see, which gathets together the bishops of the capital cities, and creates that bond of unity, in virtue of which the whole Church is in her government one, without which there would not be a kingdom at all. What is actually seen at the Nicene Council is that the three greater metropolitans (who from the middle of the fifth century were called patriarchs, but long before possessed their prerogatives), the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, were in possession of a higher authority than the rest, an authority which had come down to them from the first origin of their sees, and which the Council did not create, but recognise. Though their sees were the most renowned cities of the empire, the higher authority of these bishops was carried back to the Apostle Peter, who had sat in person, first at Antioch and then at Eome, and had placed his disciple Mark at Alexandria. The name of Peter stood at the head of the episcopal catalogue in these three sees:^ and the local tradition in all of them gave constant witness afterwards to Peter in many various ways. The Nicene Council knew only these three superior metropolitans, recognising their special rights "' Hergenrbther, I'hoHiis, i. 26. 4 50 FROM ST. PETEK TO ST. SYLVESTER. in the Sixth Canon,^ which runs thus : " Let the ancient custom continue in force which subsists in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis, by which the bishop of Alexandria possesses authority over all these, since the like custom subsists also with the Koman bishop. In like manner also their privileges should be preserved to the churches, as to Antioch and the other provinces. And in general it is plain that if any one become a bishop without the consent of the metropolitan, the great Council decrees that he do not remain a bishop. But if two or three, through individual spirit of conten- tion, resist the general choice of all, which is at once reasonable and according to ecclesiastical rule, let the voice of the majority prevail." In these terms the Council admitted what were after- wards called the patriarchal rights of the bishop of Alexandria, over the three civil provinces of Egypt> Libya, and Pentapolis, which in the time of St. Athana- sius had nearly a hundred bishops. It admitted a similar right in the see of Antioch over the metropoli- tans subject to it, in which patriarchate both metropoli- tans and bishops were much more numerous than those subject to the Alexandrine bishop. The Council in this Sixth Canon justified the prerogatives which it thus, admitted in the see of Alexandria by reference to a similar right existing and exercised at Rome ; and then by force of the same principle recognised the preroga- tive of Antioch and of metropolitans in general. ' Hergenrother, Photius, i. pp. 26-30, shews that the sixth Canon speaks of the; rights of the great metropolitans over a complex of provinces. FKOM ST. PETEK TO ST. SYLVESTEK. 5 1 In the previous history of the Church these three named sees, which were often called in a special sense " the Apostolic Sees," exercised a sort of hierarchical triumvirate,^ which the Eoman see, ever strenuous in its grasp of tradition, firmly maintained. They were the chief leaders of ecclesiastical matters, as to which they referred in the first instance to each other. Thus in the judgment deposing Paul of Samosata, the Synod of Antioch in 269 directed its letter to Dionysius of Eome and to Maximus of Alexandria. Before that, in the Novatian schism, and in the contest upon heretical baptism, these sees had carried on an active correspon- dence with each other. Three sees, whose bishops were soon after called exarchs — those of Csesarea in Cappadocia, of Ephesus, and of Heraclea in Thrace — had similar rights over metropolitans, as well as the primate of Carthage in Africa. The bishop of Eome stood at the head of all, universally recognised as the special successor of the Prince of the Apostles, and as the first of bishops. He exercised his supreme jurisdiction in the East only over patriarchs in the first instance, not over particular bishops ; but he was the only patriarch in the whole West.^ Now, looking at this hierarchy as the recipient and inheritor of such apostolic power as was to con- tinue in the Church— of that Apostolic College itself with which our Lord promised to be all days unto the consummation of the world — I think it cannot fail to 1 Hergenrother's Photius, i. 30. ^ Photius, pp. 26, 30. 52 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. * strike any one who reflects upon the subject how great is the preponderance in it given to the authority of St. Peter. For not only the first and greatest see derives from him all that authority which it exercises over and above that which belongs to every bishop in his diocese, and which is the same in all, whether the diocese be small or great, but likewise the second and the third, after the norm, so to say, of the first, as is intelligibly suggested in the terms of the Sixth Nicene Canon, exer- cise the rule of mothers over a large progeny of bishops, and all the three are sees of Peter. And the Council, in speaking of this prerogative as actually belonging to the three sees, does not claim to bestow it, but recog- nises it as existing from the beginning. "Let the ancient custom be maintained," are the words which it uses in mentioning that prerogative of the Alexandrine see which it is maintaining, but which it is not confer- ring, and which it justifies by reference to the practice of Rome as the rule and type, whilst it would have it maintained at Antioch also, with the privileges of metro- politans generally in the other provinces. The pre- eminence which has its norm in the Roman see, and its largest exercise after Rome in the other two sees of Peter, and which is further carried out in the connection of metropolitans with their suffragans through the vari- jous provinces of the Church, certainly suggests the con- -clusion that Peter is the source of whatever dignity, over •and above the simple episcopate, belongs to the patri- archal, exarchal, or metropolitan rank. And, in fact, from early times, the Popes recognised FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. SJ the two bishops of Alexandria and Antioch as, conjointly with themselves, successors of Peter. Thus St. Gregory the Great wrote to the holder in his time of the see of Antioch in very remarkable terms : " Your Holiness has written to me much respecting the Chair of Peter, Prince of the Apostles, when you say that he sits there in person to this very time in his successors. I receive with pleasure what is said of the Chair of Peter by him who sits in it himself. For who does not know that the Holy Church has been established on the solidity of the Prince of the Apostles, who expressed in his name the firmness of his mind, being called Peter from the Rock (Petra) — to whom the Truth said, ' I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven ' ; and again, ' Thou, when thou art converted, confirm thy brethren ' ; and a third time, ' Simon, son of John, lovest thou me ? Feed my sheep.' And, thus, though there be many Apostles, yet in virtue of its very principate, only the see of the Prince of the Apostles, which is the see of one in three places, received supreme authority. For he made that see sovereign, which he honoured by resting in it, and there ending the present life. He distinguished the see to which he sent his disciple, the Evangelist. He strengthened that in which he sat himself for seven years, though he was to leave it. This is why, the see upon which by divine authority three bishops now pre- side, being the one see of one, I appropriate to myself whatever good I learn from you. And if you believe any good of me, take it to your own merit, since 54 FROM ST. PETEE TO ST. SYLVESTER. we are one thing in Him who said ' that all may be ■oneV'^ It may be asked why does St. Gregory in writing to the patriarch of Antioch on the unity of the three sees of Peter solemnly introduce the three great words of our Lord to Peter which contain the special grant of his primacy ? Is it not because the Church from the begin- ning connected the metropolitan authority, in its highest degree, which is the patriarchal, immediately with the person of Peter ? He intimates that the hierarchy itself, in which, the patriarchs above all illustrated the principle of headship and subordination, was an emana- tion from the Primacy. The episcopal dignity being in itself equal in all who held it, its subordination in its various ranks, and the unity of the whole mass centred in its supreme holder, are the direct result of the grant made in these three words to Peter. For St. Gregory says : " Though there be many Apostles, yet in virtue of its very principate only the see of the Prince of the Apostles received supreme authority ". Accordingly the reference to the three great words is most pertinent. But we can trace this idea of St. Gregorj'' the Great back through many generations. Pope Innocent,^ nearly two hundred years earlier than St. Gregory, and ' St. Greg. I., Ep. vii. 40. "Itaque cum multi sint Apostoli, pro ipso tamen principatu sola Apostolorum Principis Sedes in auctoritate convaluit, quse in tribus loois unius est. Ipse enim sublimavit Sedem in qua etiam quiescere et praesentem vitam finire dignatus est. Ipse decoravit Sedem in qua Evangelistam disoipulum misit. Ipse firmavit Sedem in qua septem amiis quamris disoessurus sedit. Cum ergo unius atqne una sit Sedes, cui ex auctoritate divina tres nunc Episcopi prsesident, &c. ^ Ep. xxiv. FROM ST. PETEE TO ST. SYLVESTER. 55 only ninety years after the Nicene Council, recognised the patriarchal right of the bishop of Antioch over his provinces by referring to this Canon of the Nicene Council, which, he says, " singly expresses the miad of all bishops throughout the world " ; and he adds, " We note that this privilege was given to Antioch not so much on account of the city's magnificence as because it is known to be the first seat of the first Apostle where the Christian religion received its name, where a great meeting of Apostles was held, and which would not yield to the see of the city of Eome, except that the latter rejoices in having received and retained to the end that honour which the former obtained only in transition ". At the Nicene Council there are other sees founded by Apostles and in possession of great dignity. Of these we may take as a specimen the see of Ephesus, at the head of which St. Paul had placed St. Timotheus, which was the Mother Church of the pro"sdnce of Asia, and had exarchal dignity, intermediate, that is, between patriarchs and metropolitans. Moreover, the Sixth Canon of the Council recognised not only the special privileges of Alexandria, referring to the norm of Rome, and then those of Antioch, but with them the whole system of episcopal subordination, adding, " Likewise in the other provinces the privileges are to be preserved to the churches. And, indeed, as a general rule it is manifest that if any one become a bishop without the consent of the metropolitan, the great Council orders that he be not a bishop." From this disposition of the Episcopate at the time of 56 FEOM ST. PETEE TO ST. SYLVESTEE. the first General Council, as it was ranged, first under three great sees of Peter, which as Mother Churches comprehended many hundred bishops, andjwere set over many metropolitans ; secondly, as it was found in a number of countries which were grouped in what became exarchal complexes of provinces under the sees of Ephesus, Csesarea in Cappadocia, and Heraclea in Thrace ; thirdly, as existing in other provinces outside of these, we see that the hierarchy of the Church did not consist of independent bishops, but -of bishops closely bound together, the unity of the province lying in the metro- politan, of metropolitans in their pa.triarch, of patriarchs in the chief see of Peter. Some of these names were indeed posterior, but the tie which they denoted was from the beginning. And that the see of Peter at Eome dealt in the first instance, as far as regarded the Eastern portion of the Church, only with patriarchs, counting them as responsible for the metropolitans and bishops who belonged to their several circles of authority, by no means lessens its sovereign principate, but bears witness to that genuine love of legitimate rule, blended with autonomy, which characterises the Church from her birth through the whole period of her struggle with the pagan empire. But in the whole West, comprising Italy, Africa, eastern and western Illyricum, the Gauls, Spain, Britain, the bishop of Rome was the sole patri- arch; and these would seem to be the "greater dioceses,"^ ' Placuit a te qui majores dioceses tenes, per te potissimum omnibus insinuari. — Mansi, xi. 469. The term SioUria-is at this time expressed the complex of provinces contained in a great prefectiire of the empire ; a diocese was irapoiida, a province eTropx'"- FKOM ST. PETEli TO ST. SYLVESTER. 57 the holding of which the Council of Aries in 314 at- tributed to Pope Sylvester, and requested him to transmit their decrees to the several provinces. As I have said, the least reflection iipon the fact that at the first General Council of the Church only- three patriarchal sees existed, all which ran up to Peter in their episcopal succession, coupled with the fact that the bishops comprised in these three patriarchates made up a large majority of the whole number of bishops in the Church, would of itself shew the preponderance of St. Peter's authority in that constitution of the Church which comes before us as the result of that period when the Church, unconnected with the heathen State, and continually assaulted by it, established the distribution of spiritual power within herself, in the words of St. Leo, " according as the one spirit prompted her from one fountain of grace "} But the organic distribution of authority under this system of patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops shewn by the Nicene Council indicated more than this pre- ponderance. And the better to understand what it does indicate, reflect how diff"erent would have been the aspect which the internal relation to each other of the chief members of this hierarchy would have presented to us if, for instance, while the first see, that of Eome, had descended from St. Peter as its first bishop, the second see, that of Alexandria, had descended from St. Andrew as its first 1 St. Leo, Ep. ix., speaking of St. Peter and St. Mark: "Qiuim sine diibio de codem fonte gratise uiius spiritus fuerit et discipuli et niagistri". 58 FEOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. bishop, and the third see, that of Antioch, had descended from St. John as its first bishop. Nor need we stop at this supposition. The Apostles had, each of them, power to found sees wherever they taught. They did actually so found them. What would have prevented the twelve Apostles from each founding a patriarchal see in the chief city of the country which he evange- lised, such as Eome, Alexandria, and Antioch actually were ? And each of them might have become the first bishop of the see so founded. Whereas at the Nicene Council we find the more than remarkable fact that not a single bishop existed who could claim an Apostle as the first bishop of his see except the bishops of the three sees of Peter. St. Paul appointed St. Timotheus to be not only a bishop, but a metropolitan at Ephesus ; and St. Titus to be not only a bishop, but a metro- politan in Crete, for the purpose of establishing bishops in the several cities of the island. He founded also the see of Thessalonica, which became afterwards a great metropolitan see, and many other sees, but in no one did he sit as bishop. The other Apostles did likewise. St. John in his latter years lived at Ephesus, and exer- cised apostolical authority over the Asiatic churches, but he became bishop of no see. It is true that the see of Jerusalem had for its first bishop St. James, who is generally accounted one of the Twelve. ' But the suc- cession to this see was interrupted by the destruction of the city and the events following it ; so that when Jerusalem once more appeared as the name of a Christian see, its bishop took rank not as the successor PEOM ST. PETEE TO ST. SYLVESTER. 59 of an Apostle, but as suffragan of the metropolitan of Csesarea, and though sitting with distinction at the Nicene Council/ it was only in the fifth century that he received patriarchal rank frona the fourth General Council in honour of the original founding of the Church at Jerusalem. Thus at the Nicene Council there were many apostolic sees in the sense that they had been founded by Apostles, but not one whose bishop could claim by un- broken episcopal descent from an Apostle to be the representative of that Apostle, and so to be the deposi- tary of his apostolic power, except the three patriarchs, who, in the language of St. Gregory the Great, held the ■one see of the one Peter at Eome, Alexandria, and Antioch. This is a historical fact. What is the mean- ing of it ? What meaning is there but that Divine Providence carried out in the whole period of the Church's planting and the three centuries of heathen persecution the promise and grant of our Lord to St. Peter to be the bearer of the keys in His house and the shepherd of His people ■? And this is done by causing the whole organi- sation of the Church to proceed from Peter as the bishop in the highest degree, by making his See of Eome " the origin and principle of unity," " the root and matrix of the Church," as St. Cyprian called it, while none of the other Apostles stand at the head of an episcopal line. ^ Constant. PrcBfcdio, xiv., observes : " Tacemus de Hierosolymitana cui licet proprium honorem servari voluerit Nicsena Synodus, tamen ei ne metropoliticum •quidemjiis dignUatemque concessit. 6o FROM ST. PETEK TO ST, SYLVESTER. Again, this is exactly what Pope Innocent I. meant when,, in answering the reference of the African bishops to him, he said that " in questions of faith I consider that all our brethren and fellow-bishops should refer to no other than to Peter, who is, in fact, the author of their own name and honour". This was Peter's special privi- lege among the Apostles, that the episcopate radiated from his person. This was what St. Ambrose meant when he wrote in the name of the Council of Aquileia to the emperors Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius, not to allow " the Roman Church, the head of the whole Eoman world, to be disturbed, for this is the fountain- head whence the laws of our venerable communion flow forth to all men "} Again, St. Optatus has assigned a specific reason for this fact in his well-known words to a Donatist adversary : " You cannot deny that you know that the Chair of Peter first of all was fixed in the city of Rome, in which Peter, the head of all the Apostles, sat, whence, too, he was named Cephas : in which single Chair unity was to be observed by all, so that the rest of the Apostles should not each maintain a Chair to themselves, but that forthwith he should be a schismatic and a sinner who against that singular Chair sets up another ". And to make this result the more marked, the most distinguished Apostle after St. Peter is associated with him as a sort of second founder of the Roman see, from which every document of supreme importance has run during the long ages of the Christian faith in the name- ' St. Innocent, Ep. xxx. ; St. Ambrose, Ep. xi. FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 6 1 of St. Peter and St. Paul. But no other see claims the Apostle who founded so many sees as the head of its line, nor was St. Paul himself bishop of Eome. And in this connection we must recur to the fact that the Nicene Council grounded its recognition of the privilege of the Alexandrine see to preside over several provinces upon ancient custom, which it justified by the practice of the Roman see. Then it went on to extend that recognition to the whole hierarchical organisation exemplified in the instance of Alexandria. Thus it recognised this order of subordination as pre-existing to itself, as something which it was not creating, but maintaining, because it came down from ancient times, which means, of course, the original institution of the Apostles. The Council added nothing and changed nothing in this state of things : and thus this organisa- tion is not the work of the Council, but rather the CouncO. itself a result of the organisation. For in this Canon is contained that whole organic and graduated distribution of power by which the Church in her hierarchy presented that subordination which makes the unity and beauty of a kingdom ; and this being so, most significant is the reference to Rome as the type, standard, and example of patriarchal power. There can be no subordination without headship ; and where the headship lay is sufficiently plain from the fact that at the end of the first three centuries of the Church's existence, the See of Peter — the episcopal succession springing from Peter — had generated the whole order of bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs, of which it stood 62 FEOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. at the head : so absolutely at the head, that there was no other bishop who could claim episcopal successsion from an Apostle. The structure of the Church, as a well-ordered king- dom, is based upon the limitation of every individual bishop's authority to a certain prescribed territory. This had been the original teaching and practice of the Apostles. At the Nicene Council this limitation appears, is acknowledged, and maintained by the CouncU. But the kingdom of Christ required the principle of supreme authority, which was the bond of unity. So necessary was this, that even among twelve apostles, who were given authority over all the earth, a Primate was made to cause that authority to be exercised in unity.^ How much more was such a Primacy requisite, when the Apostolic College of Twelve was succeeded by an Epis- copate containing hundreds or thousands of members. But I am not here stating a doctrine ; I am only noting a fact. The fact is, that after three centuries of struggle with the pagan State, the result of the independence won, at the cost of incessant persecution, presents us with a constitution in which the episcopate spread through the whole world so far as it is occupied by the Church, having sprung from the womb of Peter's see, has its only patriarchs in the successors of that see ; its type of the episcopal power itself in Peter, and the sub- ordination of its members in a structure of which he is the legitimate, acknowledged, undisputed head. The Popes often declared — and I am about to cite a ^ St. Jerome. FKOM ST. PETEK TO ST. SYLVESTER. 63 remarkable instance of it — that the Nicene Council be- stowed nothing on the Eoman see, being aware that by the word of Christ it already had the Primacy, a supreme authority to which nothing was wanting. We may re- mark a singular corroboration of the fact declared b3'' the Popes in the latent recognition of the Primacy which the Canon contains. For the privileges indicated, acknow- ledged, and ratified in it comprehend all that authority which one bishop has over another, short of the Primacy itself Of such authority the patriarchal is the highest derivation ; and it is here referred back to Eome. If the Alexandrine bishop governed three provinces with their metropolitans, it was an ancient custom derived from the same exertion of power at Eome. But in all this the Council grants nothing new ; it only recognises an existing fact. And the fact is, that episcopal power being in itself equal in each recipient, whatever authority one bishop exercised over another is, in the last resort, a derivation from the Primacy. Nothing is here conferred upon Eome ; but a great deal is suggested as belonging to Eome. In the middle of the ninth century a very great Pope, Nicolas I., addressed from his sick-bed at Eome a letter to the Eastern emperor Michael, in which he draws these same conclusions from the acts of the Nicene Council.'- In answer to the insults of the emperor, he wrote : " God give you grace to know the greatness and the nature of the Eoman Church's privi- leges ; from whom they took their rise, and who was 'Nicolas I., Ep. viii. ; Mausi, xv. 204. 64 FROM ST. PETKR TO ST. SYLYESTEK. the author of its supreme authority. If you will ask this of us, as the ministers of Christ and the dispensers of His mysteries, we will do our best to shew it you ; if you scorn the knowing it, and only direct your efforts against the privileges of the Eoman Church, beware lest they turn against you. It is hard for you to kick against the goad. If you will not hea,r us, all that remains for us is to esteem you as our Lord Jesus Christ commanded in the case of those who despise listening to the Church of God. Especially the privi- leges of the Eoman Church, founded by the mouth of Christ in St. Peter, carried out in the Church's own dis- position, observed from antiquity, celebrated by the General Councils, and continuously venerated by the whole Church, can in no respect be lessened, in no respect infringed, in no respect changed. For the foundation laid by God cannot be removed by human effort ; what God has established remains firm and .strong, and he sins before all who attempts to resist the ordinance of God. The privileges, I repeat, of that See or Church are perpetual. They were rooted and planted by God. They may be attacked but not transferred, assaulted but not removed.-^ They were before your empire ; they remain, thank God, as yet uninfringed. They will last after you, and so long as the Christian name shall be preached, they will continue entire. " These privileges were given to this holy Church by ■^ This points, says Cardinal Hergenrother, to the attempted translation by the Greeks of the Primacy from Old Eome to New Rome, after the removal of the imperial residence thither. FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 65 Christ; they were not given by Councils, but only celebrated and venerated by them. Through them it is not so much an honour as a burden virhich lies upon us, though we gained that honour not by our own merits, but by the ordination of God's grace through and in the person of the blessed Peter. They enjoin and compel us to bear the solicitude of all the churches of God. For the society of St. Paul, the vessel of election and teacher of the truth, was added to St. Peter : and they, like two great luminaries in heaven, divinely fixed in the Roman Church, filled the world with the splendour of their shining. Nor were they, after their death,^ brought to Eome by princes to confer on the Eoman Church greater privileges, as you rather stretched power than used reason in doing, so as to strip other churches of their patrons, and enrich Constantinople with their spoils ; but coming to Eome in the flesh, preaching the word of life, removing from her the darkness of error, beaming on men's minds with the light of truth, and consummating their martyrdom on one and the same day, they consecrated that Church with their blood, and dedicated it to God without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. Thus they made the Church of Alexandria their own, as that of the son and disciple of one of them, since the son's inheritance lies in the parent's power, and the disciple's glory belongs to his master. Now Peter had already made the Church of Antioch his own by his corporal presence, ^ An allusion to the translation to Constantinople of the relics of St. Andrew, St. Lnke, and St. Timothy. S 66 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. which, as St. Innocent says, only yielded to Eome because it possessed but in transition that which Eome kept. Therefore, through these three chief Churches, the care of all the Churches looks for the guidance of the chief Apostles, Peter and P*^ul. In the place of these fathers, we, by divine aid, have become sons, and, however unequal to them in merit, are appointed princes over all the earth." " Observe, moreover, that neither the Nicene Council, nor any other, conferred any privilege upon the Koman Church, because it knew that it had received the fullness of all rights in the person of Peter, and the government of aU Christ's sheep." Then Pope Nicolas quotes his predecessor, Boniface I., who sat from 418 to 422, for that precise interpretation of the Nicene Council which I have given above. "This," he says, " is attested by Pope Boniface in writing to all the bishops of Thessaly. The institution of the whole Church from the beginning was derived from the rank given to St. Peter, in whom its government and whole sum consists ; for, as the «ilture of religion increased, the fountain of ecclesiastical discipline which he established diffused itself through aU churches. The precepts of the Nicene Council bear witness to this, so that it did not venture to make any appointment over him, seeing that nothing could be conferred above his merit. In fact it was aware that everything was given to him by the word of the Lord."^ 1 St. Boniface, Ep. xiv. ; Constant. 1037. " Institutio universalis nascentis Ecclesiae de beati Petri sumpsit honore principium, lq quo regimen ejus et snmnia consistit. Ex ejus enim ecclesiastica disciplina, per omnes ecclesias, religionis FROM ST. PETEE TO ST. SYLVESTER. 6^ On which Pope Nicolas comments, " If everything, then nothing was wanting in that grant. And if you care- fully examine the regulations of the Nicene Council, you will find that it conferred no increase on the Roman Church, but rather derived from its form the particular privilege which it admitted in the Alexandrine Church." This great letter of Pope Nicolas is in fact a summing up of the testimony afibrded by the eight preceding centuries to the government of the Church, as it was instituted in the beginning, and as it was recognised by the first General Council. And as Pope Innocent, ruling eighty years after it was celebrated, said of it that it " conveyed in itself the mind of the bishops, throughout the whole world," ^ so Pope Boniface, ten years later, observed that the Nicene Canons, in recognising the existing government of the Church, as it was then arranged in provinces, under metropolitans and patriarchs, bore witness to that government as springing from the person of St. Peter, the type and standard of the bishop, in whose Primacy the whole Church-government was summed up and consisted. That is a declaration, among other things, that all power exercised by an individual bishop over another bishop is a derivation from the Primacy. This was the fountain-head, out of which the whole constitution jam crescente cultura, fonte nianavit. Nicasnas Synodi non aliud prsecepta testantur ; adeo nt iion aliquid super eum ansa sit constituere, cum videret nihil supra meritum suum posse conferri. Omnia denique hinc noverat Domini sermone conces.sa. " 1 "Revolventes auctoritatem Nicsenae Synodi quae una omnium per orbem teiTamm mentem explicat sacerdotum." — Ep. xxiv. ; Constant., col. 851. 68 FKOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. of the Church, in its subordination and autonomy, flowed. The Pope in every bishop, and more especially in the tenants of the great sees, respected an authority of which he was the supreme holder. It is to be remem- bered that this- "disposition of authority" is not a development, but the form which the Church took at her birth. It is not something which the Nicene Council created, but that which it recognised as existing from the beginning, that of which it found the norm in the See of Eome, and acknowledged as valid because it was found there. There is no constitution of the Church before the Nicene. The " three Sees of the one Peter " were rooted in the apostolic order of things ; and Peter was the source of the Episcopate from the beginning. It is history in its most rigid declarations on which we here rest. There is only one class of persons which can consistently deny the force of this fact. It is those who do not believe in the Church's existence from the beginning, with a corporate life, as the king- dom of God ; and who, therefore, do not believe in the continuance of that corporate life. Those who believe in no Church, and those only, are not touched by these facts. But these words of Pope Boniface, written in the year 422 to the bishops of the lUyrian province, who since the time of Gratian had ceased to belong to the Western empire, are of such importance that we may dwell on them a moment longer. They state the constitution of the Nicene Church to be the evolution of the power stored up in the person of Peter by the direct gift of Christ ; a power not given by the Church, FROM ST. PETER TO ST; SYLVESTER. 69 but by the author of the Church for the purpose of making her. In this case, therefore, historical fact and theoretical principle are at one. In historic fact the Sixth Canon of the Council delineates the Church out- spread before it in the arrangement of its provinces ; metropolitan over bishops; patriarch over metropolitan; and the first See of Peter over all : a disposition of power eminently legitimate, autonomous, subordinated, and, in fine, springing from unity and maintaining unity. The theoretic principle of this fact is luminously expounded by Pope Boniface, addressing a province of Greek bishops. He derives from Peter's person the whole authority thus drawn out in its graduated arrangement during the Church's conflict with the heathen world in three hundred years. AVhat he says amounts to this. The chief bishop — he who held the episcopal authority in Capites — has generated the Episcopate in its various ranks. The tree, which already overshadowed the earth, had grown up from the root of Peter. The solicitude of all the Churches had flowed over from the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul to the various bishops of the world in various degrees. The episcopal authority, itself the same in all, in the least diocese of the Church as in its greatest, was by that wonderful word and gift of Christ derived in the first instance from Peter, inasmuch as he was created Pastor of the Church on the shore of the lake of Galilee, and, while it remained full and entire in him, yet had been dispensed without diminution to his brethren throughout the world. " The government and JO FEOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. its entirety consist in him." Such is the fact attested, and such the doctrine given to the Greek bishops, less than a hundred years after the Nicene CouncU, and accepted by those bishops, both as fact and doctrine, when St. Augustine was in the greatness of his genius the first Doctor of the Church. It was no innovation, but perpetually repeated in the decretal letters of the Popes, of which we begin to have a series from the time of Siricius, who himself wrote in 386 from the shrine of St. Peter ; " through whom," he says, " sprung the beginning both of the Apostolate and the Episcopate in Christ". And in this he was only expressing the tradition of the Apostolic See from the beginning, which was the foundation of all its acts, and alone could justify them. The learned editor ^ of these letters, so far as they have been preserved in the first four centuries, makes a double remark here, which I will cite. Of so many Pontiffs 'famous for doctrine and sanctity, whom even to suspect of claiming what did not belong to them would be the height of rashness, not a single one can be found who did not believe that the prerogative had been granted to him or to his church to be head of the whole Church ; whUe among all the churches founded by the Apostles or their successors, no single one can be found who ventured to call himself the head of the whole Church. Either the Popes claimed what was their right, by the gift of Christ, or they were one and all impostors from the beginning. ^ Constant. Epistolce Eomanorum Pontifieum, p. 111. FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 7^ CHAPTER III. PROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER, PART II. What great lesson of Churcli government have I drawn in the preceding treatment of my subject from the fact of the Mcene Council ? Instead of looking for exertions of extraordinary power by the Popes in the period antecedent to that Council let us weigh the constitution of the Church itself at the Council. What is the meaning of it as given to us by the Popes from the very time of the Council, by Siricius, Innocent, Boniface I., Leo the Great, Gregory the Great, and referred back, to by Nicholas I., when writing to the Eastern emperor him- self, who originated the Greek schism ? They declare the Nicene constitution itself to be an emanation of the Papacy ; the whole ecclesiastical discipline itself to have issued from the fountain of Peter ; the whole principle in the Episcopate of order, subordination, and headship, in its various degrees, to be but the carrying out by the Apostolic College of the words, " Feed my sheep," and the charge conveyed in them. According to their tradi- tion, which is invariable and unbroken, and animates every action of their ministry, not only did the great "Shepherd and Bishop" (1 Pet. i.), as His first vicar ^2 FEOM ST. PETEK TO ST. SYLVESTER. terms Him, cause the episcopal power itself to spring from the person of Peter, but the hierarchical order of that power, by which alone one kingdom of Christ could be and was maintained, was no less an emanation of his Primacy. That is, a power was given first, and in universal extension, to him, which should afterwards be communicated in its several degrees to others. The Nicene Council stands at the distance of 250 years from the action of the Apostles themselves, a time long enough to shew the issue of a great principle, the principle of hierarchy ; further, a time of which the characteristic is either active persecution, or at least fundamental enmity, to the doctrine and government of the Church on the part of the world. The details of a continuous history are indeed wanting to us in large part when we treat of this period, but the result in the meeting, action, and constitution of the Council is quite unimpeachable. If that constitution did not arise ^ in the way which the Popes before and from that time, and ever after- wards, declared it to have arisen, how did it come about ? To this, I think, no answer can be given. I now proceed to another point, which is the intimate correspondence between the hierarchy as seen in opera- ^ Wiat I am liere stating as a fact of history, testified in the fourth century, is defined as a dogmatic truth by the Vatican Council de Ecclesia Christi : — " Ut vero epiacopatus ipse unus et indivisus esset, et per coherentes sibi iuvicem saoerdotes credentium multitude universa in fidei et eommunionis unitate con- servaretur, beatum Petrum coateris Apostolis proponens in ipso instituit perpe- tuum utriusque unitatis principium, ac visibile fundamentum, super oujus fortitudinem seternum exstrueretur templum, et Ecclesise coelo inferenda sublimitas in hujus fidei finnitate oonsurgeret ". FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 73 tion at the first General Council, and that profound con- sciousness of its own unity which filled the whole Chris- tian people. The Brotherhood -^ was the name which it bore everywhere among its own members. But in the greatest Christian communities — as at Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Carthage — it was not felt more keenly to be the brotherhood than in the smallest bishop's see which could be found through the vast extent of the Roman provinces. For the bishop of that small see was one of a mass of rulers, and the civil ofiicer who ruled his people was not more completely pieced into the network of the State's organisation than he into that episcopal circle^ which formed the Church's diadem. The springing up of this hierarchy throughout the earth by the force of an innate power is one of the marvels shewn by the Christian Church in this its first stage. The sense of isolation, which might naturally have fallen on those who formed but a small minority in so many towns and cities distant from each other, was thus overcome, and the meanest Christian in the least bishop's see was well aware that he belonged to a brotherhood which was everywhere. But there are four chief bonds of unity which deserve to be specified.* 1. Christians who travelled from one place to another ^ Matt, xxiii. 8. Trdcres vfieis d8eXcf>oi icrre. 1 Pet. ii. 17. t^v aSeX^dT?;ra Tijiwre. St. Cyprian, Fraternitatem universam meo nomine salutate. Mamachi i. 6 says : — " Invaluit prseterea apud nostros nomen fratrum, quod est a Chiisto servatore in Ecclesiam introductum, itaque deinceps propagatum est, ut non modo ab Apostolis sed etiam a Christianis omnibus usurparetur ". ^ The constitution of Valentiniau III., a.d. 445, says: — "Sancti Petri meri- tum, qui princeps est episcopalis corous". — St. Leo, vol. i., p. 642. ^ Enumerated by Hergenrother, E.-g., i. 195-7. 74 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. were provided with letters from their own bishop, which testified their condition as Christians, and enabled them to take part in the rites of the Church, and to enjoy the blessings which it communicated wherever they went. They would naturally be the bearers of such tidings as it would be well for the brotherhood to receive. Thus the nomination of bishops was communicated : the glorious sufferings of martyrs were recorded in accounts sent by one church to another. Errors in doctrine like- wise as they arose, and the censures which they drew down, thus became known. It was the special function of bishops to give these letters, so that even Confessors were not allowed the privilege of giving them. The church of Smyrna's record of the death of Polykarp sent to the church of Pontus, and that of the churches of Lyons and Vienna in Gaul, describing the great perse- cution in which St. Blandina and so many other martyrs suffered, sent to the churches of Asia Minor, are in- stances of letters intended not for individuals but whole communities. 2. Again, the family bond of churches, as mother and daughter, ran through the whole Church, having its most remarkable instances in the three patriarchal sees. This bond sprung as it were naturally out of that con- duct of the Apostles and their first successors, which consisted in planting the faith in the chief cities. The civil metropolis thus often coincided with the spiritual, but it was not the civil pre-eminence which bestowed the spiritual rank ; it was the dignity of the founders. Thus churches founded immediately by an Apostle took FKOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 75 the first rank ; then those which were mediately apostolic by derivation from these. Perhaps the authority of the Jewish synagogue over those depending on it suggested this arrangement to the Apostles; as Jerusalem itself was the Mother Church to Judaea, Samaria, and Galilee, until by its destruction the metropolitan dignity passed to Csesarea. So strong was this hierarchical order that before the middle of the third century, Heraclas, the bishop of Alexandria, could depose Ammonius, bishop of Thmuis, for disobedience, and consecrate anew bishop. In Africa the primate of Carthage stood over the metro- politans of provinces, in which the eldest bishop of each province became the first. The fabric of this gradation of metropolitans was complete before the Nicene Council. 3. Side by side with it was the operation of the government which it involved. With the second half of the second century the meetings of bishops in yearly or half-yearly synods of their respective provinces become more and more frequent, having their prototype in the meeting of the Apostles at Jerusalem. Here was a pro- vision against the attacks of heresy ; here accusations, if need were, against bishops themselves could be he|rd. The institution strongly marks the blending of autonomy with subordination, and testifies the compact fabric of the Church, so that the power of the bishop, which seems in his own sphere of action complete, is found subject to the higher authority of his brethren. 4. But over all, and that to which all converge, is the Primacy of St. Peter's See of Eome. As these several churches and ecclesiastical provinces sprung from its ^6 FROM ST. PETEE TO ST. SYLVESTEE. bosom, SO they need and live by its supreme authority,, not an authority which interferes at every step, which is jealous of the bishop in his diocese, of the metropolitan in his province, of the patriarch in his complex of pro- vinces, but a power which, as it first gave birth to this order, so maintains and regulates it from the top to the bottom. This patriarchal constitution of the Church, ta which every existing record of antiquity bears witness, so far from being the antagonist of the Primacy, is its own creation. Exactly the same principle which made Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, and other great mother cities what they were, made Eome their head. Our Lord's own grant, and that alone, gave this power — the regimen and summa of which Pope Boniface speaks — to Peter, and his choosing to be bishop of Eome centred it at Eome, but it is identical in character from the least to the greatest bishop, and is the source at once of their ordinary power and of their subordination. This is the state of things inside the Church ; but we have now to cast a glance on the state of things outside- it, while this great work was being done. If we look at the hierarchy of the Church in its complete state, as assembled at the Nicene Council, we might suppose this work of three centuries to have been accomplished under the serene guardianship of the Eoman peace, as the spontaneous growth of a people, and as the nursling of sovereigns chosen by itself. But in reality it was the work of a community, which, during the whole time, was exposed to the dis- like, the suspicion, the hatred of the most powerful and FROM ST. PETKR TO ST. SYLVESTER. >]"] most despotic empire which ever has existed. These feelings were not superficial, nor were they transient. The Church's spiritual government was the outcome as well as the bearer of a doctrine which supported it. Its sole source was the Person of a Man executed by ser- vile punishment as a criminal who claimed rights which were said to interfere with the dominion of the Eoman emperor. The doctrine which His Apostles derived from Him was as much opposed to the customs and habits of those to whom it was preached as the Person from whom it was derived was in their eyes contemptible. How is it possible now to convey an adequate sense of that " folly" which was imputed by the Gentile to the believers of a religion who worshipped for their God one who had been crucified as a slave. There was found not many years ago, on the wall of the imperial palace on the Palatine, an outline which may have been scratched by a soldier in the body-guard of Decius in an idle hour. It portrayed the crucifixion of a man with an ass's head, and it bore the legend, " Anaximenes worships his God". That soldier's scribble comes down to us through sixteen centuries as a photograph of the mind with which prince, philosopher, and people alike regarded the Author of the Christian faith. Tacitus and Pliny the younger, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, the crowd which tortured St. Albina in the theatre of Lyons, and burnt St.. Polykarp in the theatre of Smyrna, speak in that crucifix with the ass's head. As to the hierarch)'- which sprung from the Crown of Thorns, its three great constituents — three, but so inti- 78 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTEE. mately blended together that they formed one mass — were a priesthood, a teaching, and a jurisdiction to which the analogous powers in the gentile world could not but feel a complete antagonism. The history of the three centuries exemplifies this in every form of persecution. It is true the gentile power used material force only from time to time. But from the act of Nero persecut- ing the Christians of Rome and severing them from that protection of the law which allowed Jews as Roman subjects to profess an inherited religion down to Con- stantine's decree of tolerance Christians were ever liable to penal prosecution, though they were not alwa,ys actually suffering from it. The times when the emperors themselves set in action the powerful engine of Roman law against them have been expressed in the number of ten persecutions. But the spiritual opposition of the vast gentile world through all its minor varieties of the polytheistic creed never ceased. The Christians during these centuries were ever as sheep among wolves. We shall do scant justice indeed to that perfect form of government which the Church at her first General Council exhibited, unless we consider it as produced by her while living in the midst of her enemies in a state of conflict and of oppression. And in particular, as to this Primacy before which Constantine bowed himself, which he honoured with gifts, on which he bestowed the Lateran Palace for its dwelling, whose chief church bore his own name as the Basilica of Constantine, had not a great predecessor seventy years before — one who attached his name to that of Trajan, and claimed to FEOM ST. TETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 79 exhibit in its purest form the spirit of the old Eoman rule — declared that he would sooner see a competitor for his throne arise, than the appointment of a bishop in the See of Peter. That one expression, preserved for us incidentally in a letter of Cyprian, is invaluable in throwing a broad beam of light over the relation be- tween the Church and the Empire in the middle of the third century. It is like the light cast by the letter of Pliny to the emperor Trajan at the beginning of the • second century, which reveals so much, both as to the number and innocence of Christians, and as to the pro- fession of Christianity itself being liable to the punish- ment of death before any special decree made by that emperor. These two incidents, even taken alone, will serve to convey to us some notion, though a feeble one, of that rivalry to the empire under which the Christian Church not only propagated its doctrine, but unfolded its government. By the time of Constantine every city and town over the immense Eoman confederacy had a bishop, whose authority was as completely a magistracy (apxv) ^^ tli^-t of a civil or military officer under the emperor. Origen, indeed, draws an instructive parallel between the bishop and the prefect of a city. But this authority rested upon the spontaneous obedience of a Christian people. In no case had it legal support. That is saying little. Its existence was a matter of jealousy to every civil officer among those who were not Christians with whom it came in contact. No more certain proof that the episcopal authority was the result of a power which the 8o FKOM ST. PETEK TO ST. SYLVESTER. Christians themselves freely acknowledged can even be desired than this jealousy which it excited in those who were outside. Consider a moment its uniformity from this standing-point. It was not established partially, but everywhere. Had there been any usurpation of epis- copal over presbyteral authority, the victory of the bishop could not have taken place everywhere. Such an authority, to be everywhere, must have come from a power which was everywhere recognised by Christians as decisive and supreme ; as an ordinance, in fact, of the Apostles. We do not need an historical record of this, though such exists^ — the fact is more than any record of it. Again, as regards the civil power, the known subjection of Christians to such an officer as their own bishop, deriving his authority from a conse- cration bestowed in the Christian society itself, was calculated to make it much more difficult for them to live unmolested among the heathen than if no such officer existed. In fact we have, in the martyrdom of St. Ignatius of Antioch, an instance of the wrath which his dignity awakened in Trajan. If that most able, cautious, and temperate of Eoman emperors — who cited the spirit of his age as opposed to cruelty, just as if he had lived in the nineteenth century — could have seen his empire covered with a network of bishops in closest union and correspondence with each other ! Would it not have moved him to attempt their extermination in mass ? The successor who took his name did see this a ^ As in the Epistle of St. Clement, those of St. Ignatius, in St. Irenseiis, TertuUian, and St. Cyprian. FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLTESTEK. 8 1 hundred and fifty years later, and did vow extermina- tion ; but the providence of God did not allow him to execute it. We are, then, entitled to consider the state of perse- cution under which the Christian Episcopate arose and spread itself everywhere with a uniform and well-defined authority, as a certain proof that its institution was legitimate and unquestionable according to the principles which ruled the Christian people. It sprung from something which their convictions and their feelings acknowledged. It increased the enmity of the empire to them during a long period in which other causes rendered that enmity persevering and relentless. It added a hostile government to a hostile doctrine for the increase of hatred in the minds of the heathen. The stress of every persecution fell upon the officers of the Christian Church in proportion to the degree of their dignity. But now the proof for the legitimacy of the episcopal order derived from its establishment every- where during the period of persecution, forcible as it is, is far exceeded by the same proof when applied to the Primacy. The function of every bishop as a local governor, as chief of the Christian worship, as teacher of its people, as ruling the daily spiritual life in a city, was offensive to the heathen power, thought, and feeling; but the special function of St. Peter's See at Kome in those three particulars was a subject of intense dislike to the Eoman State. Every act of this spiritual go- vernment had to take place in the face of this heathen 82 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. jealousy. Certainly it could only be practised upon a willing community. The notion of a fictitious or an usurping Primacy growing up in these three centuries is utterly incompatible with the w^hole condition of things which then surrounded Christians. The heathen State proscribed them altogether —their doctrine, their wor- ship, their manner of life. It objected to their with- drawal from secular employments. No doubt it was some time before the rulers of Rome thought of them at all as bound together in a wide extending polity ; but when they came to the perception of this, they would be most prone to fasten the charge of treason upon it, and it should never be forgotten by Christians that this was the original charge for which our Lord suffered. But most of all that the Christians should have in Eome itself one to whom they looked up as their chief bishop would be to every one zealous for the maintenance of Roman power and sovereignty what it seemed in the eyes of Decius. Within the decade in which those words recorded by St. Cyprian were spoken by Decius, though he soon himself ceased to reign, five Popes suffered martyrdom. Pope Fabian having issued a letter against a criminal bishop, was executed by Decius in 250. So fierce was the persecution that the Roman See remained vacant eighteen months. This was the occasion on 'which the emperor denounced the appoint- ment of a successor. In spite of this Pope Cornelius, descended from one of the noblest families in Rome, who had passed through all the offices of the church in gradation, was unanimously elected. In 252 the FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 83 emperor Gallus banished him to Civit^ Vecchia, where he was martyred the 14th September, 252. The next Pope, Lucius, was banished in 253 and then martyred. The following Pope, Stephen, maintained, according to his contemporary, Dionysius of Alexandria, the ancient renown of his Chair in providing for the spiritual and temporal wants of the furthest churches. At the instance of Cyprian, he brought back peace in the church of Aries by deposing the schismatical bishop Marcian. He restored the Spanish bishop, Basilides, to his see, though in this case he was, as Cyprian thought, deceived by him. In the full consciousness of his Primacy and appealing to his descent from Peter, he maintained the Eoman tradition as to baptism against the resistance of the bishops in Asia Minor and Africa. After four years he too died a martyr in 257. On the 6th of August, 258, his successor, Xystus 11., followed him. A troop of heathen soldiers seized him as he was offering the Holy Sacrifice in the catacomb of Prsetex- tatus, and beheaded him in his episcopal chair together with four of his deacons, and the Eoman See remained vacant untU July 21, 259.^ That is a leaf taken from the history of ten years in the Church's life at the middle of the third century. These five Popes, as many before and many after them, exercised their jurisdiction at the cost of their lives. But the acts by which they exercised it ; the letters by which they deposed one bishop and re-established an- other in distant Gaul and Spain ; the authority by which ^ The preceding nan-ative is drawn from Hergenrother, K.-g., i. 199-200. 84 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. the very next Pontiff, Dionysius of Eome, called on his contemporary, Dionysius of Alexandria, to make clear his faith on the subject of the Blessed Trinity ; these, and a great number of such acts, how could they take effect at all in a community unrecognised by Eoman law, and often outlawed by it, save through the willing, the devoted obedience of the Christians to whom they were addressed. A messenger of the Eoman church, whether priest, or deacon, or subdeacon, or lector, or acolyte, carried such mandates into distant lands, in the civil power's despite, and they were listened to and obeyed. We have seen how Heraclas, bishop of Alexandria, was in virtue of the discipline which prevailed in the Alexandrine patriarchate^ able to depose a bishop for disobedience to his directions. His successor some twenty years later, Dionysius, a man of high distinction, was a personal friend of the Eoman bishop Dionysius, who followed next the five martyr Popes. He was however accused to the Pope of error in doctrine, and was called upon by the Pope for his answer, which was heard before a Eoman Council. The patriarch corrected certain expressions, and the papal judgment still exist- ing is said to exhibit such clearness and distinctness, such an accordance with faith and with science, as to make sensible the loss we have sustained in not possess- ing in general the judgments made by the Popes from ' This is two hundred years before that title was given to the bishop. The power long preceded the name, which dates from the Council of Chalcedon. FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 8 J the time of St. Clement to the end of the persecution.^ Pope Dionysius likewise consoled by letter the Christians in Cappadocia who had been sorely tried by barbarian irruptions. St. Basil, a hundred years later, bore wit- ness how the Popes had ever supported the Orientals by their letters, and that his church of Csesarea preserved in grateful remembrance that writing of St. Dionysius. As all particulars regarding the preaching and acts of nine out of the twelve Apostles are wanting, so we have nothing like a continuous history of the acts of Popes from the death of St. Peter to the termination of the time of persecution. But what we see is the emergence at the end of this time of a power which the whole hier- archy recognises, to which no beginning can be given short of St. Peter himself ; no warrant for its existence assigned save the authoritj'' given to him by our Lord. A power which in consequence of its own nature the heathen State would regard with the utmost jealousy. A power such as, in consequence of that same nature, the bishops of great cities would be tempted to regard with rivalry, if it had not been planted in the Christian mind from the beginning by Him who alone could originate it. Now, as to those without, we see that as soon as the heathen sovereign acknowledges the Church, he acknowledges its chief hierarch. And as to those within, the great Western Council of Aries, in the first year after the peace of the Church, speaks to 1 Cardinal Newman's Causes of the Rise and Successes of Arianism, p. 282. "It is a great misfortune to us that we have not had preserved to us the dog- matic utterances of the ante-Nioene Popes," &c. 86 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. him with the utmost deference as the holder of the greater complexes of dioceses governed by the chief officers of State, and requests him to transmit their canons to the several bishops in virtue of his authority. Therefore the joint testimony from without and from within during the time of persecution and at the moment of its cessation is sufficient to prove that it was what it professed to be, the dignity conferred by our Lord on St. Peter for the maintenance of His kingdom on earth. And here we must note another mark of the perfect legitimacy which this hierarchy presents to us in all its gradations up to the supreme throne of Peter at its head. This is the fixity and definiteness of functions in the bishop, the presbyter, the deacon, and in the inferior ranks of the clergy which formed as it were the sub- structure of the diaconate. It was spread, as we have often noted, among a vast variety of peoples and races, but it did not vary with the variations of their tempera- ments. The stable Eoman, the fanatic Egyptian, the versatile Syrian, the fervid African, the unsettled barbarian, received alike the same government ; the Christian priest was one in all ; the Christian bishop ruled on the same lines his particular flock, whether he was a Greek, like Athanasius, or a descendant of the noblest Eoman gens, like Cornelius, or a rhetorician of Carthage, like Cyprian, or a slave who once escaped from his master, like that Onesimus for whom the Apostle condescended to beg pardon. It is especially in the first three centuries that we see the spirit of the original institution, before court favour had made time-servers FROM ST. PETBR TO ST. SYLVESTBK. 8/ of any bishops, before ambition could be tbougbt to have assaulted its higher ranks. There could not have been an Eusebius until there was a Constantine. Now, in the period which closes with the Nicene Council, we find the hierarchy complete in all its parts, as it was born from the womb of the Eoman See, and grew up to its full stature. A letter addressed by St. Leo to no less a person than the patriarch of Alexandria, bishop of the Church's second see, seems to me to give a lucid statement of the principle as well as the practice which effected this great work. The occasion is the ordering that the making of priests and deacons should take place on Sunday, according to the custom of the Roman church. The letter ^ runs : " Leo the Bishop to Dioscorus, bishop of the Alexandrine church, greeting. — Conference with one who is both Father and Brother is bound to be most acceptable to your Holiness, and to be received by you in the same temper with which you perceive it to proceed from us. For it is our duty to have one feeling and action, that, as we read, one heart and one mind may be shewn in us. For inasmuch as most blessed Peter received the Apostolic Principate from the Lord, and the Eoman church abides in what he instituted, it is impious to believe that his holy disciple Mark, who first ruled the church of Alexandria, formed on any other rules the decrees which he handed down to his successors : since beyond doubt there was one spirit in the disciple and the master, drawn from the same fountain of grace ; nor 1 St. Leo, Ep. ix. •88 FEOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. could he who was ordained hand anything down save what he had received from his ordainer. We therefore do not allow^ that, confessing ourselves to be of one body a,nd faith, we should have any discrepancy, and that the institutions of the master should be one and those of the disciple be other. The rule therefore which we know to have been observed with great care by our Fathers, it is our will should be maintained also by you.^ For besides the authority of custom, which we know to proceed from apostolic teaching, the Holy Scripture also manifests it. We therefore with care and kindness admonish you, that you take pains not to neglect what has become fixed in our custom as derived from the form of paternal tradition, that so we may entirely agree both in our faith and in our acts. " We have therefore given, this letter to our Son, the presbyter Posidonius, on his return to carry to you. He has frequently been present at our processions and ordinations, and in his many missions to us has recognised how we hold to the apostolic authority in aU things." Now that which St. Leo here records in various expressions, as that "one spirit of the disciple (St. Mark) and the master (St. Peter) drawn from the same fountain of grace," "the institutions of the master," " the rule observed with great care by our Fathers," "the authority of custom which we know to proceed from apostolic teaching," " what has become fixed in our custom as derived from the form of paternal tradition," " the holding to the apostolic authority in all things " — ^ Non ergo patimur. ^ ^ vobis quoque volumus custodiri. FEOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 89 all this denotes one thing, a living tradition respecting the whole Christian doctrine, government, and practice deposited by Peter in the Eoman church, which each bishop received and handed down in turn, and from which he drew as the emergency arose what sufficed for every occasion. The whole of this rested upon the fact that " Peter received the Apostolic Principate from the Lord ". And it was notorious to the whole Church that he had so received it, or the warning would have been addressed in vain to an Eastern bishop. But the bishop ■of Alexandria knew well enough that his own authority over the metropolitans and bishops of his patriarchate, nay, his episcopal authority itself, rested on the same basis : the basis of an unvarying custom handed down from the Apostles. But this principle of unswerving tradition, derived from the Principate of Peter deposited in the Roman church, has been set forth by one of his prede- cessors in the year 416, that is, twenty-four years before the accession of St. Leo, with at least equal explicitness. Nor is it irrelevant to remark that it was that bishop of Eome in whose pontificate the heathen majesty of Eome was first violated by the capture of the Queen of Nations under Alaric, a northern barbarian. ■St. Innocent, writing to a bishop, says,^ " If the priests of the Lord had the will to preserve entire the institu- tions of the Church, as they are handed down from the ' Innocent I., Ep. xxv., Sacerdotes Domini. At this time this term, so strongly individualising the one in each diocese who offered the Divine Sacrifice for all, and dispensed the Divine Food in the Mother- Church, indicated the bishop hy his great function. 90 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. blessed Apostles, there would be no diversity, no varia- tion in the ranks and consecrations themselves. But while every one thinks himself bound to hold not what has been handed down, but what he likes best, from this, in different places or churches, different rites seem to be held or celebrated. And thus scandal arises in the population, who, in their ignorance that what has been handed down from ancient times has been corrupted by human presumption, suppose either that the churches do not agree with each other, or that this contradiction has been introduced by Apostles or apostolic men. For who is ignorant, or does not lay to mind, that what was delivered by Peter, Prince of the Apostles, to the Eoman church, and is maintained to this very time, ought to^ be kept by all ; and that nothing should be superin- duced, or admitted, which has no authority, or seems to claim a precedent elsewhere. Especially since it is noto- rious that no one has established churches over all Italy, the Gauls, the Spains, Africa and Sicily, and the inter- jacent islands, save those whom the venerable Apostle Peter, or his successors, have appointed bishops. Or let them refer to history if in these provinces any other Apostle is found or recorded to have taught. If no such record can be found it is their duty to follow that prac- tice which the Roman church maintains ; the church from which there is no doubt that they received their beginning. Otherwise, in their willingness to pursue strange claims, they may appear to surrender the foun- tain-head of their institutions." ^ ' Ne dum peregiinis assertionibus student, caput institutionum videantur- omittere. FROAF ST. PETKR TO ST. SYLVESTEK. 9 1 If only these two passages from authorities so vener- able as the first Innocent and the first Leo be consi- dered, I think that the whole basis on which the Church of the first three centuries rested will be discerned. But further, only seventeen years after the Nicene Council, A.D. 342, when the Western empire was ruled by Constans, and the Eastern by Constantius, a letter was addressed by Pope Julius to the Eusebian bishops at Antioch, which Athanasius has preserved for us and incorporated into his works. The Pope, from beginning to end of this great letter, refers to a certain rule of tradition and custom as guiding his own actions and the actions of those who had gone before him. Thus he remarks that the Eusebian bishops had sent to him a priest and two deacons to defend their conduct towards Athanasius. On his part Athanasius had sent members of his own clergy. The one and the other had been heard in Council, and the clergy from Alexandria had refuted those from Antioch. Whereupon the An- tiochene legates had besought the Pope to convene a Council to consider these matters afresh. " If they had not done so,"^ says the Pope, "but I had of my own accord advised a Council to detect those who had written to us, for the sake of the brethren who had complained that they had suff'ered injustice, my advice would have been reasonable and just. For it is according to the order of the Church and agreeable to God." The brethren here spoken of were chief bishops of the ^ Julii, Ep. 1. The parts quoted are in sections 22, 33, 29, 35. St. Athanasius's Apologia contra, Arianos. 92 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLYESTEK. Church in the East, whom the Arianising party was per- secuting : Athanasius of Alexandria, Paul of Constanti- nople, Marcellus of Ancyra, and a great many others, from Thrace, Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, who had taken refuge at Eome and appealed to the Pope. The Pope here declares that he was in his right, according to the order of the Church, in requiring their cause to be re- heard. That is, he attributes to the existing rule of the Church, coming down from the Apostles, that right belonging to himself, which in the next year in the Council of Sardica was expressly decreed at the instance of Hosius, to honour the memory of the Apostle Peter.^ This letter must be read and studied from beginning to end, in order to see how perpetual is the reference in it to the settled order of the Church as a rule coming down from antiquity, unwritten but ever acted upon. And in this we see a faithful picture of the Church's original constitution at the time when Eusebius of Nico- niedia with the support of Constantius, now an Eastern emperor and practised upon by Eastern jealousies, began to break in upon it. It was a living government, not a paper charter. And so it had a reserve power for every difficulty which might arise. Accordingly in this letter Pope Julius appears not merely the supporter of some persecuted bishops, but the upbearer of the true faith, the protector of the Church's order, the avenger of her laws. He tests the individual's belief by comparison with the undisturbed fountain-head, with the tradition of the Apostles, with ' Council of Sardea, Third Canon. FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 93 the sentence of the Nicene Fathers. Aud so we see communion with him to be the surest sign of communion with Christ, and that he who has it not is likewise severed from charity.^ Thus we see by this letter that the Pope, in virtue of his Primacy, had invited Athanasius, bishop of the Church's second see, and standing at the head of the hundred bishops of Egypt, Lybia, and Pentapolis, when oppressed by the bishops at Antioch, the instruments of a court intrigue, to come to Rome and defend himself. " What was it m)' duty to do," says the Pope, " or what does the ecclesiastical rule require ? except not to con- demn the man, but to hold him for a bishop, as we did. For besides all this he stayed here eighteen months, awaiting your coming, or those who were willing to come. And his presence shamed us, for he would not have been here, but for confidence in his cause. And he came not of himself, but cited by us." If this " ecclesiastical rule," thus perpetually appealed to as the living law of the Church, had come down to us complete in a written form, the early discipline of the Church could not have been disputed as it has been by those whose minds have been nurtured in heresy and schism. Here, with regard to the second see of the Church in particular, the dependence upon Rome, in case the doctrine or conduct of its bishop is impugned, is specified as part of the ancient rule of the Church. " If any fault had been committed," writes the Pope, " judgment should have been made, not thus, but 1 Riflfel, p. 562. Paragraph translated. 94 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. according to the rule of the Church. We should all have been written to" (he speaks as the head of the Council at Eome, for though the Pope wrote in his single name, everything which he wrote had passed in Council, which he ratified with his authority), " that thus justice might have been decreed by all. For it was bishops who were sufi'erers, and not ordinary churches either, but those which Apostles themselves had personally directed. But especially in the case of the church of Alexandria why did you not write to us ? Know you not that this was the custom, first that we should be written to, and , that the right judgment should go forth from this place ? If any such thing was suspected against the bishop there, it behoved to write to the church here. But now, not haAdng informed us, but having done themselves what they chose, they would have us who have taken no part in the condemnation to share their decision. Not such are the statutes of Paul ; not so have our Fathers delivered down to us. This is another form, a novel mode of procedure. I beseech you bear this with good will. I write what is for the general good. For what we have received from the blessed Apostle Peter, this I also declare to you. And I would not have written deeming that this was manifest to all, save that what ^ has happened has disturbed us. Bishops are seized upon and banished ; others are intruded from a distance ; others are plotted against ; so that their people grieve over those who are taken away, are compelled to take the intruders, may not ask for those whom they would like, and have to take those whom they dislike." FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. 95 It is remarkable that the series of Papal letters from that of Pope Clement I. at the end of the first century to this of Pope Julius I. has been lost to us, as well as many other documents during the period of persecution. It is only" the loss of these Decretal Letters which has permitted men to close their eyes to the subsistence of the Church as an historic fact in the form of a definite polity proceeding on a uniform plan : that is, the rule followed by the Apostles, the fountain-head of which lay in the Principate left by St. Peter in Rome. One letter of the third Pope from St. Peter, his fellow- worker St. Clement,^ providentially remains as lately recovered in its entirety, to bear witness to this; and it lays down the propagation of churches by episcopal descent from the Apostles, who were simply carrying out therein the command of their Lord, as absolutely as the letters just quoted of St. Julius, St. Innocent, St. Boniface, and St. Leo refer their own conduct to the rule of the Church existing among them as inherited from St. Peter : and this letter of St. Clement likewise asserts and exercises the Eoman Principate in the defence and judgment of bishops as distinctly as they do, while it dates from the lifetime of St. John the Evangelist. If anything can add to the intrinsic force of this letter as a living witness of the Church's constitu- tion at the time of the Nicene Council, and at the exact commencement of the division into separate governments of the East and West, it is the political ^ The letter of St. Clement to the Corinthians ; see especially sections 58, 59. 96 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. circumstances of the times. The dearly prized unity wrought by Constantine was breaking up under his sons. The Eastern bishops were acting under the lead of Eusebius who had translated himself by the influence of the emperor Constantius from the See of Nicomedia to that of Constantinople, from which Paul, the lawful bishop, was banished. Constantius then held his court at Antioch, divided from his brother Constans, the Western emperor, by the strongest jealousy. Eusebius, the master spirit of the Arian faction, had already deposed Eustathius from Antioch, and Athanasius from Alex- andria, and now moved the bishops at Antioch against the See of Eome, which was in the Western empire. - The mild and dignified narration of the Pope in which he exhibits the highest prerogatives of his see as a place of refuge for the oppressed bishops of Eastern sees, and of the very highest rank, is the more telling because the ancient order of the Church appears in it as a matter of course. And he censures the illegal action of the bishops at the great Council of the Enccenia at Antioch as con- trary to all that order which had come down to the Church from her foundation. He appeals to the statutes of Paul as household words, and to what he had received from the blessed Apostle Peter, which he deemed to be manifest to all, which only the extremity of the wrong done to Athanasius, Paul, and others forced him to cite. The letter of St. Clement in a.d. 96, and the letter of St. Julius in A.D. 342, should be read together to judge adequately how they bridge over the intervening period, and unite the Primacy of the apostolic age with that of FIIOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTEE. 97 the fourth century, when the great age of persecution had passed over the Church. Now, to return to the hierarchy as seen in action at the Nicene Council, an action which was to determine a controversy involving the very existence of the Church. I consider it to be complete, because it there represented the whole Church, and as a fact had been drawn out of that Apostolic Principate which had been received from St. Peter ; and because, further, it was in all its grada- tions a fixed, legitimate, unvarying power, of which the Pope stood at the head, as careful not to lessen the respective rights which belonged to his brethren as tO' guard from infringement the " Principate " committed to himself— a Principate which preceded the body it was to govern, both in principle and in fact. Thus the whole hierarchy was formed on a complete idea, which cannot be more tersely expressed than in the words of St. Leo applied to St. Peter and St. Mark : " There was one spirit of the disciple and the master drawn from the same fountain of grace ". It follows, from what has just been said, that while " the Apostolic Principate received by Peter from the Lord " was the root and womb of the whole hierarchy, not only in principle but fti historic fact, the exercise of that Primacy was during these three centuries — as it has continued to be in every succeeding century — ^proportionate to the state and condition of the Church. Its action during the ages of persecution will be different from its action in a subsequent age, when the Eoman State has acknowledged the Church ; or again, from 7 9^ FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. anotlier period, when the whole order of civil govern- ment has been interfered with by the wandering of the nations.^ Not everything which follows from the idea of the Primacy was actually drawn out in the first centuries, just as not every work which the Church was to do had then been actually done. An Episcopate in which the three great Sees of Peter exercised a sort of triumvirate ^ in the Church was sufl&cient for the needs of those times. UntU the emperor had bowed his head to the Church there was no danger of bishops dwelling at his court, entering into intrigues for his favour, countenancing the introduction of spiritual privileges for the exaltation of a particular church which was not grounded on descent from Peter, but on proximity to the emperor. The Primacy grew with the Church. Nor were the Popes themselves careful to draw out all that was contained in their Primacy before the time which needed each particular exertion of it. In the great order of government, at the head of which they stood, the bishops throughout the world had, as a rule, been constant in their faith. Penetrated as they were with the sense of the divine origin of the magistracy which each of them administered, they were not tempted to encroach upon the territory of their brethren. They had enough to do to live in any peace with the pagan empire. The rules of their forefathers were scrupulously followed by them. These rules were their only charter. We have just seen how St. Leo describes the strict maintenance of apostolic tradition at Eome, as Pope ^ Hergenrother, K.-g., i., p. 197, sec. 229. •■'Idem, Photius, i., p. 30. FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLYESTER. 99 Julius had done a hundred years before him ; as Pope Clement I. had done at the end of the first century. There can be no doubt that such was the temper of the various churches throughout the world, while the world stood in open opposition. The band of union was not yet disturbed by ambitious struggles of individual bishops. A simple tone of brotherly aflection prevailed in the letters of the foremost bishops, which was only endangered when, as in the case of Cyprian, they thought doctrine was in peril or the settled order of the Church disturbed. The divisions were mostly local, within a particular church, but did not sever churches from churches. We find no single instance which suc- ceeded of a contest arising from a bishop exalting him- self beyond the range of his jurisdiction, as was the case afterwards ; no hankering and hunting after external rank, such as formed the subject of lamentation so often from the fourth century onwards. Thus Paul of Samo- sata, besides his doctrinal error, was a strange appear- ance in the Episcopate of his day,^ ill-omen as he was nevertheless of so many oriental bishops in the future. The Popes neither found occasion nor duty to inter- fere with an order thus generally observed by their brethren. A supervision of the churches beyond their own patriarchate through their immediate superiors was sufficient, especially when the exercise of their authority in the patriarchate and at Eome itself was accompanied with the risk of life. Thus it is quite possible that at 'Compare Hergenrbther, K.-g., i. 197, and Fhotius, i. 30-1, from whom the preceding page is drawn. lOO FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. the time of the Nicene Council no individual bishop at a distance from Rome realised the power that was latent in St. Peter's See, because there had not been occasions to call it forth. The extent of that " superior Princi- pate " to which St. Irenseus bore witness, and which St. Augustine^ declared to have existed always in the Apostolic See, had not yet been defined, save by those words of the great Shepherd Himself, Feed my lambs, be Shepherd over my sheep : definition enough for the age of martyrdom and confessorship. The times were far distant, and the circumstances far different, when it would appear as " a thousand Bishops rolled into one " to meet the barbarism of half converted kings, and sub- due the secular spirit of feudal bishops. Thus we have to bear in mind in this first period of the Church, as in every succeeding period, the propor- tion between the Primacy and that kingdom over which it is set. St. Peter's headship over the Apostles was not less real, because they were guided by the Holy Spirit as well as he ; rather the full force of St. Jerome's remark must be considered : If a head was required among those Twelve to avoid schism, divinely guided and inspired as they were, how much more when that College of Twelve was dilated to the Episcopate, whose members were not divinely guided as individuals save when they acted together in the unity of the Body, and not inspired, but only guaranteed the maintenance of what they had received by persevering in that unity. ^St. Aug., Ep. xlii'.: "Eomanse Ecolesise in qua semper Apostolicse Cathedrse Viguit prinoipatus "- FEOM ST. PETEK TO ST. SYLVESTER. 1 01 Nay, we may apply the analogy of human government here, which suffices for the occasion. The polity of the city of Eomulus was one thing and the polity of the empire of Augustus another : and the authority needed to govern the latter was greater, more peremp- tory, and more concentred than that which sufficed for the former. The condition is invariable in earthly king- doms that concentred authority is required to maintain ample and intricate dominion ; and as the one divine kingdom is still composed of men, how can it be other- wise in this respect ? I think if this consideration be fully pondered, all that species of objections to the proof of the Principate inherited from St. Peter, which has been symbolized by allowing a Primacy existing from the beginning and exercised in the first three centuries, yet refusing a Supremacy as a growth of a supposed usurpation from ambitious motives, in later times, will fall to the ground. On the other hand, it is impossible to understand the history of the Church at all, unless we bear in mind the force of the three divine words spoken to Peter in the presence of his brethren, and living in the hearts and minds of all generations in the Church. "Who is igno- rant," wrote St. Gregory the Great to the patriarch of Alexandria, " that the holy Church was established on the solidity of the Prince of the Apostles ? " But here St. Gregory is only repeating the testimony of his pre- decessors for hundreds of years, who used the same language, and appealed to the same fact as notorious to all. If these three words be taken away, not merely 102 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. from the text of three gospels, but from the' conscious- ness of the Christian Church diffused through the world, then the conduct of the Church, her councils, and her acts for so many generations, are deprived of their sup- port. It is like taking away the central pillar on which the whole roof of the chapterhouse rests. The only result to the student of history will be the effacement from his mind of the divine kingdom altogether. For with the idea contained in these great words of our Lord, who, as Eedeemer, prefigures and creates His kingdom, the kingdom stands or falls with all its mass of wondrous deeds and superhuman sufferings, which without the idea of the kingdom have no reward nor even any meaning, and there remains no reason for that series of lives innumerable sustained above the standard of natural virtue, the least of which is the result of a power vphich the whole world cannot give. But it must be remembered also, that in these three centuries the power existed in the Church's Principate to do all which the Church needed to do ; and foremost among these, things is the maintenance of its divine faith and doctrine amid all the dangers of material persecution and spiritual seduction. No kingdom of thought, above all a kingdom which dealt with the most awful problems that can touch the mind of man, could subsist for one generation, not to speak of ten, without the power to determine irrevocably and infallibly what was true and what false in its own belief. That power was exercised in the Nicene Council on a subject not exceeded in importance by any other, the Godhead TKOM ST. PETBE TO ST. SYLVESTER.] I03 of its Founder. No controversy which has been raised in the nineteen centuries goes more thoroughly down to the root of all belief than this, whether the Saviour of the world was God Himself or a creature. The Nicene Ceuncil determined that controversy. And the vast authority of the Eoman See is seen not the least in the fact that its assent to the decision of the Council alone made it ecumenical. For while the 318 Fathers who sat in the Council fairly represented the various pro- vinces of the Church in the East, five only of the whole number were Western bishops. These were Hosius of Corduba, Csecilian of Carthage, Marcus in Calabria, Nicasius of Dijon, Domnus of Stridon in Pannonia. There were also two Roman Priests, Vitus and Vicentius, who together with Hosius were legates of Pope Sylvester, and their signatures are found in the lists of subscrip- tions next to that of Hosius and before those of the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch. And yet the de- cision of the Council was received without question by all the bishops of the West because the authority of the Pope transmitted it to them. Through all after ages it was esteemed the great and incomparable Council, and its decision accepted as the decision of the Church, for which no other reason can be assigned save the Principate of the Roman See, raising its character from an Eastern to an ecumenical Council.^ ^Hefele, i. 47: "Aua dem Ge-sagten erhellt aiioh, dass und in wiefern ein allgemeines Concil der Bestatigung durch den Papst bediirfe. Solange namlich der Papst die Besehliisse einer noch so zahlreiohen Synode nicht genehmigt hat und ihnen nicht heigetreten ist, so lange sind dieselben noch nicht Besehliisse eines allgemeineu Coneils, indem ja ein solohes in der Trennung von dem Papste nicht^oglich ist. '' 104 FEOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. Thus we have seen that the Primacy of St. Peter's successor, as it was the foundation, so it was the keystone of the whole hierarchy ; as it was the beginning, so also the crown and termination of the whole building. It was, as a matter of fact, what St. Cyprian called it, the " root and womb " of the Church, and this in a twofold respect, both as the ordinary power of the bishop had its prototype and starting- point in the person of Peter, and as the gradation of ranks in the Episcopate, in which precisely the hierarchy consists, was an emanation of the Primacy. It was owing to this " origin of unity " that the propagation of the Church went on, not at haphazard and without counsel, but with a settled design and order. Again, through the whole three centuries it was the bond, so that however the Episcopate might increase in material extent, it remained tied together in the Primacy, and the origin of unity subserved its maintenance. And this bond of the Primacy was seen in " the one See of the one Peter "^ existing in the only three original patriarchates. And further, at the conclusion, in a period of time so momentous as that in which the spiri- tual and civil powers were entering upon a course of joint-action after centuries of strife, in this ipost remark- able decision of the Council when all the provinces of the Church for the first time came together as weU as in previous controversies where they only assembled partially in local synods, it was the crown which set the seal on their proceedings. For, from the beginning, ^ St. Gregory the Great quoted above, p. 53. FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. I OS it had been a part of " the ecclesiastical rule " ^ that without the assent and consent of the first bishop of the •Church, the votes of an assembly of his brethren, how- ■ever numerous, remained without force as a decision of the Church. The power of confirmation alone made them one structure.^ And in every case of doctrine this power is of supreme importance. But in such a case as the heresy of Arius, the Church without such a power would have been a helpless prey to an error overthrow- ing Christianity itself. To be the root, the bond, and the crown of govern- ment in the Church are three distinct things. The concentration of three such privileges in a single person, and their maintenance in that person from generation to generation, shew a marvellous exhibition of divine power. The three so united cumulate each other's force, they run into and complete each other, so that, distinct as they are in idea, in practice they cannot be severed from each other. They were necessary for the building which was to be erected. It is one of the marvels of divine action in the world's history that such a building was constructed in troublous times, in the bosom of a society exposed to incessant persecution. This is a revelation of strength •out of weakness, which the more it is contemplated the ^ I do not suppose this " Rule,'' so often referred to by tlie Popes, to have been made by any Council, or to have been written. It was a principle of life ■deposited in the bosom of the Church, and descending from the action observed by the Apostles. 2 Corapages, the word so often used to express the whole mass of the Church : ■ as used by Tacitus for the Roman empire itself. I06 FROM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. more it creates astonishment. The Providence of God^ before whom all things lay, not as tossed about in the turbid current of human struggles, but as the unrolling of a distinct, unfaltering purpose, led St. Peter to Eome at the moment when that queen of cities was the centre and the soul of a vast empire. The Providence is specially shewn in choosing the centre of human power^ as the centre likewise from which a divine action should be carried out. The high-priesthood of the Church is set up in Caesar's capital ; neither the great city of the East, nor the great city of Egypt, would have been suit- able for it ; nor the soft Ionian capital of Diana ; nor Athene's city, the parent of Greek culture. The city which had no peer in human grandeur had that grandeur made use of for a superhuman design. But the choice of Eome would have been fruitless unless Peter had been sent thither, charged with the divine powers, stored up in the commission of the Eternal Shepherd to feed His flock. Two things utterly dissimilar were joined together : the human majesty of the seat of em- pire, the divine majesty of the Christian Pontificate. The latter alone enabled him to use the authority of the Queen-City as if it had been the pedestal on which he set his chair of teaching. He himself tended that flock from the beginning ; he tended it there in weakness and obscurity. In this conduct St. Peter is the image of" those successors, thirty-two in number, who followed him in his chair down to Pope Sylvester. In Rome they taught and suffered : five, as we have seen, once suffered martyrdom consecutively in eight years. And of the FEOM ST. PETER TO ST. SYLVESTER. lOf whole number half were martyrs. From Rome they sent their messengers through all the West, so that there was not a bishop's see which had not been founded by Peter or one of his successors. In this they were repeat- ing Peter's example, since he had no sooner set foot in Eome than he founded the great Alexandrian patriarchate in his son Mark, and in doing this created the most perfect specimen of hierarchical discipline after Rome itself. But before he came to Eome he had founded the bishop's chair in Antioch, and become himself the first in that line of bishops who were to preside over the great oriental prefecture, a region in which it is probable that the Church flourished more than in any other during these first centuries. In Rome itself, in less than two centuries after St. Peter, the Church he planted had grown to such strength and in such order that the great general who had seized on the empire feared the appointment of its bishop more than the insurrection of a rival, because, no doubt, he who pos- sessed among his titles that of sovereign Pontiff, recog- nised^ in the Pope's universal jurisdiction over the Christian brotherhood a real competitor, so far as regarded his spiritual supremacy. One after another these Popes laboured, ruled, and died, and often a dim recess in the catacombs was the place where they offered the Holy Sacrifice, and where one of them at least is recorded to h^ve been martyred in the act. In the meantime the empire of Augustus had culminated in Trajan ; had begun to verge downwards after Marcus 1 Bossuet. I08 FKOM ST. PETEK TO ST. SYLVESTER. Aurelius ; had been saved from dissolution only by the who began hj beiiig a sort of private companion, the witness of the bishop's life and conversation, from which CHUECH AND STATE UNDER THE THEODOSUN HOUSE. 32 1 was taken his name, signifying the sharer of a cell, de- veloped into the chancellor of future times, who is even yet supposed to direct a sovereign's conscience. That vital power of organisation, which dwelt in the bishop's person, and appeared in every diocese from the time of Constantine, nowhere shewed a more luxurious growth than in the capital of the Eastern empire. About the middle of the fifth century, the number of clergy in the cathedral exceeded four hundred. The good patriarchs ever enjoyed a vast influence and respect. But their ever increasing power and wealth could not fail to engender increased dependence on the court. We are told that Flavian was the last who disdained to yield to court in- fluence. Concerning this period of which we are now treating, the hundred and fifty years following the peace of the Church, we have a weighty judgment given, that in the line of emperors from Constantine I. to Leo I. , and even later, not one dared directly to maintain that the supreme power of government and judgment in the Church be- longed to the sovereign, or that the Church, in her domain, was not independent and free, but subject to the temporal ruler. On the contrary, the emperors maintained in theory the autonomy of the religious and ecclesiastical sphere, even if in practice they often trans- gressed it. But in later times this practice, contradictory to theory, became more and more the rule, and after Flavian, who would not sue for court favour, and who was beaten to death at the Robber Council, bishops 21 322 CHURCH AND STATE UNDER THE THEODOSIAN HOUSE. became ever rarer who, at the call of duty, ventured to represent the freedom and independence of the Church against the self-will of the autocrat. Thus, only the more courageous monks of the capital and the provinces on one hand, and the Popes of Eome on the other, re- pulsed the encroachments of the emperors on the Church's domain. In the Byzantine, more than in any other. Church, the pulse of ecclesiastical self-government ceased to beat. The Church of the Eastern capital be- came more and more closely swathed in the bonds of the civil power. ^ Such was the atmosphere which the policy of the empire, the devotion of the people, and the alliance be- tween the Two Powers spread around one who had become the chief bishop of the East during the seventy years in which the Theodosian house reigned at Con- stantinople. Between the council there held in 381 and the great council of Chalcedon, held in 451, a State- made patriarch had been created. The process of crea- tion was after this manner. In 330 there was a simple suffragan of the exarch of Heraclea, who leapt into pro- minence by the act of Constantine in founding a new capital. He thus became from the bishop of Byzantium — an almost unknown see — bishop of the second city in the whole Eoman empire. After fifty years, during which the bishop of this see had mostly been the favourite and minister and corrupter of the two Arianis- ' Photius, i. 109. Pages 96-110 contain a learned account of the internal state and government of the church of Constantinople, from which the above is drawn. CHURCH AND STATE UNDER THE THEODOSIAN HOUSE. 323 ing emperors, Constantius and Valens, when Theodosius began a new era, lie was given, so far as the votes of 150 Eastern bishops could give it him, the rank of second bishop after the bishop of Eome. Theodosius began this exaltation, and his son and grandson carried it on with such effect that, at the death of Theodosius II., the bishop of the new capital had not only subjected the exarchates of Thrace, Ephesus, and Csesarea, so as to form, by their absorption, a greater patriarchate for himself than the patriarchates of Alexandria and An- tioch, but he was encroaching upon them also, and be- coming the interpreter of imperial wishes to the whole Eastern episcopate. 324 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE CHAPTER VIII. CHURCH AND STATE AND THE PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. Now let US turn to the history of the Church in the West, from Damasus to Sixtus III., in these same sixty years. In the year 380, the law of Theodosius, promul- gated especially to the bishops of the Eastern empire, who were still seething in the Arian turmoil, had pointed to Damasus as the heir of St. Peter's See and doctrine, and had attested the continuous teaching of that doctrine during the three centuries which had passed from St. Peter's martyrdom. As a counterpart to the State-made patriarch of Constantinople, whose action begins from the same Theodosius, let us trace the action of Damasus and his successors, which is entirely based upon this succession from St. Peter. Pope Damasus died in 384, after a pontificate of eighteen years ; and was succeeded by Siricius, who sat fourteen years, from 384 to 398. Respecting Pope Damasus, St. Jerome says that he had at one time assisted him as secretary in answering the questions which were directed to him from all parts of the world in the East and West. Such questions had been PEIMACY FKOM 380 TO 440. 325 directed to the Popes from the earliest times ; and it is remarkable that we possess the Papal answer to one of the first, written at the time when the Apostle St. John was stiU living. This is the letter of Pope Clement I. to the church of Corinth. These questions and the answers to them were carefully kept in the archives of the Apostolic See. But they are supposed to have been destroyed in the last great persecution, as well as the genuine acts of the martyrs in the city of Eome, which the notaries of the Holy See were ordered to make up. A very few fragments of these letters survive in the period which extends from the letter of St. Clement, about A.D, 96, to the great letter which Pope Julius in 342 sent to the Arianising bishops at Antioch, and which has been preserved to us in the writings of St. Athanasius. Pope Julius sat from 337 to 352 ; his successor, Liberius, from 352 to 366 ; Damasus from 366 to 384. Had the complete acts of the Holy See in these fifty years been preserved, they would have supplied us with more and surer information respecting that most troubled period than all the other writings which we possess, especially as to what concerns the government of the Church. But there are only a few letters and fragments of these three Popes which have been preserved. One letter of Damasus, however, Theodoret has given us, addressed, he says, "to the bishops governing the East ". They had requested from him the condemnation of ApoUinaris and his disciple Timotheus. The Pope wrote to them that he had already condemned them, and this is his letter : — 326 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE " That your charity, most honoured sons, assigns to the Apostolic See the fitting reverence, tells most for yourselves. For if we hold the chief place in the holy Church, wherein the holy Apostle, by sitting,-^ instructed us how it behoved us to steer the rudder which we received from him, still we confess ourselves to be inferior to this honour; but for this we labour to the utmost of our power, if by any means we may be able to reach the glory of his blessedness. " Know, then, that long since we condemned the profane Timotheus, disciple of the heretic ApoUinaris, together with his impious doctrine, and trust assuredly that the remains of it are of no account. But if that old serpent, once and again struck down, raises his head again for his own punishment, and, being outside the Church, does not cease trying with his poison-fangs certain men without faith, avoid him as a pestUence. Eemember, at the same time, the apostolic faith, that especially which was set forth in writing by the Fathers at Nicsea ; and resting on this as a sure basis, do not permit henceforth your clergy and laity to listen to vain words and worn-out questions. For we have already given the proper form,^ so that he who confesses himself a Christian may keep what has been handed down from the Apostles, as St. Paul says — ' If any preach to you beside what you have received, let him be anathema'. For Christ our Lord the Son of God ^ Theodoret, Sist. Lib. x. c. 5. The term sitting, Kade^ofifvos, is the techni- cal expression for a bishop sitting in his see. ^ The term proper form, tvttos, is a doctrinal exposition imposed by authority. TEIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 327 brought a most full salvation to the human race by His own passion, that He might set free from all sin the whole man, who was involved in sins. If anyone, filled by the spirit of the devil, should say that He has an imperfect Godhead or Manhood, he shows himself the son of hell. Why, then, do you ask of me again the condemnation of Timotheus, who, together with his disciple ApoUinaris, in the presence also of Peter, bishop of the city of Alexandria, has been deposed here by sentence of the Apostolic See, together with his disciple ApoUinaris, and in the day of judgment will suffer the fitting condemnation and torment ? But if, after by his own confession changing his true hope in Christ, he persuade any light-minded men, as if he had a true hope, whoever chooses to resist the rule of the Church, will perish equally with him. God preserve you in health, most honoured sons." This is a sample of Pope Damasus. But with his successor, Siricius, a continuous though not a complete series of these letters has been preserved. The first of these, bearing the date of February, 385, is written to Himerius, metropolitan of the Spanish province then called Tarragona, in answer to questions addressed by him to Pope Damasus, which did not reach Eome till after his death, and so came into the hands of his successor. Only the reading of this letter throughout will give an adequate notion of the authority with which it is written. This authority ranges over the whole sacerdotal life, giving specific instruction as to the rite of baptism, as to the dealing with apostates, as to 328 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE marriage, as to the laws respecting penitence, as to the monastic life, as to the continence which ought to be observed by priests and deacons, as to the age and life and rule of those who receive holy orders. The autho- rity which dictates this letter shews itself to be supreme, tranquil, settled in full and undisputed possession of itself, both in the belief of the vwriter and of those whom he addresses. But upon what is this authority based ? The answer to this question is very important, because not only in this letter, but in every other in the long series of Decretal Letters, of which this is the first, one only source is alleged. It is not the rank of Eome as the capital city, nor is it the decree of an emperor, nor is it the ordering of a council. It is best to give the source alleged in the very words of the letter, which begins — " The report of your fraternity, directed to our prede- cessor, Damasus of holy memory, found me, by the will of God, already placed in his see. And since it was necessary for us to succeed to the labours and cares of him to whose dignity, by the grace of God, we have succeeded, after informing you, as was fitting, of our promotion, we do not refuse a sufficient answer to the several points of your consultation, as the Lord has deigned to advise us ; because, upon consideration of our office, we are not free either to conceal or to be silent, inasmuch as a greater zeal for the Christian religion is incumbent upon us than upon all others. We bear the burdens of all who are laden ; or rather the blessed Apostle Peter bears them in our person, who, as we PEIMAOY FROM 380 TO 440. 329 trust, protects and defends ns as the heirs in all things of his government." -^ In giving the rule about baptism Siricius writes : " All bishops must observe this, unless they be willing to be torn from the solid mass of the apostolic rock, upon which Christ has built his universal Church ". As to priests and deacons, who, on pretence that priests in the old law were married, do not observe •chastity, he- says : " They must know that they are deposed from aU ecclesiastical rank, which they have unworthily xised, by authority of the Apostolic See ". " We think," concludes the Pope, " that we have made sufficient answers to all the causes which you have re- ferred to the Roman church, as the head of your body,^ and request you to make them known to the bishops of all the surrounding provinces, of Carthagena, Lusitania, Bcetica, and Gallicia." Was this specific claim of the Pope to sit in the See of Peter, and to be charged, as his heir, with the govern- ment of Peter, acknowledged by the bishops to whom he wrote ? In the year 389 he addressed an encyclical to the bishops of various provinces, condemning, as ieretical, to exclusion from the Church Jovinian and others. In his answer to this encyclical St. Ambrose,^ with other bishops, says : " We have recognised in the letter of your Holiness the watchfulness of the Good Shepherd, in that you diligently guard the door entrusted ' Siricius, Ep. i, ; Constant, pp. 624-63S. ^ De qnibus — ad Romanam ecclesiam, utpote ad caput tui corporis, retulisti. 3 Ep. xlii. 2-965. 330 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE to you, and, with pious solicitude, protect the fold of Christ, as one worthy for the Lord's sheep to hear and to follow. And inasmuch as you knew the lambs of Christ, it is easy for you to catch the wolves, and you meet their attack as a provident pastor." Thus, one of the greatest saints and doctors of the fourth century has no more doubt about the origin, the character, and the extent of the Pope's power than the Pope himself. He assigns to him, by this simple allusion, the palmary pas- sages in the gospels of St. Matthew and St. John. It is in this character, as the heir of St. Peter's go- vernment, that Pope Siricius and his immediate succes- sors issue canonical letters to the bishops of Gaul, of Africa, of lUyricum, similar in character to that quoted above, which was addressed to the Spanish metropolitan. We have but a single letter from Pope Anastasius, who sat three years, from 398 to 402, in which he writes to John, bishop of Jerusalem, that he will guard the disci- pline of the Eoman church all over the world, by reject- ing profane doctrine. " Certainly, I will never be wanting in the guardianship of the Gospel's faith among my peoples, and will communicate by letter with the parts of my body, scattered through various regions of the earth, that no profane interpretation may creep in among them to darken their minds. " ^ The next Pope, Innocent I., sat for nearly fifteen years, from 402 to 417, and we have thirty-six of his 1 Coustant, p. 728. Mihi certe onra non deerit evangelii fidem circa meos ciistodire populos, partesque corporis mei per spatia diversa terrarum, quautum possum, Uteris convenire. PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 331 letters testifying his universal action in the affairs of the Church. His pontificate covers the capture of Eome by Alaric in 410, and a most disturbed period, in whick the governments of the two brothers, Arcadius and Honorius, appear, through the intrigues of their minis- ters, to become not only separate but almost hostile kingdoms, and in which, moreover, large parts of the Western empire are occupied by the Northern tribes. In the midst of this confusion his authority, as Pope, is exercised in all directions, as well in matters of adminis- tration as in matters of doctrine. In a letter answering the difficulties of Victricius, bishop of Eouen, he goes over the same range of subjects as Siricius in his letter to Himerius of Tarragona, and again in another letter to the bishops of Spain. St. John Chrysostome appeals to him under the persecution of the emperor Arcadius and the patriarch Theophilus. The great preacher gives a most graphic picture of the sufferings which he him- self and his people were undergoing. The Pope de- fended the cause of the sufferer. When he was already banished by the emperor Arcadius, the Pope wrote " to the priests, deacons, all the clergy and laity of the church of Constantinople under the bishop John," in which he spoke of the Nicene Canons, as alone received by the Church, to exclude, it would seem, the canons passed at Antioch in 341, under cover of which St. " Chrysostome had then been deposed, as St. Athanasius before had been. The Pope said that nothing but an ecumenical synod would still this storm. He afterwards moved the emperor Honorius at Eavenna, in 406, and 332 CHUKCH AND STATE AND THE caused him to send five bishops, two priests, and a deacon, as a deputation to his brother Arcadius, asking for a council to be held at Thessalonica. They were very ill received, and the end was that Pope Innocent withdrew his communion from Atticus, who had been intruded as bishop of Constantinople by the emperor, during the life-time of St. Chrysostome, from Theophilus of Alexandria, and from Porphyrins of Antioch. They were only restored to communion some ten years after- wards, when the name of St. Chrysostome had been re- placed in the diptychs in each of the three great Eastern sees, a condition which the Pope exacted. The action of Pope Innocent upon the African bishops is seen specially in the reference of the two local councils of Carthage and Milevi, and in his confirmation gf their decision upon the doctrine of grace. -^ On this occasion the famous words of St. Augustine were uttered : " Upon this cause two councils have already been sent to the Apostolic See ; and answers from it have been received. The cause is ended. Would that the error may be ended also."^ To estimate the force of these words, it is requisite to consider the language which these two councils used to express the Pope's authority, as well as the language in which the Pope answered them : and from both these to infer what was that ■ " Principate of the Apostolic See," ^ of which St. Augus- tine attests the existence from the beginning. Here a question of faith was concerned, while the ' See the letters, 26-31, Constant, p. 867-904. ^ Senno, cxxxi. cap. 10. ' Ep. xliii., Tom. ii. 91. PKIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 333 mode of dealing witli it throws light upon the existing discipline, particularly upon the bond which united the African church with the Apostolic See. In the year 416 the African episcopate met in two great provincial councils held at Carthage and at Milevi to consider the attack made upon the doctrine of grace by Pelagius and Ccelestius. The result was that both councils condemned them, and then transmitted their judgment to Pope Innocent for his confirmation. Sixty- nine bishops of the council held at Carthage under the Primate Aurelius addressed a synodical letter to the Pope in which they say : " We have considered that what we have done should be made known to your holy charity, lord and brother, that the authority of the Apostolic See may be added to the statutes of our mediocrity, to protect the salvation of many, and to correct also the perversity of some ". At the same time sixty-one bishops at the council of Milevi, of whom St. Augustine was one, write another synodical letter to the Pope, which they begin in these words: "Since the Lord by the signal gift of His. grace has placed you in the Apostolic See, with a special fitness for the needs of our times, so that we should be rather charged with negligence, if we failed to bring before your veneration what concerns the Church's interest, than that you would either decline- or neglect our information, we beseech you to apply your pastoral diligence to the great dangers of the weak members of Christ. For a new and most pernicious heresy is attempting to raise its head." "But it is our 334 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE judgment that, by the mercy of our Lord God, who deigns both to direct your consultations and to hear your prayers, the authors of these perverse and perni- cious opinions will more easily yield to the authority of your Holiness, which is derived from the authority •of the holy Scriptures.^ In these last words the Fathers of the council state that the authority of the Pope, to which they refer, is derived from the grants made to St. Peter in the Gospel, and inherited by him as Peter's successor. In a third and longer letter, not synodical, but as it Tvere private, from five bishops, Aurelius of Carthage, Augustine, Alypius, and two others, which is in fact a «hort treatise upon the true doctrine of grace, and is placed among the works of Augustine, the Pope is informed at greater length upon the subject in question. This letter begins : " We have sent to your Holiness letters subscribed by no small number of bishops from the councils of two provinces, Carthage and Numidia, against the enemies of the grace of Christ, who trust in their own virtue, and say to our Creator, Thou hast made us men, but we have made ourselves just ". And it ends with these words : " The great kindness of your heart wiU surely pardon us for sending to your Holiness a longer letter than you would wish. In this we are not pouring back our rivulet to increase your own ample fountainhead. But the time is fuU of trial from which we beseech Him to whom we say, Lead us not 1 Note of Coustant, p. 876. Hie declarant Milevitani Concilii Patres Eomani Pontifiois auctoritatem ipsa Scripturanim auctoritate folciri. PRIMA CY FKOM 380 TO 440. 335 into temptation, to deliver us. And our purpose is to have it proved by you that our rivulet springs from the same head of streams as your abounding river, and to be consoled by your rescript in the consciousness of participating one grace." We have separate answers of Pope Innocent to both the synodical letters and to the private letter of the five bishops dated Jan. 27, 417, a few weeks before the death of the Pope. In the same year, after his death, St. Augustine^ wrote to Paulinus, bishop of Nola, a letter in which he says : " Pope Innocent of blessed memory answered all that we said as it was right and as it became the prelate of the Apostolic See ". The words of the Pope on which St. Augustine spoke this emphatic commendation run as follows, first to the Fathers of the council of Carthage : — " In examining the things of God, which require to be treated with the utmost care by bishops, and especially by a true, just, and Catholic council, observ- ing the precedents of ancient tradition, and mindful of ecclesiastical discipline, you shewed the strength of your religion not less now in consulting us, than by sound reason before you pronounced sentence, inasmuch as you approved of reference being made to our judg- ment, knowing what is due to the Apostolic See, since all we who are placed in this post desire to follow the Apostle himself, from whom the very episcopate and all the authority of this title sprung. Following him, we know as well how to condemn the evil as to approve ' Ep. clxxxvi. 1. 336 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE the good. An instance of this is that, in accordance with the duty of bishops, you maintain the institutions of the Fathers, and -will not suffer to be trodden under foot what they decreed by no sentence of their own as men, but by that of God. This is that, whatever was being done even in distant and remote provinces, they would not consider as determined until it was brought to the knowledge of this see ; by the full authority of which the just sentence should be confirmed, and that thence all other churches might derive what they should order ; whom they should absolve ; whom as being bemired by ineffaceable pollution the stream which is worthy only of pure bodies should avoid. So that as from their parent source all waters should flow, and through the different regions of the whole world the pure streams of the fountainhead well forth uncor- rupted." In these words the Pope seems to take up and apply the metaphor of the fountain used by the five bishops in their letter to him. They term the decrees passed by the 130 bishops in two councils, and the doctrine of grace defended in their decrees, a rivulet, of which the Pope is the fountainhead. He accepts this expression of their humility, and exhibits the whole Church under the image of a stream welling forth from one head, the See of Peter, and carrying everywhere unity of belief and purity of doctrine. The Pope's answer to the letter of the Numidian Council dwells upon the same thought. He says that among the other cares of the Roman church, and the PKIMA.CY FEOM 380 TO 440. 337 occupations of the Apostolic See in answering consulta- tions brought to it from different quarters, the decrees of the synods had been brought to him. " It is with diligence and fitness that you consult the secrets of the apostolic honour ; that honour, I mean, on which, be- sides those things which are without, the care of all the churches attends, as to what judgment is to be passed on doubtful matters. In this you follow the prescrip- tion of the ancient rule, which you know, as well as I, has ever been observed in the whole world. But this I pass by, for I am sure your prudence is aware of it. For how could you, by your action, have confirmed this save as knowing that, throughout all provinces, answers are ever emanating from the apostolic fountain to in- quirers. Especially, so often as a matter of faith is under inquiry, I judge that all our brethren and fellow- bishops ought not to refer save to Peter, that is, the source of their own name and honour, as now your affection has referred for what may benefit all churches in common throughout the whole world. For the in- ventors of evils must necessarily become more cautious when they see themselves, at the reference of a double synod, severed from ecclesiastical communion by our sentence." On the same day the Pope returned an answer to the letter of the five bishops, with great praise of the faith and religion shewn in it. In one of his letters St, Augustine speaks of the Prin- cipate which has always existed in the Apostolic See. And, as we have seen in another letter to St. Paulinus, 22 338 CHUECH AND STATE AND THE he speaks of the answers made by Pope Innocent on this occasion as being in all things just and right, and such as became the Apostolic See. Putting these two facts together, we obtain the following particulars as be- longing, in the mind of St. Augustine, to this Principate. First, it was an authority beyond and including the au- thority of local councUs, which, when they had done their best, referred to it for approval and ratification of what they had done. No part of the Church was more autonomous than the African ; yet, when 130 bishops had met under the Primates of Carthage and Numidia, and were as sure as to the truth of the doctrinal state- ments which they opposed to error as bishops could be, Sfc. Augustine himself being one of them, they did not think their labours concluded until they had sent their decrees to be ratified at Rome. St. Augustine described their authority as being a rivulet when compared with the fountainhead. Secondly, it was an authority based upon Scripture, so that they hoped Pelagius, if he did not yield to them, would yield to it. But there is no other way of ex- plaining how the authority of the Pope was based upon Scripture in a manner in which their own authority was not based upon it, except in virtue of the divine pro- mises made to Peter, that is, as the Church's foundation and doorkeeper, the bearer of the keys, the confirmer of his brethren, the universal pastor, coupled with the inheritance of these powers by the Pope. It was not the truth of doctrine to which reference was here made by the council of Milevi, for that they possessed, as PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 339 well as the Pope : it was not this to which the fautors of heresy " would yield more easily," but a divine pro- mise known and acknowledged by all from the begin- ning, as made to one person. Thirdly, in his answer to both of the councils, the Pope speaks of " the episcopate itself, and all its autho- rity springing from the person of Peter," in whom our Lord had placed it originally, as if the bishops them- selves knew Peter to be " the author of their own name and honour " : nor was this language peculiar to Pope Innocent, for Siricius had used it before, speaking of Peter, " from whom the beginning both of the apostolate and the episcopate sprung," in 386 ; and Pope Zosi- mus,-' who followed Innocent, used it also to these same African bishops, speaking " of the ecclesiastical discipline following its own laws, and paying reverence to the name of Peter, from whom itself descended," which is repeated by his next successor, Boniface, who says that the " whole rule of the Church took its beginning from Peter, and is summed up and consists in him". St. Augustine does not start away from this doctrine, but covers it with his approval, as expressed in the two re- scripts of Pope Innocent. It occurs, indeed, in his own exposition of Scripture, as where he says :^ " Peter him- self, to whom He entrusted His sheep as to another self. He willed to make one with Himself ; that so He might entrust His sheep to him".. " Among the Apostles Peter alone, almost everywhere, was thought worthy to repre- 1 Zosimus, Ep. xii., Coustant, 974 ; Boniface i, Constant, 1037. 2 Tom. V. 240 ; v. 1194 ; v, 415. 340 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE sent the whole Church. On account of that very repre- senting of the Church, which he alone bore, he was thought worthy to hear, I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. For these keys not one man but the unity of the Church received." " One for many he gave the answer, being the oneness in the many." But, in accepting this doctrine, when solemnly enun- ciated by the Pope of the day in his answer to councils, he identifies the Pope's authority with that of Peter, which is a different thing from attributing certain qua- lities to the Apostle Peter. And this identification with Peter, and descent frojn Peter, run through the whole rescripts of the Pope which St. Augustine receives. Fourthly, this authority of the Principate, which leads the bishops, after doing their best in council in defence of the faith, not to stop with their own decrees, but to carry them to the Pope, is described by the Pope in his answer as " following the examples of ancient tradition," as " carrying out the Church's discipline". It is then no new thing, but existed from the beginning ; for indeed, as it sprung from the promise of Christ alone, it could not be an innovation, not the tightening of a doubtful bond by an advancing power, but the original constitution, " that in which its sum consists," to use the words of Pope Boniface. This also is comprehended in the approbation of St. Augustine. Fifthly,, the Pope also in his rescripts refers to this authority as notorious. The bishops themselves know that answers are ever emanating from the Apostolic See to all provinces. This is a permanent, ever-acting power. PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 34 1 The bishops, in observing it, " guard the institutions of the Fathers as part of their episcopal office ; for they esta- blished it, not by human, but by! divine decree," which words mean, not by the canons of a council, which would make it of ecclesiastical institution, but by the words of Christ, prior to all councils, and beyond their reach. This also St. Augustine spontaneously ac- cepted. " I think," he says,^ addressing Julian in one of his last works, " you might have been satisfied with that part of the world in which it was the will of the Lord to crown the first of His apostles with a most glorious martyrdom. Had you been willing to listen to the blessed Innocent then ruling that church, you would have escaped the Pelagian snare even in your perilous youth. For what could that holy man answer to the African councils save what the Apostolic See, from ancient times, and the Eoman church, together with the rest of the churches, holds without a break." But all the preceding points are joined in one by this fact, that the Principate, in St. Augustine's conception of it, as herein expressed, justified its name. He gave it the name which belonged to the Roman emperor. All the power of Trajan, that is, of the empire at its culminating point, was summed up in the word Princi- pate. By this word, St. Augustine delineated the au- thority of the Apostolic See. This conception runs through the two rescripts of Pope Innocent. His authority being given by Christ was supreme, and was final. It was " of the Fathers," but not given by them ; 1 Lib. i. i ; Tom. x. 503. 342 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE it was not of " human but divine sentence". Most of all, in matters of faith, this supremacy, this finality, are essential. And here St. Augustine's language — the last touch which he gives to the Principate is the clearest — where he said, " Causa finita est". This was in a matter of faith, in which, as being one and universal, the action of the Primacy is more easily recognised than in matters of discipline. In all this proceeding, the spontaneous action of the two councils, the rescripts of the Pope, the repeated comment upon the whole afforded by St. Augustine, are most clear. Nothing in all that the Pope said was strange to him, nor does he hint any exaggeration on the part of the Pope as to the privileges of his see. On the contrary, his metaphor of the fountain had even invited the strongest expressions used by the Pope. It is also to be noted that these rescripts were quoted about two hundred years later by three African councils of the Numidian, Byzacene, and Mauritanian provinces to Pope Theodore, who succeeded two years after the death of Pope Hono- rius. These bishops express their assent to them in the strongest language.^ Among the more remarkable exercises of authority by Pope Innocent is certainly to be noted a letter to Eufus,^ bishop of Thesalonica, dated in June, 412, that is, less than two years after the taking of Eome by Alaric. The Pope begins by noting how Moses, to whom God had committed the entire charge of delivering and ruling ' Manzi, x. 919. 2 j;p. xiii., Coustant, 815. PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 343 Israel, had, by the advice of Jethro, delegated certain judges to jtidge the lesser matters and refer any great matter to himself. And again he notes the rule fol- lowed by the Apostles, who, being themselves appointed rulers of the Gospel, committed the minor charges to their disciples, as Paul had committed to Titus the affairs of Crete, and to Timotheus those of the Asiatic province. The examples here alleged sufficiently shew the basis of supreme power thus tacitly assumed. The Pope was acting after the example of Moses and " the form of the Apostles," language which would be very unfitting except in the mouth of St. Peter's successor. Thereupon the Pope, following, he says, the examples of his predeces- sors, Damasus and Siricius, commits to the bishop of Thessalonica a vicariate representing the Holy See over the metropolitans of the ten provinces, then constituting the government of Eastern lUyricum, that is, Achaia, Thessaly, Old and New Epirus, the two Dacias, Moesia, Dardania, and Prcevalis. " Take, therefore, dear brother, the charge, as our vicar, over the above-named churches, preserving the rights of primates (that is, metropoli- tans) ; and being yourself the first of the primates, let them leave to your decision what should be transmitted to us. Thus we order either that the matter shall be terminated by your experience, or, if you think good, be carried up to us." And he gives the bishop power to associate with himself such bishops of these provinces as he may judge fit for the determination of any particular matter. Concerning the immense power thus delegated to 344 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE Eufus, Tillemont^ remarks that the Pope takes pains to remind him that it is given to him by the Eoman church, and not derived from the dignity of the see of Thessalonica, which in the civil order was metro- polis of Eastern lUyricum. Moreover, this power dropped with each Pope who gave it, and with each bishop to whom it was given. It was renewed therefore at the succession of a new Pope, as well as at the vaca- tion of the see, as Pope Innocent at his own accession had renewed the grant of it to Anysius, the predecessor of Eufus.^ The first recorded instance of this power is the be- stowal of it by Pope Damasus on Ascholius, the bishop of Thessalonica, in 381. This would seem to suggest that it was instituted when the government of Eastern lUyricum was detached from the Western, and given to the Eastern portion of the empire by Gratian on the accession of Theodosius. It is to be noted that the authority thus created of subjecting the bishops and metropolitans of a number of provinces to one of themselves in the character of Vicar of the Apostolic See was not part of the original disposition of the Church as seen at the Nicene Council. It is a distinct unfolding of the power inherent in the Primacy. In making it the Pope leaves the rights of metropolitans in their several spheres un- touched, but he creates a superior over them, for certain purposes representing himself. A somewhat similar power was given to the bishop of ix. 644. 2Ep. i. PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 345 .Aries over the metropolitans of southern France, and to the bishop of Seville over the Spanish metropolitans, and to the bishop of Syracuse over Sicily. Atticus, bishop of Constantinople, endeavoured to use the despotic power of the Eastern emperor to draw away the bishops of Illyricum from the old tie which bound them to the Eoman See, and to obtain himself the authority thus given to Thessalonica, not as vicar of the Pope, but as bishop of the capital. The law procured by him from Theodosius in 422 was withdrawn, but at a much later time the bishops of these provinces followed the civil jurisdiction of the Eastern empire. But Atticus based his encroachment simply upon the temporal authority. The Pope exerted a purely spiritual power, in the name of his inheritance from Peter, when the city of Rome lay powerless before her enemies. It is important to trace facts as they appear in original and contemporaneous documents. Here, in these first preserved decretal letters of the Popes, we are enabled to see a double process going on. Not only do the Popes, in answer to questions addressed to them by metropolitans from Spain, Gaul, Africa, Illyricum, issue letters which unfold the discipline of Christian life then observed at Rome, but they create the institution of vicariates in the several provinces, which links the episcopate closer to them. These vicariates represent in the spiritual structure of the Church the flying buttresses in a Gothic cathedral. While they support the central fabric, they bear witness likewise to its 346 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE unity. The unity of the faith is, in fact, the centraKs- ing power, as appears so manifestly in the letters of the African councils, and the rescripts made to them, and the emphatic approval of both by St. Augustine. In the very first of these letters, that of Siricius to Himerius of Tarragona, the Pope points out the one basis upon which all these answers and acts rest in the words : " We bear the burdens of all who are laden, or, rather, the blessed Apostle Peter bears them in our person, who, as we trust, protects and defends in aU things the heirs of his own administration". Whether the Pope issues answers on discipline, or decrees on doctrine, or creates vicars specially representing himself, all these acts have a common source in his mind. They are part " of the administration of Peter". The e:^act identity of language on this point of the eight Popes, from Damasus to Sixtus, who precede St. Leo, can only be duly estimated by reading their own words. In these letters a living norma of faith and discipline, handed down by tradition from St. Peter, is continually referred to as existing in Eome. This tradition itself is viewed as a sacred thing. Thus, in the rule about ordination, Siricius speaks of those who inconsiderately ordain a priest or deacon, " as if they were better than Apostles, whose precepts they dare to change". He goes on : "I warn you that this be not done. I pro- claim that, as we have one faith, we are bound to agree in what is handed down, to be peaceable in Christ, and to have charity in observing apostolic rules. In the presence, therefore, of the Father and His only-begotten PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 347 Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity of one God- head, I charge you that the Catholic faith and our disci- pline in these things remain untouched. Nor let any- one think that ordinations are earthly things, for the priesthood is heavenly. So the glory of the same dignity shall remain to the faithful, and the accuser have nothing to cite before the tribunal of Christ." ^ The combination of faith and discipline as the con- stituent parts of one divine polity continually appears in these papal letters, and it is remarkable that the first of them all, the letter of St. Clement, issued nearly three hundred years before that of Siricius, in delivering judgment respecting an episcopal ordination, makes in like manner an express appeal to the Blessed Trinity — the first in time, it would appear, extant after the New Testament. We have given the words of the later Pope ; let us put beside them the words of the earlier : " Eeceive our counsel, and you shall have no occasion of regret. For as God liveth, and the Lord Jesus Christ liveth, and the Holy Spirit, who are the faith and the hope of the elect, so surely shall he who, with lowliness of mind and instant in gentleness, hath without regretful- ness performed the ordinances and commandments that are given by God, be enrolled and have a name among the number of them that are saved through Jesus Christ, through whom is the glory to Him for ever and ever, amen. In the same way Pope Innocent writes to the bishop of Eouen : " Though all points of the Church's rule of ^Siricius, Ad diversos episcopos, Ep. vi. "St. Clement, Ep. i., s. 58. 348 CHURCH AND STATE AND TfiE life and teaching are familiar to you, yet, as you haTe earnestly desired the norm and authority of the Eoman church, I have annexed to my letter a digest of life and approved conduct, by which the peoples of the churches in your country may perceive, each in his own profes- sion, the rules of Christian life, and the discipline which is preserved in the churches of the city of Rome ". In these two things, the answers on all points of Christian life and usage, and the creation of vicariates, the " compages" of the Church is strengthened, the whole process falling under that " administration of Peter," which the Pope claims as his heir. While the civil dissolution of the empire, stemmed with difficulty by the vigour of Theodosius, was in full process during the forty-five years between his death and the time of St. Leo, the Popes, in all this interval, went on consoli- dating the great fabric of the episcopate, in the name of him in whose person the authority itself began. And it must not be omitted that the whole of this action tended to define, and so establish, the authority of the individual bishop by the common standard of faith and conduct which it always propagated. The last glimpse of temporal prosperity which made the presence of the sovereign acceptable at Eome, when Honorius triumphed upon the victories of Stilicho, was in the year 404, the same year in which the Pope wrote to Spanish bishops : " Every good bishop should struggle that those who are scattered should be collected on the basis of doctrine to the unity of the Catholic faith, and that one body should form an impregnable whole. If this be severed into PETMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 349 parts, it will be torn to pieces everywliere, and suffer from an inward pestilence if the structure itself be in conflict." Powerful words, surely, when the Vandal was presently to be in Africa, and the Goth in Spain,, and the heir of Alaric to wed an unwilling bride in the daughter of Theodosius, and pay her dowry with the spoils of Rome. Had there then been no Pope, where would have been the Church ? Six letters of Pope Innocent, the 19th to the 24th, refer to the end of the Antiochene schism, about the year 415, eighty-five years after its commencement in the year 330, by the Arian deposition of the legitimate bishop Eustathius. As a condition of receiving the bishop Alexander to his communion, the Pope required the name of St. John Chrysostome to be placed in the diptychs, which involved an acknowledgment that he had been unjustly deposed. In his twenty-fifth letter, addressed to the bishop of Antioch, he refers to the rule of the Nicene Council as having acknowledged the see of Antioch to be set not merely over a single province, but over all the provinces constituting the " diocese" of the East. This, he says, was not so much on account of the city's greatness, as because it was known to have been the first see of the first Apostle, which would not yield to the see of the city of Eome, except that Peter had passed from Antioch, whereas he had been kept by Home to the end. " And so, dear brother, our judgment is, that as you ordain the metropolitans yourself, so you should not allow the other bishops to be made without your consent ; with respect to those at a distance, you 3 so CHURCH AND STATE AND THE can, by letter, empower those to ordain them who do it now on their own authority only ; those who are near, you can, if you think proper, require to come for the imposition of your own hands. As the care of these things belongs to you, they ought to await your judg- ment." On this rule TUlemont remarks^ that it was to give a great authority to the patriarchs, and greatly to diminish that of the metropolitans ; but it would seem, as the Pope gives this counsel, that it was what the Popes practised themselves in the provinces more immediately depending on them. "As to your inquiry whether, when the emperor divides a province, there should be two metropolitans, we think that the Church of God should not foUow the changes of human things ; and,- therefore, that the metropolitans should remain as before." He ends by requesting the bishop of Antioch to make known his answers to the bishops either by a synod, if that can be done, or by transmission of his letter ; " in order that what you have so necessarily inquired, and we have so distinctly answered, may be kept by common consent and zeal of all ". This letter, therefore, sets forth the relation of the Pope to the third see of Peter in the year 415 — the Pope being the subject of the emperor Honorius, and the patriarch of the emperor Theodosius 11. About the same time, St. CyrU of Alexandria termi- nated the suspension of communion, which had arisen 1 Tillemont, x. 6ii. PRIMACY FKOM 380 TO 440. 35 1 from his uncle's persecution of St. Chrysostome, by replacing the name of that saint on the diptychs ; and the like was done by Atticus at Constantinople, who had been the most obstinate in his enmity to the saint, into whose see he had been intruded during his lifetime. The Pope, in aU the three cases, had obtained the con- dition which he had laid down. Pope Innocent died in March, 417, after a pontificate of nearly fifteen years, and was succeeded by Zosimus, who sat only about twenty months, but has left letters setting forth his authority even in stronger terms, if it be possible, than those used by Pope Innocent, as in his twelfth letter to the council of Carthage. After him, Boniface I. occupied the Apostolic See during four years, from 418 to 422 ; Celestine, ten years, from 422 to 432 ; Sixtus III., eight years, from 432 to 440. The letters of these Popes are of exactly the same tenour as those of St. Innocent. In order to avoid repetition, it will be best to consider in one mass at the end the authority disclosed in the series of these letters from Damasus to the accession of Leo. In the meantime, I turn to the condition of the empire and the civU government. Theodosius had been nominated by Gratian, in January, 379, his colleague, and had received from him the administration of the East, together with the province of the Eastern lUyricum, then first detached from the "West, He died in January, 395, at forty- nine years of age ; and during these sixteen years he may be said, by his wisdom and courage, to have 352 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE suspended the fall of the empire. Yet he was doomed to witness and to suffer terrible things. The emperor Gratian was murdered at Lyons in 383, by Maximus, and Theodosius was obliged to acknowledge the success- ful insurgent as Eoman emperor in Gaul, Spain, and Britain, while he was just able to maintain Valentinian in Italy and Africa. This state of things lasted five years, when Maximus advanced into Italy itself; Valentinian fled from Milan before him ; and Theo- dosius was reduced to fight for his own throne and that of Valentinian, whose beautiful sister Galla he had taken for his second wife. Under the walls of Aquileia, in 388, he conquered Maximus, and restored the whole West to Valentinian. Yet, a few years later, as Gratian had been murdered by Maximus, so Valentinian was murdered by Arbogast, whom Theodosius himself had made commander of his army ; and Theodosius had once more to contend for his throne and life with Eugenius, the creature of Arbogast. A final victory near Aquileia in 394 delivered him from these, and for the last time the whole Eoman empire was in his hands. But four months later this noble life was ended. St. Ambrose had uttered words of deepest lament over the two young emperors — first Gratian, then Valentinian, taken away in all their bloom and promise ; and now Theodosius, the saviour of the empire, followed them at the highest point of his maturity ; and once more the great bishop and statesman uttered the voice of praA^er and consolation over a Eoman emperor, this time the noblest of all who had been invested with that terrible PRIMACY FKOM 380 TO 440. 353 power, and whose fatal death left the Eastern throne to his eldest son, Arcadius, a youth of eighteen ; and the "Western to his second son, Honorius, a chUd of eleven. The sixteen years of Theodosius had been years of incessant action, requiring at once heroic vigour and superhuman skill. He had put an end to official Arianism in the East, though he could not undo the evil which Valens had done by fostering its propagation among the Goths ; but it was beyond his power to heal the schism of Antioch. He had the art to use the valour of the Goths for the defence of the empire, and Alaric was a general in his service at his death ; while Stilicho, the Vandal, was his chief minister, and had received in marriage his niece, Serena^ dear to him as a daughter. He was the last Eoman emperor who, while he ruled in the spirit of Augustus and of Trajan rather than of Diocletian, worthily supported the imperial name, and the idea of sovereignty in human govern- ment which it had embodied. Of him the Gothic king, Athanarich, said — " The emperor is God upon earth ; ■whoever raises the hand against him atones for it with his blood ".^ Yet from the time of Constantine, the empire had only subsisted by enrolling in the ranks of its armies the bravest of the northern races, who were surging onwards to destroy it ; and even by promoting to high rank, both civil and military, the most distinguished men of these races, Frank, or Vandal, or Goth.^ Thus the German element was ever pressing in upon the 1 Quoted by Reumont, i. 698. ^ Reumont, i. 699. 23 354 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE Roman ; it invaded not the army only, but government, the ranks of official life, the whole order of society. With Gratian and Theodosius there is a rapidly in- creasing number of these figures who bear Roman titles while they are of northern race. In the Western empire they were chiefly Franks. Under Gratian one, Mero- baudes, stood at the head of the admistration ; another, Vallis, had the command of the army. Arbogast and Bauto were great at the court and army of the younger Valentinian ; Mellobaudes, of royal descent, commanded the guards of Gratian. Richomer stood high in the Western court, and was an esteemed and fortunate commander under Theodosius. In the East, the Goths were conspicuous ; in the army most, but also in the administration. These were forces which Theodosius could rule ; but when his hand was withdrawn woe ensued to the di- vided empire. But let us consider the condition of Rome itself. Theodosius, having re-established his young brother- in-law Valentinian on the throne in 388, spent the winter in Milan, and on the 13th June, 889, made his trium- phal entry into Rome. Thirty-two years had passed since in 357 Constantius had entered it with the pomp of an Eastern despot. In all that time Rome had not seen an emperor, but five emperors had passed from the stage of life. Constantius had given way to Julian ; Julian to Jovian ; Jovian to the first Valentinian ; Valentinian to Gratian ; Gratian to Theodosius, who now was cele- brating the tenth year of his accession in the ancient PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 355 capital. Five years before this event Augustine had been at Eome, and received from Symmachus, as prefect of the city, nomination to a chair of rhetoric at Milan, which brought him under the influence of St. Ambrose, and was followed by his conversion. Three years before it, after the death of Pope Damasus, St. Jerome left Eome to practise the ascetic life in Palestine. Both these great men saw Rome in undiminished grandeur, so far as the buildings were concerned, with which four hundred years of imperial sway had decorated it ; un- diminished likewise in population; a nobility enormously wealthy, idle, and corrupt ; a populace such as it had always been, greedy, wayward, restless, given up to shows and spectacles. Two societies were struggling against each other, the heathen and the Christian ; and if the latter was gradually gaining predominance, its victory was by no means complete. It had to struggle with heathenism in its utmost corruption ; and the alloy shewed itself too often in the Christian character, of which the complaints of St. Jerome and other Fathers give but too painful truth. But political power had long departed from Eome. Milan had become the residence of the emperors in Italy, Lyons or Treves in Gaul.'^ The authority in spiritual things, which, according to the ancient con- stitution, had belonged to the emperor, and which had passed from the heathen over to the Christian emperors, was actually exercised in Eome by its bishop, which from Constantine, who left Eome in 327, to Theodosius, ^ Reumojit, i. 675. 3S6 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE who visited it in 389, only saw Constantius for a few weeks in 357. This combination of secular and local oircumstances, together with the tradition of the Pon- tificate of the chief Apostle, which had remained constant among the Christians, the remembrances and memorials of martyrs running back to the first times, the reverence which the name of Rome awakened in the general mass, gave a place to the Eoman bishop among the heathen as well as the Christian population, which no other possessed. From the moment that the Christian Church was recognised by the empire, this place could not but become more and more influential, more and more evident, even in its outward surroundings. The law of Theodosius in 380 only acknowledged in Damasus a prominence which every heathen as well as every Chris- tian in Rome had heard from childhood to be attributed to its bishop. He was the ruler of the polity which Peter had set up : that double fabric of doctrine and discipline, of sacraments instinct with belief, which made up together the daily Christian life. Constantine built and endowed Rome's cathedral in the Lateran Palace, which he had bestowed on her bishop, as weU as the Basilicas of the two Apostles, whom he found the patrons of Rome.^ Where is the voice of the nineteenth century which would impugn the contemporaneous tes- timony of the two great Christian emperors, and aflfect to deny what Constantine expressed in his actions and Theodosius attested in his law ? But it is from this Rome that the series of papal ' See Gregorovius, i. 97-8. PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 357 letters to bishops throughout the world, which we have been quoting, went forth : a Eome whose political power had passed, while its religious authority was daily increasing. At the very time when the presence of the emperor at Constantinople was making its bishop into a patriarch, the absence of the emperor from Rome left its bishop room to unfold the Papacy ; for the root of the patriarch was the emperor, the root of the Pope was St. Peter. Let us watch this effect of political changes upon spiritual authority in its increased action, from the death of Theodosius. With this death the long agony of the Western empire began. In the course of his episcopate, from 395 to 430, St. Augustine beheld not only the capture and plunder of Eome during these days by Alaric, but the permanent settlement of the Gothic people in the south of France and in Spain ; and he died as the Vandals were besieging Plippo, when the occupation of Africa by Genseric and his Vandals was even more fatal to Italy, and to Rome in particular, than the loss of Spain and Prance. Honorius began his reign as a child of eleven, in 395, and ended it at the age of thirty-nine, in 423. Theodosius bad valued and trusted Stilicho, and not only bestowed upon him his niece Serena, beloved by him as a daughter, in marriage, but left him as guardian and prime minister to his son ; and during thirteen years the utter incapacity of Honorius was supported and veiled by the vigour of the man who, in all but his Vandal lineage on the father's side, was a 3S8 CHTTRCH AND STATE AND THE Eoman after the pattern of Julius Caesar. His brilliant genius both as, a commander and a statesman repeatedly saved the Western empire. Whether in the end lie conspired against the weakling to whom he had suc- cessively married his two daughters ; whether also lie was secretly hostile to the Christian establishment of the empire, which he had rescued from destruction, remains one of history's unsolved problems. But he was slain by order of his son-in-law, in 408, who, in a reign of twenty-eight years, never struck a blow for a falling empire ; with the result that in 410 the Alaric, who had been a general of his father, captured Eome : that Alaric' s successor, Ataulph, espoused in 414 the proud daughter of Theodosius, who had disdained her cousin Eucherius as a Vandal, but yielded to the Goth whose bridal gifts were the spoils of her brother's capital, and the condition of her marriage the dismem- berment of his empire. I dwell here only on the result of that fatal division ensuing on the death of Theodosius, which not only made the East and West two dominions, but reduced the former to a government of eunuchs under Arcadius, and the latter to a heap of ruins, when Honorius, having deprived himself of Stilicho, took refuge behind the marshes of Eavenna. These were the scenes which St. Innocent witnessed in that pontificate of fifteen years. He was himself at Eavenna pleading with the feeble folly of Honorius in behalf of his people. If we read the letters of this Pope to the bishops of the East and West, it would seem as if he spoke amid a world governed in perfect tranquillity, while in every PRIMACY FKOM 380 TO 440. 359 year of the fifteen the Romans were quaking behind their walls at the rumour of some impending barbarian incursion. In fact, the actually existing walls of Eome were repaired by command of Stilicho in the utmost hurry under such an alarm. Indeed, this first capture of Eome in 410, short as it was, filled the world with fugitives suddenly reduced to ruin, so that the noblest matrons and maidens were in danger of being sold as slaves in Syria by a recreant African governor. But it also remains as a landmark in history to point out the time when the majesty of heathen Eome, having been once violated, was lost for ever. Temporal sovereignty never sat again upon the eternal city ; but at the same moment a spiritual sovereignty, carried thither more than three centuries before by the Galilean Fisherman, and planted in his tomb, came forth in full power, manifested as it were by the fall of the temporal city. From that time forth not Christian Eome only but heathen Eome also became fully conscious that it was the head of a dominion more than Csesarean. It is no Christian but a rationalist historian^ who writes : " Alone of all the cities of the world was Eome adorned with the divine title of ' Eternal ' ; and the poet's prophecy passed into fact — ' Imperium sine fine dedi '. The Eoman empire, enthralled and worn out by the long imperial despotism, foundered in the mighty German deluge of nations. They redeemed the Western world from that immoral tyranny, renewed it, or created it afresh, when they had ^ Gregorovius, i. 11. 36o CHURCH AND STATE AND THE taken Christianliood into themselves. The majestic city of the Caesars collapsed when the Eoman State and the ancient worship died out. It was in reality the Chris- tian religion which destroyed Eome, but likewise caused its resurrection. It broke in pieces the city of the old Eomans, but raised up a new Rome from the catacombs as a subterranean arsenal." It was this new Eome which speaks still in those letters of the Popes : speaks from the beginning and at all times ; for there is no time in them. Clement spoke under Domitian ; Julius under Constantius ; Innocent in the face of Alaric. But Clement, Julius, and Innocent speak with an authority which is in truth rooted in a catacomb, the grave of Peter, and expresses a succession independent of time, because spoken in the words of Him who said, "Before Abraham was made, I am"; and who said also, " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church : and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it ". This foundation came now to light. So long as the bishops sat over against civil prefects and governors throughout the empire, as Origen already described them, as the laws of Constantine recognised them, and gave them civil jurisdiction, many a heathen might consider them a sort of second civil magistracy ; but when the Northern deluge swept away the civil magistracy, and the Christian episcopate remained standing among the empire's ruins, and the Pope addressed these bishops as if the peace of the Roman world dwelt all around undisturbed, the commission of PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 36 1 Christ to Peter became visible to heathen and Christian alike;, and the divine kingdom rose out of the ruins of the temporal. In was in St. Augustine's time that all this took place. This City of Cod it was which the sacking of Eome, the banishment of her noblest who came in the pilgrimage of poverty to his doors, enabled him to see himself and to delineate for aftertimes more clearly than any had done before him, so that the taking of Eome unfolded the City which could not be taken, and the head of Charlemagne pillowed itself upon Augustine's book when four hundred years after Alaric the voice of a Pope made him "great and pacific emperor of the Eomans ". This lesson was taught to the world amid terrible sufferings ; probably history does not contain eighty years in which greater calamities were undergone than those which fell upon the countries comprised especially in the Western Eoman empire from the death of Theodosius in 395 to the disappearance of the last shadow of Augustus in 476. Within the ten years which followed the capture of Eome the kingdom of the Visigoths was founded under Ataulph, who wedded Galla Placidia in Eoman dress as the friend of her brother Honorius. After his premature death her hand became the prize of Constantius, the brave commander who supported her brother's throne being named joint-emperor, and he too died in 421. He was followed by Honorius in 423, who was buried in pomp in St. Peter's church aj; Eome, and whose only epitaph was that his incapacity ruined the Western 362 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE empire. At his death we are told his nephew Theodosius II. deliberated whether he should not reunite the West to the East. But the rise of an usurper diverted him from this purpose ; and he resolved to acknowledge Galla Placidia as empress and regent for her infant son by Constantius, Valentinian III. A few months before Honorius died, Pope Boniface terminated his pontificate of nearly four years, and in that year 422, he had addressed to the bishops of the province of Thessaly, forming part of the great prefecture of Eastern lUyricum, the civil government of which had been taken from the West and given to the East in 379, a letter^ in which he charged them to obey Rufus, the bishop of Thes- salonica, in his character of Apostolic Vicar. The beginning of this letter runs in these words : " The institution of the whole Church from the beginning was derived from the rank given to St. Peter, in whom its government and whole sum consists. For as the culture of religion increased, the fountain of ecclesiastical discipline which he established diffused itself through all churches. The precepts of the Nicene Council bear witness to this, so that it did not venture to make any appointment over him, seeing that nothing could be conferred above his merit. In fact it was aware that everything was given to him by the word of the Lord. It is certain therefore that this Church is to the churches diffused through the whole world what the head is to its members : from which who- soever (tuts himself off, becomes an alien to the Chris- 1 Boniface I., Ep. xiv.; Coustant, 1037. See also Ep. xv. PKIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 363 tian religion, by ceasing to belong to the structure" (compages). I cite this passage because nothing in the writings of any subsequent Pope, as, for instance, St. Leo, can ex- ceed its distinct and peremptory assertion of supreme authority given by our Lord to St. Peter, so that the whole structure of the living Church is said to rest upon it, and to be continued on by St. Peter's successors. I note that it was issued to bishops, subjects of the Eastern emperor, a few years after the fall of Rome, when the Western emperor was afraid to live within its walls, when his empire was already in part sur- rendered to the Goths ; and I note that there is not the slightest trace that the bishops to whom such language was addressed disputed its truth. It is in accordance with the language of the Pope's immediate predecessors, Zosimus and Innocent, to the African bishops, which those bishops, St. xlugustine being one among them, received with deference ; in accordance, also, with the language addressed nirfe years later by Pope Celestine to the Council of Ephesus, and which, as we have seen, and shall see later on, the Council accepted. The capture of Rome had made its chief nobility a spectacle of humiliation and misery to the whole world. It had not in the least diminished the autho- rity of its bishop, but had rather disclosed the founda- tion on which it rested. From the death of Honorius in 423 the Eastern emperor claimed to be and acted as the superior lord of the whole empire ; but this did 364 CHDECH AND STATE AND THE not interrupt the claim of the Pope to be the head of the whole Church. As Spain, and Gaul, and Britain, and Africa were being detached from the feeble son and grandson of Theodosius, while the Eoman bishop was holding the bishops of these countries together by the strong grasp of his Primacy, the lot both of the Church and of the State was different in the portion of the empire ruled, in name, at least, by another son and another grandson of the great Theodosius. Arcadius, indeed, and Theodosius II. were personally almost as feeble rulers as Honorius ; but the empire over which they reigned is thus described by Gibbon: — " The successors of Constantine established their per- petual residence in the royal city, which he had erected on the verge of Europe and Asia. Inaccessible to the menaces of their enemies, and perhaps to the complaints of their people, they received, with each wind, the tribu- tary productions of every climate, while the impregnable strength of their capital continued for ages to defy the hostile attempts of the barbarians. Their dominions were bounded by the Adriatic and the Tigris ; and the whole interval of twenty-five days' navigation, which separated the extreme cold of Scythia from the torrid zone of Ethiopia, was comprehended within the limits of the empire of the East. The populous countries of that empire were the seat of art and learning, of luxury and wealth ; and the inhabitants, who assumed the language and manners of Greeks, styled themselves, with some appearance of truth, the most enlightened PKIMACY FKOM 380 TO 440. 365 and civilised portion of the human species. The form of government was a pure and simple monarchy ; the name of the Eoman Eepublic, which so long preserved a faint tradition of freedom, was confined to the Latin provinces, and the princes of Constantinople measured their greatness by the servile obedience of their people." Such a domain was the second Theodosius allotted to rule. For his education, when he succeeded his father as a child of eight years old, all that was possible had been done by the guardianship of the virtuous Anthe- mius, and afterwards by the great ability and still more admirable example of his sister Pulcheria. He was reign- ing at the age of twenty-four, when he condescended to invest his aunt Galla Placidia with what remained of the Western empire as guardian of her son, Valentiniau. She with difficulty maintained a precarious rule, sup- ported by the great ability in war and statemanship of her generals, Boniface and Aetius, whose union might have preserved the sinking West, " while their discord was the fatal and immediate cause of the loss of Africa ". In such a political state of things, while the bishops of the West looked to the Pope as the defender, champion, and exponent of the Church's rights, as the standard and maintainer of orthodoxy, the bishops of the East beheld a great preacher, called at the emperor's bidding from Antioch, as St, John Crysostome had been called thirty years before by his father to sit in the great see of Constantinople. The new bishop, as soon as he came, filled the capital with confusion by attacking the Blessed Virgin's title, "Mother of God". The two 366 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE cousin-emperors, one in possession of the vast Eastern empire, with its impregnable capital, the other a child of eleven, for whom his mother could find no safe residence save the marsh-defended fastness of Eavenna, convened the Council of Ephesus to terminate the controversy. Its assembly afibrds us a fitting standpoint at which to review, as a whole, the Church's government indicated in these letters of the Popes at the precise time when the Eastern and Western portions of the great empire were permanently settling into separate kingdoms, and particularly when the crown of secular greatness had for ever departed from Eome to rest for long ages upon Constantinople. I will trace in as few words as possible the common character which belongs to these letters. First, as to their own authority and position with regard to the other bishops of the Church, not only in the West, but in the East, the seven Popes, that is, Siricius, .Anastasius, Innocent, Zosimus, Boniface, Celestine, and Sixtus, who sat from 385 to 440, and were the immediate predecessors of St. Leo, speak with one voice, and in the most precise language. What they say is simply this, that Simon Peter was invested by our Lord with the government of His Church, the kingdom of God on earth, by the three great words which our Lord ad- dressed to him, as priest, as prophet, and as king ; that he came to Eome, and deposited in that See, as its bishop, this special and unique power of government with which he was himself invested, and which de- PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 367 scended to his successors such as he received it, unaltered. Each one of these Popes considers himself as invested with this power ; speaks and acts to individual bishops, to large synods, as, for instance, those of Africa ; to Eastern patriarchs, as to the bishop of Antioch ; to the predominant bishop of the new capital, in the tone and with the authority which such a power would justify, and no less a power would justify. ■^ And it is to be borne in mind that all the letters in question, though bearing the name of the Pope alone, were in the disci- pline of that age always agreed upon at a synod over which the Pope presided. This power is invariably ascribed to the personal gift of our Lord : is said not to be given by any council, to be above the gift of a council, to be not depending on the individual merit or sanctity of the person holding it. It is simply " ad- ministratio Petri," ^ which each Pope took up from his predecessor when he became Pope, and left to his suc- cessor when he departed, alike without increase and without diminution. Such a power set forth to bishops in conciliar documents, framed with legal accuracy and peremptory distinctness, could only meet one of two things, acceptance or rejection. I have quoted the words of the two most eminent bishops during this period, St. Ambrose and St. Augus- tine, as expressly recognising, in reference to these 1 See, for instance, the 24th letter of Innocent I. to Alexander, bishop of Antioch, and the 6th letter of Sixtus III. to John, bishop of Antioch, and the letter of Celestine to Nestorius, as bishop of Constantinople. 2 Siricius, Ep. i. Petrus, qui nos in omnibus, ut confidimus, aJministrationis SU83 protegit et tuetur heredes. 368 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE letters, the authority claimed in them to be " scriptural," that is, givenby our Lord in the way stated : the one herein speaking as the metropolitan of northern Italy, the other as a member of the Council of Numidia. On the other hand, nowhere can a bishop, or a patriarch, or a synod, in the fifty-five years herein com- prised, be found who replied to the Pope that the autho- rity thus claimed by him, as given by our Lord to Peter, was not given to Peter ; or, again, that though given to the Apostle as a personal privilege, did not descend to the Pope as successor of St. Peter. And, once more, I will quote the words of the Bene- dictine editor ^ of these letters, who says — " Of so many Pontifis, renowned for learning and sanctity, no one can be found who did not believe that this prerogative was bestowed upon himself or his church, to be the head of the whole Church, while, among all the churches of the world erected by the Apostles and their successors, no one can be found whose bishop ventured to aflirm him- self to be the head of the whole Church. And it may be noted that, however zealous the bishops of Constan- tinople were in defending their rights, they were con- tented, down to Photius, with the second place of rank -after Rome." When John, bishop of Antioch, gave up the support which, together with the bishops of his patriarchate, he had for some time given to Nestorius ; when Nestorius had been deposed, and a successor appointed, Pope ^ixtus in. wrote to the bishop these words: "You ^ Cousfant, Preface, p. iii. PEIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 369 have experienced, in the issue of this present matter, what it is to be of one mind with us. The blessed Apostle Peter has handed down, in his successors, that which he himself received. Who would consent to be separated from the teaching of him whom, together with the Apostles, the Master Himself first fully instructed. He was not instructed by hearing from another, nor by a written discourse. He was taught with the rest by the mouth of the Teacher. He had not to suffer ques- tioning as to the meaning of Scripture or of writings. He received an absolute and simple faith, which ad- mitted no controversy. It is this on which we are bound continually to meditate, and in it to abide ; so that, following Apostles in the unco'rrupted sense, we may be accounted apostolical. It is no small burden, no small toil, which lies upon us, that no spot or wrinkle may touch the Church of God." ^ The vividness of the Roman tradition, and the force of oral teaching from the mouth of Christ Himself, could not be better expressed than in these words, in which point they are an epitome of all these letters, for in all of them there is reference to the storehouse of apostolical teaching deposited at Eome. Now, the fact that Peter took for his see the capital of the Roman empire ; again, the position of the Roman bishop after the transference of the imperial residence to Constantinople ; again, the fact that the Pope was sole patriarch in the West : these circumstances exercised, no doubt, a certain influence upon the rank accorded to ' Ep. vi. ; Coustant, 1260. 24 370 CHUKCH AND STATE AND THE him. They are, as it were, outward environments, which worked together for the exaltation of his see above all other bishops and patriarchs. But they could not provide that living consciousness of the Primacy, seated in the heart of the Church, to which the Popes through- out these letters constantly appeal. That could only rest upon a recognition from the beginning of a divine investiture of St. Peter with the guidance of the Church by our Lord, as part and parcel of the apostolic teach- ing.-' The reception given to these letters proved that it was so recognised. This is the first contrast between the Papal Primacy and the State-patriarchate which, in these fifty years, began to be set up at Constantinople. The former rested on the gift of Christ at the beginning ; the latter upon a canon of a particular council of Eastern bishops held in 381. The canon itself gave no jurisdiction, but only rank; but even so it was rejected by Rome, rejected by Alexandria, while, on the other hand, it was fostered by the Eastern emperors. The following contrasts are, as it were, corollaries of the first : — 2. The Primacy set forth by the Popes is throughout claimed as of divine institution. Being the gift of Christ alone, it is antecedent to all councils. It is, in fact, the generating power of the Church, which created gradation of ranks in an episcopate otherwise equal, and so bound it into one government, whereas the origin of the patriarchate on the Bosphorus was simply political. ' This is noted by Reumont, ii. 21. PKIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 371 "It was instituted to make the emperor's bishop the first bishop of the emperor's kingdom, and grounded expressly on the fact that Constantinople was Nova Roma. 3. The Primacy, being divine, is independent of poli- tical authority. It is, indeed, true that St. Peter in the beginning, by divine guidance, chose the temporal capital for its seat, a choice which runs up for its authorship to Christ himself, who would shew His power by placing His vicar in the capital of His enemy. There is just this amount of truth in the canon of 381, which implied that Rome held the first rank in the Church because it was capital in the State. And the Primacy subsisted there through ages of persecution, latent so far as the Church was latent. When the Church was recognised it came forth also. In proportion as the emperors re- tired, the Primacy advanced. From Septimius Severus to Constantine the emperors were absent usually from Rome defending the frontiers, and the Primacy came more and more into view, so that, in the middle of that period, the emperor Decius, standing on the old Roman lines, recognised it as a mortal foe. Constantine went to the Bosphorus, and left the Primacy behind him, as well as a city heathen in the vast majority of its popu- lation, and specially in its senate and great families. At the end of the century Rome had become from a heathen city Christian. The worship of the false gods ^ dropped from its shoulders like a worm-eaten mantle of state, and Theodosius had laid the first steps on which his ^ Gregorovius, i. 73, first edition. 372 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE patriarch's throne should be built ; the tenaat of which should as completely lean on the emperor as the Pope descended from St. Peter ; for was he not to rank as second in the Church, simply because Constantinople was New Eome ? 4. In these letters the Popes uniformly speak as maintaining the authority of the Nicene Council and the whole order of things antecedent to itself to which that Council bore witness, whether they be matters of doctrine or of government. The Nicene Council represents to them not only the faith of the Church respecting the Person of her Founder, but the whole anterior history of the Church. But the chief thing of all to the Popes is the living tradition stored up at Eome: "the Statutes of St. Peter and St. Paul," as Pope Liberius speaks of them ; and Pope Julius in his letter of 342 : "Not such are the dispositions of Paul ; not so have the Fathers handed down : this is another form, a new custom. What we have received from the blessed Apostle Peter, this I signify to you ; and I should not have written, believing it to be known to all, except that what has been done has disturbed us." Each Pope speaks as heir of the three preceding centuries, as carrying on a settled unchanging order. Herein lies a strong contrast to the growing power of the see of Constantinople, which carried with it an innovation, upon the rank of others. The resident council of bishops sojourning at the new capital was the medium of this innovation. It issued in the degra- dation of Alexandria, so fiercely resisted by Theophilus, rEIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 373 Cyril, and Dioscorus ; and in that of Antioch, so tamely yielded to by successive bishops, through the weakness resulting from its divided condition since 330. 5. These letters are the same in tone throughout as they are in the beginning ; the tone of those who are sure of their fact, never go beyond it, and never recede from it. It is a tone supreme, conservative, moderate, unaggressive, the very reverse of intrusive and med- dling. Each bishop, each metropolitan, each patriarch, is maintained in the existing sphere of his duties. Where no wrong is committed, there is no interference. Disturbance of discipline, and, above all, violation of the faith, cause intervention. The Pelagian heresy is a great instance in point. The application of the African synods to St. Innocent in that matter, and his answer and the comment upon it by St. Augustine, bring out the strongest and clearest witness to the authority of the Eoman See's Principate, as likewise does the heresy of Nestorius. For one faith absolutely demands one power to maintain it ; and a hierarchy, wherein that power seems distributed among its members in time of peace, is sharpened into the action of its head by conflict. It was quite different with the rising power of the bishop in the new capital, which increased with each tenant by the aid of imperial support. This going beyond the limit of the J)ishop began with Nectarius ; increased by the virtues and ability of St. Chrysostome ; advanced still further under Atticus, and again under Proclus. In all these steps the temporal authority of 374 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE the Eastern emperor was mixed up with the advance of the bishop of his residence. 6. It is somewhat more than what is said in the two preceding paragraphs that the Pope throughout these letters speaks as with the Church at his back. All that he does being based on one fact, the investiture of St. Peter, lodged in the deepest consciousness of the Church, he speaks as a lawful sovereign in his inherited monarchy ; moreover, as a sovereign who, with his predecessors, has made his monarchy. For all that vast array of bishops, metropolitans, primates, and patriarchs is the outcome of the Apostolic Twelve, with Peter at their head. That the Twelve had a head is the reason why the whole episcopate, which the Pope beholds before him, has a graduated distribution of spiritua,l power. The distance of three hundred years had not obscured this origin. Therefore the honour of each bishop is, in the words of St. Gregory the Great, his own honour. And the relationship between them makes him their born de- fender. His authority includes theirs, and therefore protects it. But if the bishop of Constantinople was greater when the second Theodosius died than when the first set him- self to restore the broken ranks of the Eastern episcopate, what other reason for this was there than that the Eastern emperor exercised part of his political omni- potence through the bishop of his capital ? 7. And here we come to one of the most remarkable incidents in the history of this power conferred on St. Peter's successors. PEIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 375 Up to the end of the reign of the great Theodosius, the empire both in the East and West stUl stood erect. In the thirty-five succeeding years, which so exactly coincide with the episcopate of St. Augustine, not only was Eome taken and sacked by the Gothic king, but the empire lost permanently its hold upon Southern France, Spain, Britain, and lastly upon Africa, the granary of Italy. The Popes beheld a vast rending of the civil structure which had grown together during almost twelve centuries. They mourned over terrible ruins ; the rich became poor in a day ; and patrician families at Eome who had owned vast estates lost, with their riches, their personal liberty. At that moment of destruction the hierarchy of the Church alone stood,^ and that it was not broken up into as many pieces as the Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Vandals, Ostrogoths, conquered territories, was owing solely to the Pope's Primacy. It was a first effect of Constantine's alliance to invest the bishops throughout his empire with a great civil juris- diction, as we have seen. It was a second efi"ect of the barbarian inundation, which, on the fall of the Western empire, made the Church the sole school of learning, the sole preserver, so far as it was preserved, of a sinking civilisation. And the Popes, in the midst of a city trembling at every rumour of a fresh incursion, received from the vigilance, energy, and charity exercised under the woes which they vainly deplored, and did their utmost to mitigate, an influence greater even than they had enjoyed when the mind and the sword of Constan- ^ See Matthieu, Plouvoir Temporel des Papes, pp. 48-51. 376 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE tine and Theodosius maintained their capital in security and the cities under their rule in peace. Here again, while the bishops of Constantinople were established in a splendid servitude to propagate the emperor's will in the Eastern episcopate, the Popes between the two violations of their city by Alaric and Genseric led the Western bishops in their struggle against war, famine, and heresy. The break-up of the empire may be said to have finally established their Primacy on a spiritual basis, by destroying the temporal rank of their city. 8. For the political prostration of the Eoman city under these seven Popes is as remarkable as the pre- servation of the Eastern empire through the impreg- nable position of its capital. It was owing to this choice of Constantine that the monarchy which he founded, with Eoman title but after Oriental fashion, over peoples so long accustomed to be ruled by absolute power, lasted in some sort for more than a thousand years. But absolute power was killed out in Rome by the barbarian sword, and its walls aflPorded no defence against the assault of hunger when it was once deprived of its African granary. Thus the time of desolation fully unveils its spiritual greatness. Had there been any truth in what was inscribed on the foundation- stone of the Byzantine patriarch's greatness, that the Fathers had given the Primacy to Rome because it was the capital of the empire, that Primacy would have passed to the city of Constantine when temporal supre- macyrested on it. But the exact contrary of this happens. PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. 377 All power had passed from Eome when the second Theodosius gave a weak woman and her infant son the name of empress and emperor, and it was then that hi& own bishops, assembled in general council, accepted the full statement of the Eoman Primacy, which the legates of St. Celestine presented to them, who bore a commission from the Pope couched in the words : "If it come to a discussion with the bishops, you are to pass a judgment upon their sentence, not to enter into a conflict with them". Scarcely ninety years had passed since the Eusebian bishops at Antioch had sought to deny to Pope Julius the rights of his see. In these three generations Eome had perpetually waned, and Constantinople as constantly grown ; now it was all- powerful. The reigning emperor sympathised with Nestorius ; the bishop of his capital was deposed by the sentence of the Pope, and his full authority recog- nised in a council where the Pope's legates were almost the only Western bishops present. 9. As the temporal city at Eome decays, the spiritual power of the Pope increases, and this double action is drawn out by a special historian, who by no means acknowledges the truth of the Christian faith, as a phenomenon unknown to any other city of the world. There is not in the whole of human history another instance in which the same city becomes head of a whole empire by the might of arms, and, when that empire perishes, becomes head of a second world-empire by the might of faith. Herein the contrast with Con- stantinople is perfect. The Pope comes out when Eome 378 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE ceases to be capital ; the bishop begins when his city- begins to be capital. His power is always in proportion to the temporal greatness of his city ; but the Christian faith came into Eome as into the seat prepared for it, and out of the ruins of the political monarchy drew forth the giant form of the spiritual monarchy, the Church. That this was an immovable structure at the very time the old empire fell is one of the greatest facts of history, for the whole life of Europe was built afresh upon the Church's firm foundation-stone ; and that foundation-stone itself was the Primacy given by our Lord to Peter. ^ I do not know how history could oflFer a stronger con- firmation to the belief of the Church that such a Primacy had been given to St. Peter, and had descended from him to the Popes, than its acceptance by the bishops as it was set forth in the letters of the Popes addressed to them out of a discrowned and captured Eome, and again, and further, as it was acknowledged by the Eastern bishops who were submissive subjects of the Eastern throne seated in Constantine's rival city, when the bishop of that city was himself impugned for mis- belief and deposed. A notice of this council, the circumstances under which it was held, and its decisive recognition of the Eoman Primacy has been already given. We may add to what has been there said the great importance of this council as affording an estimate of the internal and ' Grogoroviua, i. 6-13 ; see also 97-8, on St. Peter and St. Paul as patron faints of Rome. PEIMACY FKOM 380 TO 440. 379 essential development of the Churcli made in the first century after Constantine's alliance of the empire with the Church, There had been no council like it since the Nicene, because the council of Sardica, intended to be general, was frustrated of that distinction by the enmity of the Eastern emperor Constantius and the heretical spirit of his bishops. Again, the council of 150 Eastern bishops at Constantinople in 381, which was afterwards considered general because its decrees completing the doctrine concerning the Blessed Trinity by the condemnation of the Macedonian heresy respect- ing the Holy Spirit were confirmed by Pope Damasus, though its canons were never confirmed, was at the Council of Ephesus passed over in silence. It was then held to be only an Eastern council, and the precedence which it had voted to the bishop of the new capital was rejected both by Pope Celestine and by St. Cyril of Alexandria, who presided over the council in the Pope's name. Accordingly, the Ephesine Council in 431 was the first meeting of the Church in plenary council since the great event of Nicsea, 106 5' ears before. And from its acts it is apparent that a double new relation had been formed in the interval. The first was betweeu the Papacy on the one hand, and the episcopate, the patriarchs, and general councils on the other. The second was between the Papacy and the imperial power. It could not but be that both these relations were new, because the circumstances under which they were formed were new. As to the first, " Ecumenical councils 380 CHURCH AND STATE AND THE were at that time a novelty in the Church".^ Accord- ingly, until they took place the action of the Universal Primate with regard to them could not be adequately foreseen. The whole life of the Church before it was called together, while it was actively opposed, dis- couraged, or vehemently persecuted by the civil power, was different in its conditions from those which ensued when these circumstances were altered. The convening of the Nicene Council was the beginning of the altera- tion. As to the second relation, the whole action of the imperial power within the Church was new\ It was an immense force introduced into the Church's constitution. The interaction, then, of Pope, patriarchs, bishops, and councils in reference to it, occasioned or affected by it, was new also. In both cases, the further action of immense political changes must be allowed for. It needs but to mention Rome under Constantine in 330, when the barbarian world of heaving force beyond the Ehine and the Danube was silent before him, and the great rival Eastern kingdom beyond the Euphrates counted his alliance an honour ; and Eome in 430, under Theodosius II. and Valentinian III., when the walls of Constantinople sheltered one Eoman emperor, the marshes of Ravenna the other, and the cities of the world trembled before the inundations of Huns upon Teutons, and of Teutons driven westward by Huns to flock as birds of prey upon the empire. St. Augustine himself began his career as bishop under the great Theodosius, and ended it with Genseric ^ Newman, Causes of (he Rise and Success of Arianism, p. 101. PRIMACY FEOM 380 TO 440. 38 1 before the walls of Hippo ; that Genseric who from that day to his death in 477 harried sea and land with the ferocity of a Barberine corsair. In the Ephesine Council the Pope deputed St. Cyril, as bishop of Alexandria, to preside in his place over it. St. Cyril did not decline the oflSce, nor the Council for a TDoment demur to being led by the Pope. The Pope did not wait for the Council to censure the doctrine of Nes- torius, nor to depose him from his see if he did not correct it. The way in which the Council greeted the exposition of his Primacy by his legates, and especially the descent from St. Peter as first bishop of Eome, amounts to the acceptance by the second Council of precisely that authority in the whole Church which the letters of the Popes above quoted maintain. This, therefore, is the result of the hundred years and five between the first Council at Nicsea and the second at Ephesus. Heresy has done its worst from 330 to 380 ; absolute power has created a nest for itself on the Bosphorus ; the barbarians who served the empire under Constantine, Valentinian I., and Theodosius have now led their tribes into partial possession of it ; the West is trampled on and devoured ; Eome, for eight hundred years the queen of the earth, has had her royalty sullied by the Gothic leaders ; Constantinople apes the former grandeur of Rome, and has taken what remain(jd of her power ; but while Eastern bishops are in the way to lose their independence under a despotic master, the Pope, from a defenceless Eome, shines a beacon of hope to the world, marshals the bishops of 382 CHUKCH AND STATE AND THE PRIMACY FROM 380 TO 440. the West to the defence of the one faith, and is acknowledged by the East to act in the name of Peter, " who is the pillar of the faith and the foundation of the Catholic Church," "and up to this time and for all time to come lives and judges in his successors".^ ^ Council of Ephesiis, see above. THE FLOWEKING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 383 CHAPTER IX. THE FLOWERING OF PATEISTIC LITEEATUEE. The divine kingdom on earth, viewed as a sphere, may- be said to revolve on the two poles of government and doctrine, for Christ never ceases to act in it as Prophet and as King, and the line of His Priesthood, passing through the centre of this sphere, gives one motion to the whole, and binds the poles together. A kingdom has its own life of thought and action, and cannot cease to grow so long as it lives. By the law of its being it must develop ; and this, which is true of every kingdom, is in the highest degree true of the greatest, that is, the divine kingdom. Accordingly, in the hundred and five years between the Councils of Nicgea and Ephesus, government and doctrine have not only grown, but have kept even pace, not forestalling each other, as the revolution of a sphere on its axis is even and its motion one. It has been my efi"ort in the preceding chapters to draw out continually the parallel advance of govern- ment and doctrine from the Nicene Council. To carry this further on, I put together several points of view 384 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC IITERATUEE. on which that Council is to be taken as a great epoque. It must be repeated here, as a prelude to what follows, that its convocation is contemporaneous with the sole monarchy of Constantine, when, after defeating all his rivals and enemies, he united the empire in his single person, and proclaimed himself a Christian in his own personal belief and in the maxims of his government, though he neither sought for baptism nor received the regular instruction of a catechumen. Had he been instructed and baptised, he would probably have escaped the great errors which occurred in the last years of his reign, not to speak of the terrible tragedy "which sullied his private life and made him the slayer ■ both of wife and son. The great event of his conversion seems to serve as a sort of common root to many consequences. First, it was the beginning of union in Christian history between the Two Powers, which represent respectively the natural society of man, as constituted by God the Creator for the good of His creatures ; and the supernatural society instituted by a personal advent of God the Redeemer — that is, the Church, the Family, and Kingdom of Christ. Secondly, it was the beginning of freedom to the Church to meet by representation in her whole episco- pate ; for Constantine, by summoning the council, hot without previous consultation with the great sees of Eome, Alexandria, and Antioch, gave the first recogni- tion of the Roman empire to this representation. The THE FLOWEKING OF PATEISTIC LITEEATDEE. 385 Church, indeed, had ever been ready in her hierarchy, drawn out of her bosom by the action of the Holy Spirit from the day of Pentecost, so to meet ; but was never allowed, by the absolute power of heathen emperors, to exercise that inherent capacity. The act of Constantine, therefore, summoned into existence a force not hitherto exercised, for such was the collective action of the great Christian senate. Thirdly, it was the beginning of deliverance to the Papacy from the pressure of the enormous superin- cumbent weight laid upon Christian society by hostile paganism. It was thus enabled to exercise its original and inherent, but hitherto latent, authority, and to work upon the whole Church. And as the difference between bishops spread over the whole world in their several provinces and local autonomy, and those bishops assembled in council and acting by impact on each other could not be discerned beforehand, so neither could the difference between the paternal presidence of the Pope over brethren in the episcopate, pressed like himself by heathen persecution, and the presiding over those brethren when free to meet and act in council, be anticipated before it came into effect. Fourthly, the Nicene Council marked the beginning of freedom to all to proclaim the Christian doctrine, by word and writing, without hindrance from without, through the whole Koman empire. The time of apolo- getic defence was over; and henceforth the Christian spirit could set forth the Christian religion, not as an advocate defends a culprit who lies under suspicion, but 25 386 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATUKE. as the messenger of a sovereign sets forth a positive system of doctrine and conduct, as much more potent in practice than Stoic virtue as it was more exalted in matter than Platonic discourses. This was a change, in the intellectual standpoint, no less great than the two preceding changes in external position. Once more as great a development as the preceding is betokened in the introduction at this same time of the monastic life.-^ The pagan persecution ceased on the one hand ; but on the other, Christians, by the simple fact that they were no longer persecuted, were thrown, especially in all the great cities, into a contact, which their former isolation had restricted, with the worst ex- cesses of moral corruption. At the same time, it cannot be doubted that the number of converts from interested motives, which from Constantine's time pressed into the Church, lowered perceptibly the standard of Christian practice in the mass. Against all this, a life which aimed at perfection, by not merely performing the commands of Christ, but by carrjring out His counsels in daily practice, shewed itself in the Christian people. It had existed from the time of the Apostles scatteredly and in secret ; now it came forth from the privacy of the family to public gaze. The unbridled, sensuality of heathen society, and the worldly conduct of converts for gain, received a rebuke and a correction in the Christian doctrine of virginity, and the celibate life was set forth with the utmost praise by the writers of this period. The enormous luxury which revelled in the great cities, 1 Noted by Fessler, i. 337. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 387 and the passion for theatrical exhibitions which cor- rupted their population, as well by immoral prostitution as by cruel sacrifice of the human body, were confronted by the self-chosen poverty and self-denial of those who lived upon God alone in the deserts of Egypt and Syria. Athanasius, taking refuge in Eome to defend the faith at its centre, under the protection of the Apostolic See, introduced there the history of St. Anthony. It bore fruit at once, while later in the century the noblest men and women in Eome deserted their sumptuous palaces for a life of prayer and poverty in Bethlehem. The Nicene Council may be said to mark when the religious life becomes a public institute, a fountain of holiness, moral strength, and also intellectual life and vigour, never to be dried up in the Church. Again, simultaneously with the civil freedom granted to the Church, and the ending of the apologetic period wherein her writers defended her against the assaults of the Hellenic spirit outside her, there rose up in the very bosom of the Church the deadliest of heresies, denying the Godhead of her founder, and the most destructive of schisms, denying the unity of His kingdom ; so that from this time the whole intellect of the Church was directed to the maintenance of these two assaulted truths. And in this way the Arian heresy and the Donatist schism, which arise together about the year 318, work together during more than a hundred years to elucidate doctrine and consolidate unity. Now, bearing these several circumstances in our mind, let us consider the interval of a hundred and fifty JSS THE FLOWEKING OF PATRISTIC LITEEATTTEE. years between the end of the pagan persecution and the overthrow of the Western empire by the Northern tribes, as being a period of wonderful intellectual vigour, shewn in the writers of the Church. It has often been remarked that after the failure of the Persian attempt to enthral Greece, a great outburst of genius took place at Athens, which became the centre, drawing to itself the greater minds of the larger Hellas. The period begins with the dramas of ^schylus, and may be said to end with the death of Aristotle. Thus it lasted from the time that the independence of Greece was saved from destruction by the Persian invader, until a Grecian conqueror, in subjecting Persia, destroyed also his country's freedom. There was no time like that" before it in Grecian history, and no time after it, for the varied productions of genius. With the two great exceptions of Homer and Pindar, every poet and almost every historian and philosopher who have made Greece illustrious were born and flourished in this time. Similar in duration, similar in exuberance of intellec- tual life, is that space of the Church's history which begins with Athanasius, the peerless confessor, and ends with Leo, the peerless ruler, both great writers, but men in whom the greatness of character surpasses the lustre of mind; and if an apostate, won by so much nobility to a transitory admiration, summed up the history of five banishments in the words, " The world against Athanasius, and Athanasius against the world," those who have studied the letters and sermons of Leo THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 389 witli a profound sense of tlie sanctity which utters itself in majesty, will yet more wonder at the greatness of the man, who sat unshaken upon the throne of Peter while the city of Eomulus, having completed the augury of twelve centuries, was falling with its empire in ruins around him, yet betrayed not a single word of fear, a single consciousness of danger. Almost the whole wealth of patristic literature lies between these two. The greatest of those who preceded them, as, for instance, Clement and Origen in the East, TertuUian and Cyprian in the West, are but preludes and foretastes of the vast work in subduing heresy, convincing Judaism, exposing heathenism, commenting on Scripture, expounding doctrine, eloquence in the chair of teaching, thoroughness in catechising, and mani- fold illustration of the world around them in their letters, aflforded by those who lived in this time. And after Leo many hundred years intervene before a similar period can be shewn. As soon as paganism had been conquered in the conversion of Constantine, and before the northern barbarism broke up the civilisation of the West, and the Byzantine despotism quenched the genius of the East, this short time was given by the Providence of God in which a Chrysostome should use the language of Plato in its old age with greater effect than Demos- thenes in its prime : and in which a Rhetorician of Thagaste should take the worn-out language of Cicero, and deposit in it treasures of thought far beyond the range of "Eome's least mortal mind," and mark out almost single-handed the groundwork for the structure 390 THE FLOWERING OF PATEISTIC LITERATUKE. of theology and philosophy in the Church, so that his successors for fifteen centuries have drawn upon his treasure, and sought to complete what he had begun. In this interval between heathenism and the Western desolation with the Eastern enslavement, the Church creates a greater intellectual Hellas and a greater intellectual Eome than were the heathen originals. By the powerful bond of her unity, or rather by the one Spirit who creates that unity, she subsidises a wider range of cities than Athens could touch in her proudest time. She selects champions from a number of races such as Athens never imagined, or despised, so far as she knew them, under the common name of barbarians. First and foremost in this great roll she calls Athanasius from Alexandria, and his brother confessor Eustathius from Antioch ; later she sent Chrysostome, the greatest preacher of Antioch, to win the same place in Constanti- nople. From Edessa she calls Ephrem, hardly less powerful, as the chief Syrian teacher ; Basil the Great from the Cappadocian Csesarea, and his scarcely less eminent brother Gregory from Nyssa, his equal Gregory from Nazianzum ; Cyril from Jerusalem, Epiphanius from the Cyprian Salamis; and presently another Cyril, greater than the former from Alexandria, together with Didymus, teacher of the chief school of Egypt, and the monk Makarius, great in its deserts. Synesius she calls from Ptolemais in Cyrenian Africa ; Asterius from Amasea, Amphilochius from Iconium, Nemesius from Emesa in Phoenicia, Theodoret from Cyrus. This vast range of cities in Asia, Africa, and Europe is the greater THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 391 Hellas, survival of Alexander's empire, from which she evokes her warriors in the field of theology. But she has likewise a greater Eome at her disposal. She finds in her Ambrose, son of a prefect of Gaul, him- self governor of Milan, one on whom she lays her hand suddenly and makes him the model of a bishop, a Eoman who converts Augustine, and informs with mildness the spirit of an emperor, teaching an irresistible conqueror to do penance for his hasty disregard of human life. She calls from Poitiers Hilary, a noble Gaul, to con- fession in Asia for long years in word and deed. She endows the Dalmatian Jerome with the language of Rome and the learning of Varro, to use them in behalf of Scripture interpretation, to set forth Christian counsels and form the ascetic life in the female sex. She rescues a burgher of a small town in Africa, after a servitude of fifteen years, from the phantoms of Mani- chseism and the turpitude of immorality, and makes him the wonder of his time and of all succeeding times for that vast stream of doctrine, that energy of thought penetrating every fold of the spiritual life, by which he lays the basis of theological structure, and utters the principles of true philosophy to be taken up by the Church after him, to be fostered through ages of trial and struggle, and built up eight hundred years later into the great mediaeval temple of St. Thomas. Further, she calls Zeno from Verona, Philastrius from Brescia, Eusebius from Vercelli, Prosper from Aquitaine, Peter Chrysologus from Aquileia, Maximus from Turin, Pacian from Barcelona, Juvencus, Prudentius, Orosius, from 392 THE FLOWERING OF PATEISTIO LITERATURE. Spain, Optatus from the African Milevi. But likewise during the whole time in the line of her Eoman bishops from Sylvester to Leo she shews an unmatched series of rulers, differing in national descent but instinct with the same faith, whose letters, directed to all parts of her domain, commence a series of historic documents which have no equal in human history. They draw out from age to age a Christian legislation descending to our own time, and promising for the future more even than they have done in the past. ,The literature of the age of Pericles, the literature of the age of Augustus, the general literature of the present day, except so far as it is Christian, has no one spirit guiding it, no key therefore to its development or its interpretation. How different it was with the literature on which I am now engaged, I shall endeavour to shew. If I mistake not, it will be seen more and more clearly, as we contemplate it in a mass, to be the offspring of faith in the mystery of God incarnate and suffering, and to draw its whole life and inspiration from the working in the human heart and mind of that stupendous act of love, which these writers realised the more thoroughly because it was betrayed by many who were bound to proclaim it. This one fact it is of which they are one and all the defenders, whatever the particular mode of their defence, controversy, teaching, comment on Scripture, preaching. These, the intellectual champions of the great truth on which all Christian life and hope depend, even when they do not suffer the death of the body, are the martyrs of thought : THE FLOWEKING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 393 " And tliey stand in glittering ring Eound their warrior God and King, Who before and for them bled, With their robes of ruby red, And their swords of cherub flame." The time then when Christian doctrine opened from the bud to the flower began with Constantine, as the great dogmatic struggles began with him. In the East they were occasioned by the Arian, Semiarian, and Macedonian heresies, and by some smaller sects ; in the "West, by the schism of Donatus, involving heresy in its train, and by the heresy of Pelagius. Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, denied the divine nature and eternal existence of the Redeemer, declared Him to be a creature of the Father, whom He had not begotten of His substance, but created out of nothing. Macedonius, bishop of Constantinople, maintained concerning the Holy Ghost what Arius asserted of the Son, making Him a creature of the Son-^ as Arius made the Son a creature of the Father. Nestorius, also bishop of Con- stantinople, set aside the true incarnation of the Son of God by maintaining that the Logos dwelt in the man Jesus only as in a temple, without really making the human nature His own, and uniting it in true indivisible union with the divine Nature in the one divine Person. His antagonist, Butyches, an abbot in Constantinople, absorbed the human nature of Christ in the divine, and thus assumed there to be in Him not only one Person, but one Nature only. ApoUinaris, Wshop of Laodicsea, 1 Confer Pope Damasus, Doufession of Faith sent to Paulinas of Antioch IV. Anathematizamus Macedonianos, qui de Arii stirpe venientes non pevfidiam mutaviere sed iiomen. (Migne, xiii. 359.) 394 THE FLOWERING OF PATBISTIC LITEEATURE. denied a human soul to Christ. The Donatists in Africa, at first only denying the validity of the sacra- ments as conferred by a certain line of bishops, soon came to reject the whole Church except themselves. The Briton Pelagius and his companion Ccelestius maintained that there was no original sin, that man could attain blessedness by his own strength : that he needed neither actual or sanctifying grace. And in maintaining this, he denied the need, indispensable so far as the will of God is made known to us, of the Lord's incarnation and of His work in redeeming. These errors therefore imperilled the whole Christian faith. It added to their danger that the authors of three of them, Arius, Nestorius, and Eutyches, were aided by the imperial authority at Constantinople, which sought to oppress and root out orthodox doctrine.^ Any one of these heresies, had it been accepted by the Church, would have destroyed the Christian faith, and the Church was incessantly occupied in resisting some or all of them, from the promulgation of false doctrine by Arius, to the great letter of St. Leo, which set forth the true faith concerning the two Natures and one Person of our Lord ; and the councU of Chalcedon which addressed the same St. Leo as their " Father," " the very person entrusted by the Saviour with the guardianship of the vine," " a Head presiding over them as members ". The literature intervening between these two events I look upon as called forth by the efi'orts of the several ' From Nirsohl, vol. i. p. 2. THE FLOWERING OF PATKISTIC LITERATURE. 395 writers to defend what they most prized, the inheritance of the faith. They none of them wrote for gain or for vainglory. But heresy broke out in the midst of the Church : that heretical spirit began forthwith to set the Eastern bishops, who had fallen into its toils, 'against the original Primacy of the Roman See. At the same time, a vehement schism, in which bishops stood against bishops, divided the African church, and endeavoured to submit matters of doctrine to imperial judgment. This the Donatists did to Constantine, as the Arians afterwards to Constantius, of whom Athanasius said, " They have no king but Caesar ". By this terrible danger to the faith and the unity of the Church, the intellectual efforts of its defenders are called forth. In this they were only continuing the course which Christian literature had taken from the beginning. " Christianity appeared in human history not as a result of scientific inquiry, but as the announce- ment of a divine revelation. Miracles contained the proof of the doctrine they taught : nay, the doctrines themselves, which language served only to expound. In consequence, Christianity demanded faith, the im- mediate basis of which was its own contents : proof and the thing to be proved coincided. The Apostles re- counted their Lord's history, and the whole contents of Christianity were given with the history itself. Thus whoever had a mind receptive of higher things, whoever had an open spiritual sense, accepted the message without any notional development, and without any demonstration, which indeed could not have been given 396 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. him. And so literary activity was almost needless ; but every eflFort must have been spent on its exercise, had Christianity endeavoured to make good its footing as a result of human thought." ^ The first age after the Apostles was meagre in writers; the second century on the contrary shews a great rich- ness of them in all possible forms. The reason is that the Christian Church was assaulted from within and without. From without heathens and Jews presented the strangest distortions of it. The civil power used every effort to kindle popular hatred against it. Within, its doctrine was misunderstood. The false Gnosis caused it endless battles. " Throughout this century the direct refutation of heathens and heretics continued to be the main literary occupation of Church writers. It was a task which led them into a great range of thought, and introduced the most difficult problems." " The result of the first two centuries is that Christian literature, from a meagre beginning, had developed itself to such an extent as to cause admiration when we consider the range of its productions, the variety of their subjects, their successful treatment, together with the shortness of the time and the external position of the Christian Church. The apologists, on whom the light of faith had only just fallen, failed not to give suitable answers to the challenges of Hellenic wisdom, and to meet with all their power the destructive inroads which it made into the guarded territory of Christian revelation. Much was done when this first assault of 1 Mohler, Patrologie, 49, 178, 185. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 39/ heathenism and heresy upon conduct and doctrine wa s received so firmly and repulsed so definitely. That, however, was the main thing done. A proper and independent exhibition of Christian science could not yet present itself. That required a time of increased consolidation within, and of external peace." ^ This situation continued during the third century The hostile position of heathenism and the empire did not essentially alter. Persecutions even increased in intensity. The more the Christian faith spread among all ranks, and the deeper its influence on the hearts of men, the more apparent its effects upon society, in pre- paring a total change in what had hitherto been the relations of men to each other, the more did the State with whose growth heathendom was intertwined, defend what seemed to it a part of itself. But within the Church every heresy and every schism had the sure result of leading the Catholic Church more deeply to- comprehend its own being, to enunciate and maintain its unity and exclusiveness with more decision. In the first instance the teaching delivered by the Apostles to the Church had only been historically handed down. To grasp this heirloom of faith as an idea, to arrange it scientifically, was a progressive work, occasioned in the main by the Church's necessary defence of herself against heresy and schism. The false Gnosis led to the beginning of a Christian philosophy, of which a part was to work out the relation between faith and knowledge. The Arian heresy was a most deadly attack ; the 1 Mohler, Patrologie, pp. 416, 420, 424. 398 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. movement of theological formation wHcli ensued upon it was proportionally great. It was not the will of God that the outward peace given to the Church should find her at peace within ; but the recompense bestowed on the Church for the terrible trial into which she was cast by the defection of her bishops, joined with the imperial authority as exercised against her by Constantius and Valens, in the fifty years from 330 to 380, was accomplished by turning what had been in the main the childlike reception of the faith by her chUdren as an inherited tradition into the scientific exposition of that faith by acute intellects invested also with lawful authority. As the first of these I take Athanasius, as the last Leo. In that glorious battlefield he who sat in the s'ee of St. Mark, which was also the second see of St. Peter, led the fight; he who sat in the supreme See of Peter terminated the fray, and in the act was acknowledged by the whole Church in plenary Council as her Father and Teacher, in whose person truth and unity were crowned together. The martyrs who by their blood saved and propagated the faith of the Church in the first three centuries, the writers, often also martyrs, who from St. Clement the Pope and St. Ignatius, wrote in behalf of it, such as Hermas, Polycarp, Papias, Melito, Justin, Minutius, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Irenseus, Hegesippus, Pan- tsenus, Clemens, TertuUian, Origen, Cyprian, Dionysius of Alexandria, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Methodius : these and others, individual ministers to the Church's unfailing Magisterium, carried her victorious through THE FLOWEKING OF PATHISTIC LITERATURE. 399 the great persecutions, througli the perpetual assaults made by judaising sects, through the constantly- repeated efforts of the Gnostic sects to give their assumed and pretended knowledge supremacy over faith, which is the principle of heresy. In the second half of this period the great catechetical school of Alexandria had done immense service through the ability of the men who had imbibed all the wisdom of heathen antiquity, making use of its forms and modes of expression to draw the more cultivated heathen into the sanctuary of the Church. Yet if we could plant ourselves in the position of Athanasius, when about the year 318, being not more than twenty-five years of age, and before the promulgation of the Arian error, he wrote his two beautiful treatises — the one against the Gentiles, the other on the Incarnation of the Word, I suppose we might express the attitude of the Church over against those who were not in her bosom somewhat after this manner. She stood out in the face of all the false religions cultivated in the hundred provinces of the empire as a complete whole which had rejected in her doctrine all intermixture of human wisdom. She a,dored the Blessed Trinity in unity as the only God through the Word made Man for the salvation of men.-' The connection of her several doctrines with each other, their mutual relations, how they acted and re- acted, their inward essence, and the indivisible ^ For proof of this see the encyclical put forth by Alexander of Alexandria, at the rise of Arius (Nirschl, ii. 29), as well as the two just mentioned treatises of St. Athanasius. 400 THE FX.OWEKING OF PATKISTIC LITEEATUEE. life which ran through them all as a structural body, — all this existed, and was felt unconsciously by every martyr who suffered, by every writer who thought, by " Clement in his varied page," by " Dionysius, ruler sage in days of doubt and pain," by " Origen with eagle eye ". But to give these things their due expres- sion, as, for instance, taking the highest, to state the eternal Sonship of the Logos, and the Person of the Holy Ghost the Sanctifier, in union with the Godhead of the Father, in appropriate terms, which would defy cavil, express the whole truth, and expel insidious heresy masking itself in double language, — this was the task of a later time. I suppose it commenced imme- diately upon the proclamation of peace to the Church by the empire. This sifting and separation, this advancing of the deepest mysteries into day, was accomplished with the greater struggle because it was the assault of error which the Providence of God was using more perfectly to delineate the truth.^ In the period from Athanasius to Leo that work of the human intellect upon the principles of faith, of which the Apostles' creed is, as it were, the exemplar, while a full catechetical arrangement of all Christian doctrine would be the complete structure, wherein the writings of doctors and the schools of the Church are laboratories which take part in that divine chemistry, of which the Councils of her Fathers and the Decrees of her Pontiffs state the result, which in one word we call Theology, ran its first stadium. Its effect is to bring ^ In the above I have used and partly quoted Eiffel, 277-9. THE FLOWERING 0? PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 40I out in open day, and so to imprint by the use of un- failing standards on the popular mind, the truths which from the beginning have been the life of Christians, to guard them from the perversions to which human language so readily lends itself, and so to collect the vast inheritance of past ages for the benefit of all. What the labours of successive generations accomplish for a particular human science, theology does in forming the one divine science. The great dogmatic struggle, which occupied four full generations from St. Athanasius to St. Leo, and received its definitive solution from the latter in the council of Chalcedon, while it raised a dense cloud of words, and cost its champions infinite pains to select the right form of words in order to safeguard celestial truths, was at the bottom very simple. On the side of error it was an assault upon the facts enshrined by St. John in the beginning of his Gospel, " the Word was God"; "and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us"; and by St. Matthew in the .baptismal formula, which made the whole Christian people : " the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ". On the side of truth it was to maintain the Incarnation and the Blessed Trinity, on which two things the whole Christian revelation rested, and on which the whole Christian life had been supported from the day of Pentecost. The two cohere inseparably together. Arius, Apollinaris, Macedonius, Nestorius, Eutyches, attacked one or both. It is difficult in any way to misstate the doctrine that the Son of God be- 26 402 THE FLOWERING OF PATEISTIC LITEKATUKE. came Man, without further misstating "the Name," that is, the Being, "of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost". We find that almost all the writers of this period wrote against the impugners of these two doctrines. Against Arius and Macedonius, all the energy of faith and learning, all the force of prayer and science, were spent by Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa, Ephraem, Didymus, Amphilochius, Chrysostome, CyrU of Alexandria, Hilary, Ambrose, Marius Victorinus, Augustine, Prudentius, Lucifer of Cagliari, Eusebius of Vercelli, Zeno of Verona. Against ApoUinaris Athanasius and Basil carried on the con- flict ; against Nestorius and Eutyches, Cyril of Alex- andria, Proclus, Theodoret ; against Eutyches, Leo and Cassian. Further, the error of Pelagius rendered the Incarnation unnecessary ; for if man could be saved by the strength of nature, without grace, it was not neces- sary that the Author of nature should assume the creature, to restore it. In that case, certainly " Mestier non era partorir Maria ". Against this most destructive heresy, which is said to have been the offspring of the Nestorian error, though preceding it in time,^ Optatus of Milevi, Jerome, Prosper, but especially Augustine, contended ; and the same against the Donatist schism, which tended to destroy the work of Christ in the unity of His spiritual body, as the Pelagian destroyed the need of His coming in the body ^ According to the couplet — Kestoriana Ines successit Pelagiaiite, Quae tamen est utero progenerata siio. THE FLOWERING OF PATKISTIC LITERATURE. 403 at all. Augustine further spent much time in exposing the Manichsean perversion of the Being of God, in which he had himself been so long involved. Jerome censured certain impugners of the Blessed Virgin's honour, Jovian, Helvidius, and Vigilantius. It is apparent now, when we look back upon these heresies and schisms ^ as a .whole, that they have a very- close connection with each other. And for the historian it is most noteworthy that the great victory of the Church betokened by the conversion of Constantine, which seemed to mark the end of a pagan persecution, carried on by the mightiest empire that has yet arisen in the world's history, was simultaneous with the outbreak of a contest so deadly in the very bosom of the Church as to threaten her dissolution. It may be doubted whether any prospect can be found in all her annals more terrible than that which seemed to lie before her in the last year,^ a.d. 361, of the reign of Constantius, when he was taken away by a fever at the age of forty-four. The force of heresy has never since risen higher : the episcopate has never since been so near failing. There is no one of the divine promises to the Church on which the mind has more need to dwell, or to which her nineteen centuries of life bear so 1 1 say schisms, because the position taken up by the Eastern bishops at the conciliabulum of Philippopolis against the council of Sardica threatened the unity of the Church as much as the Donatists. " Seefor proof theopeningof St. Hilary's libellus, A. D. 360, ' ' Tempusestloquendi : quia jam preeteriit tempus tacendi, Christue expectatur, quia obtinuit antichristus. Clament pastores, quia mercenarii fugemnt. Ponamus animas pro ovibus, quia fares introierunt, et leo siEviens circuit. Sustineatur tribulatio, qualis non fuit a constitutione mundi." 404 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. constant a witness, as that contained in the words, "the gates of hell shall not prevail". Between Athanasius and Constantius the forces seemed unequally divided ; but the former endured five banishments and closed his episcopate of forty-five years in peace upon his patriarchal throne : the latter died in middle life, his work unaccomplished, his throne taken by the infidel cousin whom he feared and hated, and whose enmity as an apostate from the Church worked for her deliverance. The mind also of Athanasius and his fellow-workers, united with their suflferings, prevailed. The knot of heresies generated by Arius, together with the schism which they animated, is extinct and exploded. The most that can be said for him is, that having infected the young faith of the noblest Teuton tribes, the Goths and Vandals, he was at length cast out of them, and they became members of the one Catholic family. The heresy expelled turned into an open foe, and finally Arius passed into Mahomet. Now it is a fact that the rise of the Arian heresy was followed by a great outburst of scriptural study. What is the connection between these two facts ? I conceive it to be that the defenders of the Church saw in the Scriptures the great arsenal of defence for what they had hitherto received by unquestioning inheritance in the order of the Church. St. Athanasius says in one place concerning the word being from eternity with the Father, of one substance with Him : " See, we are proving that this view has been transmitted from THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 40S Fathers to Fathers. But you, modern Jews and disciples of Caiaphas, whom can you assign as Fathers to your phrases ? " What he here says of this one great doctrine, he held likewise concerning the whole govern- ment and doctrine of the Church. They were all comprehended in " the rule of faith " ; and this rule was the basis of his own teaching. " He assumes," says Cardinal Newman, " that there is a tradition, substantive, independent, and authoritative, such as to supply for us the true sense of Scripture in doctrinal matters — a tradition carried on from generation to generation by the practice of catechising and by the other ministra- tions of Holy Church. He does not care to contend that no other meaning of certain passages of Scripture besides this traditional Catholic sense is possible or is plausible, whether true or not, but simply that any sense inconsistent with the Catholic is untrue, untrue because the traditional sense is apostolic and decisive. What h& was instructed in at school and in church, the voice of the Christian people, the analogy of faith, the ecclesiastical (ftpovrjfjia, the writings of saints ; these are enough for him. He is in no sense an enquirer, nor a mere disputant ; he has received, and he transmits." Again, " the fundamental idea with which he starts in the controversy is a deep sense of the authority of tradition, which he considers to have a definite jurisdic- tion even in the interpretation of Scripture, though at the same time he seems to consider that Scripture thus interpretated, is a document of final appeal in enquiry and in disputation. Hence, in his view of religion, is 406 THK FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. the magnitude of the evil which he is combating, and which exists prior to that extreme aggravation of it (about which no Catholic can doubt) involved in the characteristic tenet of Arianism itself. According to him, opposition to the witness of the Church, separation from its communion, private judgment overbearing the authorised catechetical teaching, the fact of a denomina- tion, as men now speak, this is a self-condemnation ; and the heretical tenet, whatever it may happen to be, which is its formal life, is a spiritual poison, and nothing else, the sowing of the evil one upon the good seed, in whatever age and place it is found ; and he applies to all separatists the Apostle's words, They went out from us, for they were not of us." Thus he laid the utmost stress upon catechising, as in fact supplying the evidence of tradition as to the doctrine which Arius blasphemed. " Let them tell us by what teacher or by what tradition they have derived these notions concerning the Saviour." " For who was ever yet a hearer of such a doctrine ? or whence or from whom did the abettors and hirelings of the heresy gain it ? Who thus expounded to them when they were at school ? Who told them ' Abandon the worship of the creation, and then draw near and worship a creature and a work ' ? But if they them- selves own that they have heard it now for the first time, how can they deny that this heresy is foreign and not from our Fathers \ But what is not from our Fathers, but has come to light in this day, how can it be but that of which the blessed Paul has foretold, tha't in THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 407 the latter times some shall depart from the sound faith?" " Who is there, who, when he heard in his first catechisings, that God had a Son, and had made all things in His proper Word, did not so understand it in that sense which we now intend ? Who, when the Arian heresy began, but at once, on hearing its teachers, was startled, as if they taught strange things 1 " Cardinal Newman supports these statements by a great number of passages from many authors, and then adds : " From these it would appear that the two main sources of Eevelation are Scripture and Tradition ; that these constitute one Eule of Faith, and that, some- times as a composite rule, sometimes as a double and co-ordinate, sometimes as an alternative, under the magisterium, of course, of the Church, and' without an appeal to the private judgment of individuals ". Indeed " the great and essential difference between Catholics and non-Catholics was, that Catholics interpreted Scrip- ture by Tradition, and non-Catholics by their own private judgment ". I believe that in the words above quoted,^ Cardinal Newman has given an accurate view of the position and principles held, not only by Athanasius, but by the whole body of writers in the period stretching from '^ Notes on Athcmasius, pp. 311, 250, 61, 63, 312, 264. The articles upon Definitions, Catechising, Heresies, Heretics, Private Judgment, the Rule of Faith, Authority of Scripture, Tradition, if read together, will be found to con- tain a view of the Antenicene Church, supported by vast erudition, and throwing much light upon that unknown sea. I have quoted some of these passages in Vol, IV. in a somewhat different connection. 408 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. Athanasius to St. Leo, and of the Church herself at the Nicene Council, and the succeeding period. When, therefore, her very foundation was assailed, when the tradition on which her teaching, her sacra- ments, her daily rule of life, and her government alike rested, was in danger, her children, resting ^ on that tradition itself, turned with hitherto unexampled ardour to the Holy Scriptures for support and corroboration. For instance, the very mystery in and by which her worship began, which her Fathers called "the tremendous and unbloody sacrifice," the priesthood, according to the order of Melchisedek, and the rite in which it was celebrated day after day from the beginning, all this expressed the Godhead of her Lord, being as an insti- tution before, and independent of, its record, in the written gospels and the epistle of St. Paul. The nega- tion invented by Arius evacuated this mystery of all its efficacy.-^ This, then, is one instance in which the Fathers sought by the testimony of Scripture to confirm what tradition had handed down to them. Thus each assault of heresy threw the faithful upon a more earnest and complete study of Scripture. Of St. Ephraem, St. Gregory ^ of Nyssa says, that he was incessantly engaged in the study of scripture, and wrote (ommentaries on the whole Old and New Testament. Eufinus ^ writes of St. Basil and St. Gregory, that they 1 Does not Athanasius allude to this when, as above quoted, he says, "Abandon the worship of creation, and then draw near and worship a ci-eatnre, and a work" ? i.e., the Lord's Body in the Eucharist, which, as St. Augustine says, "we should sin if we did not adore," but which Arius made " a creature and a work ". - In his panegyric. ^ Kufinua, Rist. a. 9. THE FLOWERING OF PATEISTIC LITERATURE. 409 are said, putting aside all Greek literature, to have passed thirteen years together studying the Scriptures alone, in doing which they followed out the sense, not from their private opinion, but by the writings and authority of the Fathers. Theology itself may be termed the scientific exposi- tion^ and proving of the Church's traditional belief, and of this Athanasius has been called the father. The movement, therefore, which drew all the great writers of this period to study, as a whole, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and as a result of their study to make commentaries, and, further, to deliver homilies upon them, may be considered, not only a natural expansion of devotion, but also an efi'ort to corroborate the existing order, discipline, sacraments, belief, and usages of the Church by the testimony of Ood Himself, whether delivered in prophecy to the writers of the Old Testament, or uttering the deep aspirations of the heart in psalms, or recorded as history by evangelists, or enforced as exhortation by Apostles, or seen in vision by the one who lay on the Lord's breast. The subject of unbounded interest to them in doing this was the illustration of faith and the enforcing of a holy morality. Into questions raised by modern criticism, and which not unfrequently serve to imperil faith and pervert morals, they did not enter. But the key which they used for unlocking Scripture was that so dwelt upon by Athanasius, the ecclesiastical sense. ^ Nirschl, ii, 47. 4IO THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. But while those whom we now call " the Fathers " used the ecclesiastical sense as the key of knowledge in the interpretation of Scripture, Arius was remarkable for not using this key. Thus, instead of the rule of faith on the subject of the Divine Trinity and Filiation, he used a private key of his own reasoning : such as, How could a Father have a Son if He was not before Him, and how could a Son have a Father without being after Him? And how could the nature which is ingenerate be the same nature as that which is generated? As if "how could" entered into the being of the Almighty and Eternal One. The result was, that Arius and those who followed him in this method of disregarding the ecclesiastical sense for the interpretation of Scripture, used these Scriptures not to corroborate the existing faith and order of the Church, as historically handed down from the beginning, but to substitute another belief, and to change the order. I will mention here fifteen chief champions of the Church in this period, grouping them partly from the time in which they lived, and partly from their work, in five triads. The first triad shall be of the three writers and con- fessors, the chief glory respectively of Egypt, of Gaul, and of Syria : Athanasius, Hilary, and Ephraem. Athanasius was born, and Ephraem also, in the last decade of the third century ; Hilary some twenty-five years later, but he died about 369, Athanasius in 373 ; Ephraem in or near 379. Thus they are exactly con- THE FLOWERING OF PATEISTIC LITERATURE. 411 temporaxies, especially in the period of their intellectual work. The world has been full of the glory of Athanasius for fifteen centuries since he went to his reward. I will let one who has lived upon him speak of him. Cardinal Newman says : " This renowned Father is, in ecclesiastical history, the special doctor of the sacred truth w^hich Arius denied ; bringing it out into shape and system so fully and luminously that he may be said to have exhausted his subject, as far as it lies open to the human intellect". He "accompanies his exposi- tion of doctrine with manifestations of character which are of great interest and value". Himself nurtured by the tradition of- the Church, he is fierce only against the denial of it ; of a " prudent, temperate spirit and practical good sense " ; " self-distrustful and subdued in his comments on Scripture and his controversial answers ; he, the foremost doctor of the Divine Sonship, being the most modest as well as the most authoritative of teachers". And he quotes the judgment of Photius upon him, thus : " In his writings Athanasius is ever perspicuous, never wordy, never involved. He is keen, deep, nervous in his mode of arguing, and marvellously fertile. His argumentation has nothing poor or puerile in it, as happens in the case of the young or half-edu- cated, but is philosophical and magnificent, full of thought and with broad views, fortified by testimonies of Scripture and weighty proofs. Especially such is he in his treatises ' Against the Greeks ' and ' On the Incar- nation,' and in his Pentabiblus against Arius, which is 412 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. a triumpliant defeat of every heresy, and eminently of Arianism. And if we were to say that Gregory Theo- logus and the divine Basil, as if drawing from a well, derived from this treatise their beautiful and luminous arguments against the heresy, I consider we should not be far from the mark." The Cardinal's own measure of him, as to style, is given in the words : " Erasmus seems to prefer him as a writer to all the Fathers, and certainly, in my own judgment, no one comes near him but Chry- sostome and Jerome ".^ Of his whole character St. Gregory begins his funeral oration with the words : " When I praise Athanasius I shall praise virtue. For to name him is to praise virtue, since he had in himself collected all virtue, or, to speak more truly, he has. For all who have lived according to God, though they depart hence, live to God. Whence He is said to be the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, who is the God not of the dead, but of the living." And Basil,^ in his utmost distress, wrote to him : " When we look at the state of things and consider the difficulties under which every exertion for good seems to be hampered as by a chain, we fall into quite a despair of ourselves ; but when we turn to the weight which your character carries with it, and reflect how the Lord has provided you to heal the weaknesses of the churches, we recover our thoughts, and rouse ourselves from individual despair to the hope of better things." A great number of his writings, dogmatic, historic, ^ St. Athanasius, vol. ii. 51-9, vol. i. 152. " Quoted by Migne, xxv. 275. THE FLO WEEING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 413 commentaries and letters, have been preserved; and fifteen of the Pascal Letters which he wrote in the forty-five years of" his episcopate, a special function of the Alexandrine bishop exercised at the Epiphany of each year, have been lately recovered. Had all been preserved they would have given us much-needed infor- mation respecting that unrivalled confessorship, and the general history of the years during which it lasted, which is wanting. What Athanasius ^ in the conflict with Arianism was for the East, his contemporary Hilary was for Gaul and Italy. As he resembled him in learning and in spirit, in piety, eloquence, and confessorship, he has. been called the Athanasius of the West. He was born at Poitiers between 320 and 330, of a distinguished, family ; devoted himself to the study of the Latin and Greek languages and to Philosophy. From Philosophy he went on to the study of Holy Scripture. To use his. own words ^ : " My mind was eager not only to fulfil these duties which it would be most criminal and miser- able not to fulfil ; but to know God, the author of so great a gift as life, to whom it owed itself entirely ; in service to whom it placed its own nobility ; whom it recognised as the source of every hope .which it could form ; in whose goodness it will rest as in a safe and familiar harbour amid the storm of pressing troubles. The keenest desire was kindled in me to understand or to become acquainted with this God." The issue of his enquiry was that he became a Chris- 1 See Nirschl, ii. 75, &c. = De Trinitatc, i. 3. 414 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. tian, and about the year 350 was baptised with his wife and their only child, a daughter. Then he shewed himself the model of a Christian. It would seem that from his baptism he lived in continence. Soon after, at least before 358, the unanimous voice of clergy and people called him to the see of his native city. He devoted himself entirely to a charge which he ■deemed divine. The renown of his gifts and virtues went beyond Aquitaine ; but he was not permitted long to wield his pastoral staff in tranquillity. The Arian Constantius, though only a catechumen, had assembled more than three hundred Western bishops at Milan in 355, and persecuted them into condemning Athanasius. Those who would not yield were banished ; as Eusebius, bishop of Vercelli, Lucifer of Cagliari, Dionysius of MUan ; Paul of Treves was already an exile in Phrygia. Presently the same lot fell upon Pope Liberius and Hosius of Cordova. The Arian Auxentius took the see •of Milan ; and Saturninus, metropolitan of Aries, pro- moted Arianism in Gaul. So the triumph of the heresy in the West seemed complete. Then Hilary appeared at the head of the Gallic bishops against his own metropolitan Saturninus. They signed a decree, which was probably drawn up by him, exclud- ing Saturninus and tho two Arian bishops, Ursacius and Valens, the special instigators of Constantius, from their communion. Saturninus, to punish Hilary, traduced iim to the emperor. He defended himself with brilliant power ; but the emperor caused the Caesar Julian, who then ruled for him in Gaul, to call a synod at Biterrae, THE FLOWEKING OF PATRISTIC LITERATQilE. 4x5 the present Beziers, which deposed him, and banished him to Phrygia, where he bravely bore witness to the truth. The Gallic bishops remained in communion with him, and his see was not filled up. Hilary was active in his Phrygian banishment, writ- ing a work on the Blessed Trinity, which continues in renown to the present day, by the side of St. Augustine's work. He strove to inform the Eastern bishops as to the importance of the great struggle, and the position of the Western bishops in regard to it. He was present at the great council of Seleucia, the Eastern counterpart of the council of Eimini, where he was received with much goodwill, and bore witness to the Nicene belief of the West, though he took no part in the public pro- ceedings. He witnessed the denial of the Godhead of Christ, and saw the semi-Arian bishops, after the coun- cil, deprived of their sees, and replaced by partisans of Ursacius and Valens. Well aware that their support was in the emperor, he betook himself to Constantinople, and asked an audience of Constantius, in the intention of informing him. He composed a petition to him, asking to be allowed a public disputation with his metropolitan Saturninus. The party was afraid to grant this, and prevailed on the emperor to terminate his sojourn in Constantinople by sending him back to Gaul. Thus, after four years' banishment, he returned in triumph to Poitiers. He was received with joy. St. Martin, who then lived in solitude in Pannonia, came to meet and salute the confessor, and afterwards, with the help of Hilary, built, in order to be near him, the first 4l6 THE FLOWERING OF PATEISTIC LITERATURE. monastery of Gaul, Ligug^, close to Poitiers. HUary worked witli all zeal to exterminate Arianism in Gaul. Many synods were held for this. They all rejected the decrees of Eimini, and accepted the Nicene Oreed. Saturninus and the other chiefs of the heresy were de- posed and banished at a great council held at Paris ; and, again, one at Biterrse, presided over by Hilary. The chief merit of restoring the faith in France belonged to Hilary. When the emperor Valentinian had succeeded, in 364, Hilary also went to Milan, and attempted to convict Auxentius of the heresy. A public disputation was granted him, at which ten bishops were present. Aux- entius was so hard pushed that he was reduced to con- fess the consubstantiality of the Son. But he had the art to persuade Valentinian both of his own orthodoxy, by a creed which he framed, and that his opponent was a disturber of the peace, who thereupon was ordered to return to his diocese. Auxentius from that time was at least obliged to conceal his heresy, and the victory was complete when, afterwards, St. Ambrose succeeded him. This was the public life of Hilary, who is supposed to have died in 369, when he was not yet fifty years of age. His chief work is that on the Trinity, distinguished for its force of speculative thought, the completeness of its scriptural arguments, its logical order, the full refiita- tion of opponents, and a most carefully finished style. It was the first Western work on the doctrine of the Logos, and a masterpiece. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 417 Hilary also was the first Western to write commen- taries on Scripture, which were upon St. Matthew and the Psalms : again, the first hymnnologist — and he has left a number of polemical writings. The letter against Constantius, when he was refused a public hearing, is of extraordinary force and freedom. St. Jerome says of him : " I cannot blame so great a man, the most eloquent of his time, who is proclaimed, wherever the Eoman name is known, for the merit of his confession, the industry of his life, and his brilliant eloquence ". St. Augustine calls him no msan authority on the treatment of Scripture and maintenance of the faith. He was the first properly dogmatic Latin writer. The most illustrious of the Syrian Fathers is Ephraem,^ who has been called "Prophet of the Syrians," "Harp of the Holy Ghost," " Pillar of the Church," " Teacher of the world ". He was born of poor Christian parents at Nisibis, in Mesopotamia, at the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century. He received a pious education, chose the life of solitude, and sought for his teacher James, bishop of Nisibis, who had such affection for him as to take him to the Nicene Council in 325, and, on his return, made him master of his school at Nisibis. Here Ephraem worked with great success until the city was ceded by Jovian to the Persians in 364, and they broke up the school. Thereupon, Ephraem betook himself to Edessa, espe- cially to venerate the relics of the Apostle Thomas. He 1 Nirschl, ii. 255, &c. 27 41 8 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. remained for some time with the solitaries near the city, inhabiting a cavern. Finally he took the city for his residence, was called by its name, and the school which he opened there became a centre of the faith. Ephraem drew all eyes upon him as a distinguished teacher, but also as a preacher of great power and unction, a most prolific writer of hymns, and a great opponent of the numerous heretics ; moreover, as a pattern of penitence, humility, and poverty. And he communicated to his hearers what he felt himself, so that he was called " the Preacher of Penance ". He became a deacon, and also, as is judged from passages in his writings, a priest. He had the greatest sympathy for the poor, and possessed an irresistible charm for aU : his look, his word, his tone, would soften the hardest hearts into compassion. Thus he is said, during an epidemic, to have provided three hundred beds in Edessa for poor sufferers. He is also said to have spent some time in Egypt, visiting the monks and hermits there ; and, quite in his last years, he paid a visit to St. Basil at Csesarea, whom he had seen in a vision as a pillar of fire. The last recorded act of his life is a funeral oration over St. Basil, shortly after whose death he died himself, about the year 379. He left a vast number of commentaries on the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament, of homilies, and of metrical hymns on the chief mysteries of our Lord. They were written in Syriac, many after- wards translated into Greek, and, besides, moral and ascetical writings. His hymns and homilies formed THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 419 part of the ritual of the Syrian church from his own days to the present time ; and, as he preceded the Nestorian and Eutychean heresies in his own country, they also kept and valued his writings. Like St. Athanaaius, he is a witness of the Antenicene church's faith. His writings have been marvellously preserved in the Syrian monastery of the Wadi-al-Natrum in Egypt, whence they have been procured at the beginning of the eighteenth century for the great Roman edition, and in our own time by further manuscripts brought to the libraries of Paris and London. Among the latter are eight remarkable homilies for the services of the Holy Week. The fourth of these narrates the institution of the Eucharist a^nd the whole doctrine of the Church respecting this sacrament and the sacrifice of the Mass. Before it are words which contain the most ancient testimony of the Syrian church to the Primacy of Peter and his prerogative of infallible teaching. They are thus translated from the original Syriac : — " After Simon had obeyed the Lord and allowed his feet to be washed, the Lord resumed his dress, and, whUe the supper continued, took again his place. As they were all reclining, Jesus said. Know you why I have done this. If I do not explain My mysteries, who will understand them ? If I do not fulfil the types, who wiU know My will ? I must do all which the prophets have said concerning Me ; it behoves Me to become the teacher of wisdom to you. Simon, My disciple, I have made thee the foundation of Holy Church, I have 420 THE FLOWERING OF PATEISTIC LITERATURE. already called thee the Eock,^ because thou shalt sustain My whole building. Thou art the bishop^ of those who build Me a church on earth. If they would build any- thing reprobate, do thou, the foundation, repress them. Thou art the source of the fountain whence My doctrine is derived. Thou art the head of My disciples. Through- thee wiU I give all nations to drink. Thine is that life- giving sweetness which I bestow. Thee have I chosen to be in My institution as the first-bom,^ and to become the heir of My treasures. I have given to thee the keys of My kingdom. 1 have appointed thee the chief over all My treasures." As a witness, St. Ephraem speaks for the whole Syrian church. During his life, say from 300 to 380, it was, I suppose, the most flourishing part of the whole Church, full of great cities, in which there was a large Christian population. Besides this testimony to the Primacy, and that which follows concerning the Eucharist (wherein he says : " What I have now given to you think not to be bread ; receive, eat it, nor break it into crumbs ; what I have called My Body is so indeed ; its smallest crumb can sanctify millions, and is sufficient to give life to all who eat it "), there are in his extant works testimonies to the Godhead of Christ, the myster}'- of the Trinity, the number of the sacraments, the freedom of the will, the genuineness of the deutero-canonical scriptures, the veneration of the saints. He speaks for Syria as Hilary 1 That is, Cephas, signifying in Syriac, the language in which our Lord spoke, at once Petra and Petrus. 2 This word, says Dr. Lamy, signifies the same as the Greek ima-Kvoms. — Vol. i., p. 412. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 42 1 for Graul, and Athanasius for Egypt. It is to be re- marked that he died sixty years before St. Leo's acces- sion to the throne of St. Peter, and that he precedes all those letters of the Popes from Siricius forwards, which I have quoted above, and which rest on that foundation of authority which he has described in terms at least as absolute as theirs. We come now to the Cappadocian triad, Basil and the two Gregories, as it were three passion-flowers of equal beauty, growing on the same stem. Basil was born at Csesarea in 329, of a family distinguished for rank, but yet more for its pietj'-, which has given seven saints to the Church : his grandmother Macrina, his father Basil, his mother Emmelia, his sister Macrina, his two brothers, Peter of Sebaste and Gregory of Nyssa. He studied at the most celebrated schools of the time : Csesarea, Constantinople, and Athens. After five years' stay at the last, he returned to Csesarea at the age of twenty-six, renounced the profession of rhetor, was baptised, became a lector, travelled into Palestine and Egypt, to learn the life of the hermits, and then withdrew into a solitude in Pontus, where his mother and sister had already established a convent. Here he spent a long time in prayer and contemplation, in labour and study, with his friend Gregory. In 364, when thirty-five years of age, he was made priest by his bishop Eusebius, and after some years' work in Csesarea, during which at a time of famine he gave all his goods to support the poor and sick, he was elected to succeed Eusebius in the great see, which was at the head of 422 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. fifty bishops. Here, for nearly nine years, he resisted the Arianism which the emperor Valens was trying to impose on the Eastern church, whose praetorian prefect Modestus, the same who caused eighty ecclesiastics of Constantinople to be turned adrift in a burning ship, assaulted him in vain with threats of banishment, confis- cation, and death. The first three years of Basil's episcopate were the last years of Athanasius : he con- sulted and honoured him in life, and became at his death the chief pillar of the Eastern church, soliciting repeatedly the help of Pope Damasus in its troubles and confusion, of which his letters give the most terrible account. His severe life, together with the calamities which he strove to avert, wore out his strength prema- turely, and he died in his forty-ninth year. The extraordinary greatness of this doctor of the Church is manifest in the writings which he left : his dogmatic works in defence of the blessed Trinity and the Incarnation, his commentaries on Scripture, his homilies, his works on the religious life, and more than three hundred letters, masterly in style and contents. Great in the practice of the religious life ; great as bishop ; great as preacher, as commentator, as a founder of orders, it is his least distinction that he was an accomplished gentleman in word and deed, through all the relations of life. He stands out, like his contem- porary St. Ambrose, as the bishop who feared not emperors. The villany of Valens shrunk before him, whose ignominious death he just outlived ; while Ambrose also lived long enough to embalm the memory THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 423 of the conqueror, who had bowed to his reproof in the height of his power. In them the East and the West produced respectively two bishops of equal courage, vigour, and ability. His friend Gregory, born in 326, shared Basil's life of study at Athens, and of ascetic retirement in Pontus, after being baptised at the age of thirty. At the age of thirty-five he was forcibly ordained priest by his father ; and Basil, having become archbishop of Csesarea, made him a bishop against his will in 372. He was pursuing a contemplative life in Isauria, when the death of Basil strengthened him in the resolve to leave the world. But in spite of himself he was drawn back into its troubles, being summoned by the emperor Gratiah in 379 to Constantinople, in order that he might restore the condition of Catholics in the new capital, from whom the tyranny of Valens had taken their churches. Here, in a private dwelling, which he had made into the small church- of the Eesurrection, he reawakened, by the power of his eloquence, the dormant Catholic spirit. For a moment he sat upon the bishop's throne ; but being as anxious to abdicate it as ambitious men around him to take possession of it, he speedily bade them farewell, and offered himself, as Jonas, to still the storm of conflicting interest, which arose upon the death of Meletius. The last years of his life he spent in re- tirement, dying in 389, at the age of sixty- three. He left behind him sermons, letters, and poems. The forty- five sermons take a rank unsurpassed by anything in patristic literature, and have won him the special title 424 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. of " the Theologian ". More than two hundred letters bear witness to his learning and kindliness. His poems, which perhaps should rather be called verses, are most valuable for the dogmatic and historical matter which they contain. The third of this brotherhood, Gregory of Nyssa, is supposed to have been born in 330, a year after Basil, who, together with his sister Makrina, gave him the first instruction. He became a teacher of eloquence, not at first following the example of his brother and friend. But the earnest words of the latter moved him to renounce the world. He led for some time a solitary life; afterwards the bishops of his brother's province chose him for bishop of Nyssa, in 372, which he took against his will, and met with persecution and banish- ment until the death of Valens. Sorrow succeeded in the loss of his brother Basil, over whom he held a funeral discourse, going thence to the death-bed of his sister Makrina. Theodosius called him to the Council of 381, where he was among the most esteemed, preaching when his friend St. Gregory was installed in the chair of Constantinople, and at the funeral of Meletius of Antioch, president of the council. Again he preached there at the death of the empress Flacilla. He appears to have died about 394. He has left a mass of writings which rank no way below those of his two friends. His refutation of Eunomius, defending the previous work of his brother Basil, is deemed by Photius, in elegance of treatment, fullness of thought, strength of argument, the best which THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 425 lias been written against the Aria.n leader. His great ■catechism is of the highest value. His work against ApoUinaris is equally good. Like his brother, he has written on the work of the six days. He is remarkable among the Eastern Fathers for the range of his knowledge. A systematic thinker of high order, endeavouring to grasp and establish doctrines in their organic connection, yet recognising faith as in a sphere as much above knowledge as revelation is above reason.-' He grounds his proofs always upon Scripture, which he esteems the rule and fountain of truth. As a speaker he takes as high a rank as any in his own time and all antiquity. Photius calls his style brilliant and delightful. What was the joint effect upon the progress of Theology produced by these three Fathers, so closely allied in family and intimate friendship ? All the three were equally champions of the Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation. All the three were men who possessed all the knowledge of the time, with great natural abilities, suffering persecution for justice' sake. They are men in whose life and character, learning and ability, no flaw ■could be found. Masters of thought in the most beautiful of languages, which had lost none of its variety, ■elegance, or accuracy, whether issuing as the living word from their mouths, or fixed as the written word on their pages, they brought to the cause of truth, in respect of the two great doctrines which underlie the Christian faith, all which natural power could produce when ' Nirschl, ii. 212. 426 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. wrought into supernatural sanctity ; and in this Basil and the two Gregories stand beside Hilary, Ephraem, and Athanasius himself. Somewhat elder in birth than either of these three, but covering with his episcopate of thirty-five years almost the whole time in which they wrought and acted, was St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Born there in 315, and brought up in pious studies and exercises, he was made a deacon about twenty years of age, and seems to have led a strict ascetic life. At thirty the bishop Maximus made him a priest, and committed to him the office of preaching and of instructing the highest class of catechumens. To this we owe one of the most valuable works which have come down to us, the catechetical lectures which he delivered, eighteen in the Lent of the year 347, to those who were to be " enlightened," and five in the following Easter week, to those who "had received the illumination " of baptism. This occasion led him to expound the belief and practice of the Church at Jerusalem. The eighteen lectures preceding baptism illustrate the Creed; the five following illustrate the mysteries usually veiled at that time under the disciplina arcani. Thus in the fourth of their second series the Eucharist is set forth as a sacrament, in the fifth as a sacrifice. In the former the newly-baptised are enjoined "to be fully persuaded that what seems bread is not bread, though bread by taste, but the Body of Christ, and that what seems wine is not wine, though the taste will have it so, but the Blood of Christ". In the latter, St. Cyril goes through the actual Eucharistic THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 427 Liturgy, mentioning the washing of hands, the kiss of peace, the sursum corda, the preface and tris-agion, the conversion, the commemoration of the living and the dead, the Lord's Prayer, the communion, the mode of receiving, and the thanksgiving. His words upon the eucharistic sacrifice itself are these : " Then, having hallowed ourselves by these spiritual hymns, we invoke God, the lover of man, to send down the Holy Spirit upon what is lying before us, that He may make the bread the Body of Christ, and the wine the Blood of Christ. For assuredly whatever the Holy Spirit touches, that is sanctified and changed. Then, after having completed the spiritual sacrifice, the un- bloody worship, upon that sacrifice of propitiation we invoke God for the common peace of the churches ; for the w^ell-being of the world ; for kings, for soldiers, and allies ; for the sick ; for the suffering ; and, in a word, we all beseech for all who need help, and we ofier this sacrifice. Then we make mention of those who have entered into their rest, first patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, that God by their prayers and intercessions may receive our request. Then also in behalf of those at rest before us, holy fathers and bishops, and in general all of those at rest before us, believing that the greatest help will be to the souls for whom prayer is offered, from the holy and tremendous Sacrifice lying before us." St. Cyril received the crown of confessorship, since during his episcopate, which lasted from 351 to 386, he was banished during sixteen years ; first, five years 428 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. under Constantine, and eleven years under Valens, from 367 to 378. St. Epiphanius, the other great witness of Palestine, w-as born in 310, before St. Cyril, and died after him in 403, having been for thirty-six years, from 367, metro- politan of Cyprus. Thus his life stretched almost through that agitated fourth century, and he beheld the rise, the tyrannical domination, and the fall of its great heresy. Inferior in style to those hitherto mentioned, he was greatly esteemed for learning and revered for his uniform ascetic piety, and his steadfast witness to the truth. One of his works contains a positive statement of the right doctrine in the midst of the confusion caused by the Arian and semi-Arian conflicts ; another describes eighty heresies which down to his time had sprung up : in his own words, " a medicine chest for those who had been bitten by serpents ". St. Jerome sums up his praise in the words that he was "the father of almost all the bishops, and a remnant of ancient holiness ". Antioch, from the time its noble bishop and confessor Eustathius had been deposed in 330 by the faction of the Nicomedian Eusebius, was suffering from a disputed succession which entailed a schism, divided the popula- tion, and paralysed the legitimate influence of the great see of the East. It had been beyond the power of Athanasius, of Gregory of Nazianzum, of Pope Damasus, to heal this schism : it had defied and outlived Theodosius. But Antioch produced in the latter half of the century the great confessor and renowned preacher, for THE FLOWEEING OF PATKISTIO LITERATURE. 429 whose name of John subsequent ages in their admiration have substituted that of the Golden Mouth. Who shall deny greatness to Charlemagne, or eloquence to Chrysos- tome ? He was born at Antioch, probably in 345, the only son of a distinguished officer, and a mother left a widow at twenty, who dedicated her life to the education of her son, and was only not a Monica, because he listened to her teaching and her example from the beginning. He received baptism from Meletius in 369, was made a deacon in 380, and a priest by Flavian in 386. He had devoted his youth to study, severe discipline, and for some years to a solitary life. When at the full age of forty he was appointed preacher in the cathedral church of Antioch, that luxurious capital listened for twelve years to a stream of eloquence which never failed in sounding all the depths of the Christian life. At the end of these twelve years that unequalled renown led him to be called against his wishes to the most dangerous see of the Church, the arena of endless factions, in a people given up as a prey to courtiers, eunuchs, and barbarian soldiers of fortune. There during six years the preacher, who was unrivalled, shewed him- self likewise an admirable bishop, living the strict ascetic life of a saint in the very centre of worldly pomp. Then, banished by the jealousy of rival bishops, and the pride of an offended empress, acting on a feeble mind in possession of absolnte power, he passed the last three years of his life an exile in a wild Armenian village among the mountains, proclaiming almost with his last breath the truth which his example was shewing, that 43° THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. "no one can be hurt except by himself". Thus the greatest genius of his day was deposed from what was practically the second place in the Church, became a spectacle to men and angels, like the Apostle to whom he was devoted, and when at length he felt his strength ebbing, and was unable to follow further his enforced journey, he put on the white roTse of the newly -baptised, and lay down to rest in the church of a martyr who had warned him in vision of his end, being hiudself one whose confessorship outshines the glory of many martyrs. And so he was the greatest of all men in word, but greater than himself in deed. We possess large writings of St. Chrysostome, as a commentator on Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament : upon Genesis, Isaiah, St. Matthew, St. John, the Acts of the Apostles ; 246 homilies on the Pauline Apostles ; 486 on the whole New Testament. A word of St. Thomas Aquinas is recorded, that he would rather possess his commentary upon St. Matthew than the city of Paris. Of his language Suidas writes that it rushes down in a stronger stream than the stream of the Nile at the cataracts, and that never since the world began has anyone possessed such a fulness of language ; while St. Isidore calls him " a wise discloser of the secret things of God ". His discourses are like- wise dogmatic and polemical, against heretics, Jews, and heathens, and his exile has provided us with 237 letters, a picture of his magnanimous, loving, and pious spirit. There is no more faithful or more manifold witness of Christian truth in the patristic age ; no one who has THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITEKATDRE. 43 1 given so vivid a picture of society, heathen and Christian, in his time. The whole weight of St. Chrysostome's character, his living eloquence, and his writings were given against the Arian heresy, and its offshoots, the ApoUinarian and Macedonian. As he was a great corrector of life both by word and conduct, so he was a great builder of doctrine by positive exposition in the language of which he was a master. Cyril, Epiphanius, and Chrysostome may be called the Trio of Jerusalem and Antioch. 432 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. CHAPTER X. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. We now pass to the three great doctors of the West who belong to this period. Ambrose was born, probably, in the year 340, at Treves, where his father ruled as praetorian prefect of the Gauls. His father's early death in 354 caused him to remove, with his mother and his brother Satyrus, to Eome, where' his elder sister Marcellina was already an inmate of a convent. He received a learned education, and, together with his brother, distinguished himself greatly as a lawyer for his gift of speaking. His re- putation, combined with his high birth, led Annicius Probus, praetorian prefect of Italy, whose friendship he enjoyed, to recommend him to the emperor Valentinian for governor of the Ligurian and -iEmilian provinces. " Go," said Probus to him, " and govern, not as a judge, but as a bishop." So he came to Milan in 373. In the next year the Arian bishop, Auxentius, died, and a successor had to be chosen. The population, partly Arian and partly orthodox, was in a state of excitement. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 433 Ambrose was answerable for the public order, and ad- dressed a great crowd in the church upon the blessing of peace and union. They were listening with delight to his eloquence, when a child exclaimed, " Ambrose for bishop ". The word flashed like lightning on the crowd, and was met with universal acclaim. In vain the governor, who was not yet baptised, but only a cate- chumen, utterly surprised and confounded, excused him- self with entreaties and refusals, took to flight, and even attempted, by discrediting himself, to escape. The people would have Ambrose, and none but Ambrose ; and the emperor, when appealed to as a last resource, failed him, and was only too happy to have governors whom the people would choose for bishops. Ambrose had to yield ; he received baptism, then holy orders in a week's time, and was consecrated bishop the /th December, 374. Up to this time the life of Ambrose had been pure and blameless. Then a remarkable change took place. He recognised the will of God to make him a bishop, by an extraordinary choice of the people. He gave himself up to that will with the most perfect obedience. He began a severe life ; bestowed most of his goods on the poor and the churches; studied the Holy Scriptures, and the works of the Fathers: Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Didymus, and especially the writings of St. Basil, who had become Archbishop of Csesarea four years before. This he did under the guidance of the priest Simplician, to give himself the requisite theological training for the office of preacher. In this office he was unwearied, though, 28 434 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATUKB. as lie said himself, being taken from the eloquence of the bar, he had to learn while he was teaching. I know not whether history offers any fairer vision than the episcopate so strangely begun. When, ten years later, Augustine, a teacher of eloquence, and still in the mazes of error, saw him in the midst of his work, he described him thus : "To Milan I came, tp Ambrose the bishop, known to the whole world as among the best of men, Thy devout servant, whose eloquent discourse did at that time strenuously dispense unto Thy people the flower of Thy wheat, the gladness of Thy oil, and the sober intoxication of Thy wine. To him was I unknowingly led by Thee, that by him I might know- ingly be led to Thee. That man of God received me like a father, and looked with a benevolent and episcopal kindliness on my change of abode. And I began to love him, not, at first, indeed as a teacher of the truth — which I entirely despaired of in Thy Church — but as a man friendly to myself. And I studiously barkened to him pteaching to the people, not with the motive I should, but as it were trying to discover whether his eloquence came up to the fame thereof, or flowed fuller Or lower than was asserted ; and I hung on his words intently, but of the matter I was but as a' careless and contemptuous spectator. And I was delighted with the pleasantness of his speech, more erudite, yet less cheer- ful and soothing in manner than that of Faustus." Again, a little later : " I could not request of him what 1 wished as I wished, in that I was debarred from hearing and speaking to him by crowds of busy people THE FLOWERING OF PATEISTIC LITERATURE. 435 to whose infirmities he devoted himself. With whom, when he was not engaged (which was but a little time), he either was refreshing his body with necessary suste- nance or his mind with reading. But while reading, his eyes glanced over the pages and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. Ofttimes, when we had come (for no one was forbidden to enter, nor was it his custom that the arrival of those who came should be announced to him), we saw him thus reading to himself, and never otherwise ; and having long sat in silence (for who durst interrupt one so intent ?), we were fain to depart, inferring that, in the little time he secured for the recruiting of his mind, free from the clamour of other men's business, he was unwilling to be taken off." -^ Such was the ordinary day's life in his episcopate of twenty- two years. But Ambrose had also extraordinary work to do. About this very time he had to defend his Church from seizure by the Arian empress Justina ; he risked his life, and he saved his Church. Then again, he -had to go as ambassador to defend the throne of that same empress's son, Valentinian II., to the court of the usurper Maximus, who had murdered Gratian, and was reigning over Gaul, Spain, and Britain, acknowledged by Theodosius. In truth, his whole episcopate was cast in a terrible time. He witnessed the murder of the two young emperors, first Gratian, then Valentinian, in the bloom of their youth and promise ; he was the adviser of the living and the praiser of the dead ; he prefigured 1 ConfmioTis, lib. v. 13 and vi. 3, Edinburgh translation. 436 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. those mediseval bishops who were to be the personal friends and most trusted councillors of sovereigns, who were themselves set as stones in the all-encircling crown of St. Peter's See. And Theodosius, who had large experience of Eastern prelates, when he contrasted the subservience of a Nectarius, which admitted him to the inmost shrine at Constantinople, with the firmness whicb stopped him, red with the blood of a massacre, at the door in Milan, exclaimed, " In Ambrose alone have I found the bishop ". Twice, also, had Ambrose beheld Theodosius narrowly saving his own life and the em- pire ; and, sorrow of sorrows, he had to weep over his body at last, with the thrice repeated words, " I have loved this man," and to feel that the sun of Eome set with him. But he who was made a bishop from a neophyte, whose daily life was an unvaried round of doing and suffering, at the mercy of every enquirer, since he might be approached unannounced, who was no less ambassa- dor, minister, councillor of Roman emperors, found time in that episcopate of little more than twenty-two years to leave such works behind him as made him the earliest of the Church's four Western doctors, and one of her chiefest witnesses. He formed into treatises a multitude of commentaries on Scripture which he had delivered as homilies. They have thus come down to us. He has given a work on the duties of the Church's ministers, which answers in Christian literature to Cicero's heathen work. Like all the Fathers of the period, he has dwelt with special zest on the virginal THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 437 life. Hymns of his are enshrined in the services of the Church. Ninety-one letters written to emperors, bishops, governors, his brother Satyrus, his sister Marcel- lina, and others, are dogmatic, or moral, or scriptural, or confidential. All of them are valuable for history; all present the perfect Christian in the Eoman noble, the Ambrose of his time ; his activity for the empire and the Church ; his zeal and also his learning ; his cultivation and his piety, together with his prudence, kindness, and humility. He was to the West what Basil was to the East : a pair of bishops whose memory is a fragrance to all aftertime. St. Jerome was born at Stridon, on the borders of Dalmatia ; no less than a period of fifteen years is dis- puted as to the time of his birth, which is placed as early as 331, and as late as 346. I will follow the last date. From the age of seventeen^ he was educated at Rome, in the school of Donatus, perhaps also by Marius Victorinus, and was baptised there before the death of Pope Liberius in 366. He had to lament passages of his life before he was baptised, but appears from that time to have been full of zeal. In a visit to the court of Treves in 369, he resolved to renounce the world, and formed part of a fervent company of young men at Aquileia during three years from 370 to 373. He then went to the East, and lived in the Syrian desert of Chalcis during five years until 379. At Constantinople ' Of a letter written in 373 to Heliodorus he says, in his letter to Nepotian : "Dum essem adolescens, imo pcene puer, et primos impetus lasdvientis cetatis eremi duritia refrenarem". A greater age than twenty-seven can surely not be assigned to such expressions, which woixld put his hirth in 346. 438 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. in 380 and 381 he enjoyed the friendship and instruc- tion of St. Gregory Nazianzene. In 382 he was invited to Eome by Pope Damasus, and his residence there until August 385 was an important portion of his life. His reputation for learning and the ascetic life drew round him some of the highest nobility, men and women, such as Pammachius and Oceanus, Domnion, Marcellus, and Rogatian, Paula, her unmarried daughter Eustochium, her widowed daughter Blsesilla, Albina, and her daughters Marcella and Asella, Principia, Lea, Feli- citas, and Fabiola. Thus St. Jerome was the means of transplanting the life of the Fathers of the desert into the patrician families of Rome, when the general corrup- tion of Roman society was at one of its worst times. In 385, Pope Damasus having been succeeded by Siricius, St. Jerome resolved to leave Rome for good with a small company, of which Paula and Eustochium formed part. After visiting Antioch, Jerusalem, Alex- andria, and the monasteries of the Nitrian desert in Egypt, they settled at Bethlehem at the end of 386. Here St. Paula founded two monasteries, one for herself and her daughter and companions, one for St. Jerome, his brother, and other friends. In forming and watching over the inmates of these houses St. Jerome spent the remaining years of his life, thirty-four in number, being also engaged in incessant literary work, translation of the Scriptures, comment upon them ; devoted to the maintenance of the religious life in himself and all around him, watching with all the keenness of one who loved the purity of the Catholic faith as others love THE FLOWERING OF PATKISTIC LITERATURE. 439 wealth, pleasure, fame, that no error should arise unde- tected and unpunished ; especially no error as to the Person of our Lord, or the honour of His Mother, or the rank of the virginal life, or the necessity of grace, or the magisterium of St. Peter's successor. The greatest result of St. Jerome's fifty years of intel- lectual work, from 370 to 420, was that he gave to the Church a translation of the Scriptures which she has mainly used ever since. He was also one of the first masters of the spiritual life. We have 116 letters, the most charming and most original of his writings. They throw light upon the theological questions and struggles, and the ecclesiastical relations of his day, as well as depict his personal character. They are written in a style of which no less a judge than Erasmus has nof feared to say : " He has an art of speech which not only leaves behind it all Christian writers, but seems to me to rival even Cicero. At least, unless my love to that holy man deceives me, when I compare a passage of Jerome with one of Cicero, it strikes me as if I missed something, I know not what, even in that prince of elo- quence, so great in our Jerome is the variety, the weight of the sentences, the liveliness and many-sided- ness of thought." ^ In his own day a man thought him- self to be honoured by a single letter from him; but every heretic hated him bitterly. Among his letters may be mentioned that to Oceanus, on the virtues of a bishop ; that to Nepotian on the life of the clergy ; that to Paulinus on the ascetic life ; that to Heliodorus on his ^ Erasmus, Life of Jerome, quoted by Nirschl, ii. 423. 440 THE FLOWEEING OF PATEISTIC LITERATURE. life in the desert ; that to Lucian on contempt of the world ; that to Magnus on reading heathen books. Most perfect in matter as in style are his letters to his chief friends Paula, Fabiola, Marcella, on Christian per- fection ; Demetrius, Eustochium, on the glory of the Virginal Life ; Lseta, on the education of her daughter, the younger Paula ; Furia, Salvina, on widowhood. Four of his own age said of him : Augustine, " a most learned man, possessing all the three languages " ; Sulpicius, "' always reading, absorbed in his books : he gives himself no rest, night or day " ; Orosius, " I was retired at Bethlehem, sent by my father, Augustine, to learn the fear of the Lord, seated at the feet of Jerome " ; and Prosper, " Hebraeo, simul et Graio, Latioque venustus Eloquio, morum exemplum, mundique inagister". Twelve years after St. Ambrose had been called suddenly, and to his own great astonishment, from the seat of secular government to the chair of bishop in one of the greatest cities of the empire, an event as surpris- ing took place, in which he was an agent, and the consequences of which surpassed even those of his own life and labours. There was then residing in Milan among the imperial professors a young man renowned for his eloquence, passionately devoted to literature, eager for distinction, but leading a heathen life, and tormented with doubt, even as to the Being of God and the certainty of truth. The example, the words, the very look of Ambrose, had an effect upon this young man ; but he required a stroke of divine grace, like that THE ELOWEKING OF PATEISTIC LITERATUEE. 44 1 wMcli prostrated St. Paul, to convert him ; and the Tolle, lege, of the child, directing him to the words of the Apostle, was empowered to work a change as great as in the Apostle himself, when the aspirant after secular fame rose from the baptismal water to become the greatest of the Church's doctors. Augustine was con- verted at the age of thirty-two years, during nine of which he had been a Manichsean ; then he had fallen into doubt, so that he despaired of finding truth in the Church; during fifteen years he had been living in open sin. On Easter Eve, April 25, 387, he received baptism by the hands of St. Ambrose. From that day to the day of his death, forty-three years after, as bishop of Hippo Eoyal, he had but one thought, the glory of God; but one occupation, to bring all whom he met under the rule of that grace which he had received himself. The mother, whose prayers had done so much for him, was taken away when her work was accomplished ; the son, whose precocious beauty of mind and character filled him almost with fear, was taken likewise. Then, after a year spent in Eome, during which he saw the great capital in the untouched splendour which imperial magnificence from the time of Augustus had thrown round it, he returned to his native Thagaste, and set up close to it a company of friends, who led with him the ascetic life. Three years afterwards, in 391, called by an act of charity to Hippo, he was seized upon by the people, against his wishes, for the priesthood. In this act the aged bishop Valerius discerned an answer to his own prayers, who had asked for one to help him in 442 THE FLOWEEING OF PATEISTIC LITERATURE. the work of preaching, for which, as a Greek, he was not well qualified, from defective use of the Latin language. In a few years he obtained his wish to make of the priest, whom he had found through the grateful violence of his people, a coadjutor. In 395 Augustine was consecrated bishop, and speedily succeeded to the see. From that time during thirty-five years his life shews a power of intellectual energy almost unequalled, directed by as great a fervour of piety. He appears to have had the faculties of imagination and reasoning both in extraordinary degree, so that they balanced each other and produced a judgment, which never failed in acumen or in moderation ; while an inexhaustible treasure of ideas shewed itself on every subject to which he gave Jiis thought. The producing and the criticising mind, so seldom united, were equal in him — both intellect and practice being guided by a glow of piety and charity. When he became a Christian, he was already acquainted with Greek and Koman philosophy and history. We have still eight philosophical treatises composed in the interval between his baptism and his priesthood. In the forty years which ensued he was engaged in writing against the Manichees between the years 390 and 405 ; against the Donatists, from 400 to 412 ; against the Pelagians, from 410 to 430 ; against the Semipelagians, in 427 ; against the Arians, in 428. Commentaries upon the Old and New Testament stretch over the whole time : on the Psalms alone an immense volume; on the Gospel of St. John, 124 treatises; on THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 443 his epistles, 10. On the greatest of his works, the City of God, he spent thirteen years, from 413 to 426. And Alaric's transitory seizure of the capital of the world became the occasion of delineating the empire of Him, " Cujus regni non erit finis " : a philosophy of history the first and, as yet, the greatest ; for human wit, learn- ing, and genius have not yet equalled the doctor of the Church, and he has given to his best imitators what was most worth in them. His positive dogmatic writings likewise stretch over the whole forty years — one alone of these, that on the Blessed Trinity, running from 400 to 416. But the great speaker was an indefatigable preacher : more than four hundred sermons still survive ; and 218 letters, some of them deep treatises, give us, like those of St. Jerome, the most manifold instruction as to his times. They would be a monument of him by themselves. In opposing the heretics above-named, he had to deal with the deepest, the most interesting, and the most intricate questions of all which belong to man in his passage through time to eternity. Thus, in dealing with the Manichees, he had to touch the Being of God, the origin of evil, the conflict between good and evil in single man and in society. The Donatist schism, already become a heresy, required him to grasp the nature of the Church's unity, the work of her sacraments, the promises made to her. The error of Pelagius was a sort of Western succession to the Eastern heresies on the Person of Christ, attack- ing the whole Christian life in the individual, inasmuch 444 THE FLOWERING OF PATKISTIC LITERATURE. as it denied the power itself which it was the work of the Incarnate Saviour to produce in man ; so that while Nestorius dissolved His Person, the Briton monk made his coming in that Person needless. The City of God dealt with the noblest and largest views of history : opened new ranges -which had been entirely closed to the greatest writers of Greece and Eome. It answered at once the GentUe and the Jew. What is Tacitus, in his knowledge of human things, to the writer of the letter to Volusianus on the sequence of the ages ? The episcopal life of Augustine begins with the death of Theodosius, and witnessed through all its thirty -five years the ever-increasing and irretrievable decline of the empire. Nor for this did he falter in loyalty to the two hapless sons of the empire's former Saviour. It is among the advantages of his writings that they supply us with full information upon the respective positions of the spiritual and the civil power ; of the mode with which heresy was treated by the actual legislation ; of the respective value belonging to civil liberty and spiritual truth. I shrink with dismay from the attempt to express the moral and intellectual work achieved by the life and the writings of St. Augustine. Down to his time the Greek mind had certainly had a large preponderance in exhibiting the theological construction of doctrine. St. Augustine's single weight made the balance even. He was more, indeed, to the line of bishops and peoples rising after him in the West than all the writers of the East together to those who came after them ; but this THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 445 is because the succeeding ages in the East were ages of defeat or of extermination : those in the West of growth and expansion, after trials and revolutions. The Pope made a new world out of Charlemagne ; but schism, death, and corruption followed in the track of Mahomet. Instead of a Pope, enfeebled nations had Photius ; instead of Rome, Byzantium. It is an unique fact in history that the writings of a bishop, whose see was a country town in Africa during thirty years at the beginning of the fifth century, should have been studied through thousands of monasteries for hundreds of years. The false Prophet had silenced in the churches of Africa, from Egypt to the Atlantic, the voice of prayer and praise to the Triune God : in him Arius and Pelagius had a joint triumph. But St. Augustine, when his country died, lived in his writings. From them the teachers of nations yet to be born drew light and consolation. The great African formed the spirit of Europe. And when, after full seven hundred years, the- power of original thought reappeared in Northern tribes who had become Christian peoples, at length, by study of his works, doctors who can be named in the same breath with him matured and completed his doctrine, under the magisterium of the Church. St. Athanasius, St. John Chrysostome, St. Cyril, and St. John of Damascus were not so fortunate. The birth- place of Christian ascetic life is still the very home and centre of false doctrine and sensual life ; and nowhere is Christ more vehemently scorned and denied than where His greatest teachers proclaimed His Godhead 446 THE FLOWERING OF PA.TRISTIC LITEKATUEE. and Manhood, in the cities of Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople. The see of Alexandria was at the height of its strength and influence when it was held, during thirty-two years, by one of the greatest Eastern doctors who completed the defence of the Blessed Trinity, effected by his pre- decessor Athanasius. The date of St. Cyril's birth is not known : he must have been at least forty years of age when he succeeded his uncle Theophilus, in 412. He died in 444, and during this whole period, from the firmness of his character, and his great ability while he stood at the head of the whole Egyptian church, would seem to have been a most powerful personage in the Eastern empire. He was contemporary with St. Augus- tine during sixty years, and took rank as one of the greatest defenders of the Church's belief in his day. When the erroneous teaching of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia found an exponent in the disciple who had been exalted to the see of Constanti- nople, Cyril met his attack at every point, and set forth the doctrine of the Incarnation with a force equal to that of Athanasius, Augustine, or Leo. He shewed the same acuteness, clearness, and precision ; and he had the great honour to preside over a General Council, with the rank and commission of Pope Celestine superadded to his own dignity. In that council, and by his advo- cacy, the Blessed Virgin appeared manifestly in her character as destroyer of heresy ; inasmuch as the Church, confirming her title of Mother of God, defended thereby the Godhead of her Son, together with His THE FLOWERING OP PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 447 Manhood. A great mass of St. Cyril's writings is extant, thougli by no means all which he composed. Besides those numerous works in which he refuted Nestorius, he answered the emperor Julian's attack on the Christian faith, an answer which has the same sort of value as Origen's reply to Celsus. He has left a work of great power on the Blessed Trinity, so that he closed the controversy in the East on that subject, and was called by them " the Seal of the Fathers," as no one after him arose so great. Especially, he was de- voted to commenting on the Scriptures, on every part of which he is said to have written. He was, likewise, a preacher of great renown, so that the Eastern bishops recommended his homilies to be learnt by heart. Seventy of his letters also remain. In all things of which he speaks, he speaks with clear unfaltering voice, incapable of double meaning, never sheltering opposite doctrines " with the stammering lips of ambiguous for- mularies ". Particularly, his witness as to the belief of the Church in his day, respecting the Blessed Eucharist, is decisive. Of many passages, one may be cited : "Pointing to them, He said, This is My Body, and this is My Blood, that you may not think what meets the eye is a figure, but that the oblations are really changed into the Body and Blood of Christ by some inscrutable secret of the Almighty God, by partaking of which we receive the life-giving and sanctifying power of Christ ". Theodoret, the learned bishop of Cyrus, was born to his parents after a long childless marriage, between the years 386-393. He received a most pious education 448 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATaHE. in a monastery near to Antioch, his birthplace. He entered into the clergy early, and gave, on the death of his parents, his whole substance to the poor. On account of his extraordinary learning and ability he was made bishop of Cyrus, against his will, when somewhat more than thirty years of age, and his diocese contained eight hundred churches. He laboured long to convince the various heretics who di'S'ided his diocese, and was often stoned for his pains. He was a pupil of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and among his comrades were Nestorius and John the Patriarch of Antioch ; and, when the heresy broke out, he was led to take the wrong side for a time, though, afterwards, he was reconciled with St. Cyril, and in the end condemned Nestorius. Hardly any Greek writer has more distinguished himself than Theodoret. As expositor of Scripture, he bears a high rank, both in his interpretation of the Psalms and the Song of Songs, his commentary on the prophets, and the Pauline epistles. He has given, in twelve books, a defence of the Christian faith — the last, and by some thought the best, of those written by the old apologists. Similar in style and ability are his ten discourses on Providence, the best of their kind. He has left also a large number of letters, remarkable both in style and matter. There is a blot upon his writings, in that those which he wrote in the first instance against St. C5rril, lie under the censure of the fifth Council. • He was deposed at the Eobber Council of Ephesus, but ap- pealed to St. Leo, in a letter which fully maintains the supreme authority of St. Peter's See. St. Leo restored THE FLOWEEING OF PATEIHTIC LITERATURE. 449 him, and he sat accordingly in the council of Chalcedon. He then lived in peace to the end of his life, in 458. In the time both of his birth and death he was almost the exact contemporary of St. Leo. He closes the magnificent roll of Greek writers in this period, as St. Leo that of the Latin. But the writings left by St. Leo, that is, his sermons and letters, are too intimately bound iip with his govern- ment of the Church in his twenty-one years' pontificate to be dealt with separately. I will rather here touch upon some points which arise from considering the col- lective mass of this patristic theology, whose chief representatives have passed before us ; while narrowness of space has made it necessary to omit a far greater number. It is difficult to convey an adequate notion of the vastness, as a whole, of the intellectual work on which the fifteen Fathers already named, and so many others who belong equally to this period, spent their lives. We may term it the mind of the Church working from the basis of Tradition upon Scripture. The product is a precision and enlargement of the language in which doctrine is stated, a result obtained by the theological sense thus called forth and matured. The period of time in which this happened forms the first stadium of theology. The Tradition which I here mean is that inherited Christian faith in which each man grew up in his own place : for instance, the Eoman at Eome, the Alexandrian at Alexandria, the Antiochene at Antioch. Again, the inherited temper and principles of inter- 29 450 THE FLOWEKING OF PATRISTIC LITREATUKE. pretation in the great scliools, especially of Alexandria and Antioch, from which the bishops of churches con- nected with them would be often drawn. When the 318 Fathers, who were all Easterns but five, came to- gether at Nicaea, this Tradition as held by each was the basis of their judgment upon the matters submitted to them. The decrees of the council expressed the result, upon which, when Pope Sylvester had set his seal, the Church rested evermore. But as upon a basis never to be shaken for the further structure, I take the intellectual history of the next hundred and thirty years in the minds of all these Fathers to be a carrying out of the doctrinal conclusions then reached. The mind and heart of each had been formed by the daily life which he had passed in his own place. Thus St. Isidore of Pelusium, friend and con- temporary of the patriarch St. CyrU, addresses a short letter to a monk who had fallen into the heresy of Macedonius : " If our God and Saviour, when He took manhood,^ handed down that the most holy Spirit was the complement of the Divine Trinity, and is numbered with the Father and the Son in the invocation of holy baptism as delivering from sins, and makes common bread upon the mystical table the proper Body in which He became incarnate, how, madman, do you teach that the Holy Ghost is something created, or made, or of servUe nature, not kin and consubstantial with the imperial, world-creating, royal Substance. For if He be ■^ UapiSoiKe. This word expresses the fact which I am noting. St. Isidore, Ep. i. 109. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 451 servile, number Him not with the Lord ; if a creature, place Him not with the Creator. But He is so united, and so named together : for we must believe Christ, the accurate dogmatist of such things, who safely teaches what concerns His own Substance, even if your opinion be not so, who boast to be wiser, and to know the things of heaven better than God, or rather wag your tongue boldly against Him." Now I conceive that such an argument as this was valid against the Arian, Semiarian, Nestorian, or Mace- donian heresies, and every modification of them which individual phantasy might raise ; while it was drawn from what had come down by direct historic descent from Christ in the Church, and the existence of which in the Church was quite independent of the Scrip- tures, which also recorded it. The baptismal and the eucharistic rite here referred to are only specimens of the vast body of truth which was enshrined in the service of the Church, known to every Christian in many parts, to the Church's own ministers in all, but a sealed book to the outside world. The Fathers who wrote in this period were in full posses- sion of this treasure. And their possession of it must be borne in mind when we consider the fervour with which they threw themselves one and all upon the study of the Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testaments. To suppose that the Tradition here marked out was something uncertain, while the text of Scripture was certain, would be entirely to misrepresent the patristic position. The home of their dearest thoughts and 452 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. habits was one vast Tradition, which comprehended the visible fabrics of the churches everywhere erected, the faith taught in them, and the worship in which it was embodied, as well as the Scriptures which were in the guardianship of the church, and to deliver which to the heathen was termed " treason ". All this constituted a coudition of things hard to be understood by those whose notion of a religion amounts to the lucubration of a single mind upon a book, lying helplessly subject to every reader. The danger of the emergent heresy was that which in the first instance moved to the defence Athanasius and all who followed him. A very large mass of writings, all those which not only set forth the truth positively, but refute the opposite error, spring directly from the attack of Arius. But the natural ardour of the Christian spirit to unfold and communicate itself must be taken into account in all these writings. I would now dwell specially on the devotion shewn to the study of Scripture. Christian schools of great renown for learning flourished before the Nicene Council, at Alexandria, Csesarea in Palestine, and Antioch, afterwards at Nisibis, Edessa, Ehinokorura. Alexandria and Antioch especially were centres and lights of Christian knowledge during the whole of this period. Ornaments of the former are to be named : Athanasius, Didymus the blind, CyrU. Representatives of the latter are Eusebius, bishop of Emesa, who died in 360 ; Diodorus, bishop of Tarsus, who died in 390 ; Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia, who THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 453 died in 428 ; and his brother Polychronius, bishop of Apamea. Of the several principles of interpretation which distinguished these schools, it is only needful to say a word, which I will take from Cardinal Newman. First, of the literal : "The immediate source of that fertility in heresy which is the unhappy distinction of the Syrian church was its celebrated Exegetical School. The history of that school is summed up in the broad characteristic fact, on the one hand, that it devoted itself to the literal and critical interpretation of Scripture; and on the" other, that it gave rise first to the Arian and then to the Nestorian heresy." ^ Of the mystical, he continues : "In all ages of the Church her teachers have shewn a disinclination to confine themselves to the mere literal interpretation of Scripture. Her most subtle and powerful method of proof, whether in ancient or modern times, is the mys- tical sense which is so frequently used in doctrinal controversy as on many occasions to supersede any other. In the early centuries we find this method of interpre- tation to be the very ground for receiving as revealed the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Whether we betake ourselves to the Antenicene writers or the Mcene, certain texts will meet us which do not obviously refer to that doctrine, yet are put forward as palmary proofs of it. On the other hand, if evidence be wanted of the connection of heterodoxy and biblical criticism in that ' Arians, Appendix, p. 414. 454 THE FLOWKEING OF PATKISTIC LITERATURE. age, it is found in the fact that not long after their contemporaneous appearance in Syria, they are found combined in the person of Theodore of Heraclea, so called from the place both of his birth and his bishopric, an able commentator and an active enemy of St. Atha- nasius, though a Thracian, unconnected except by sympathy with the patriarchate of Antioch. The case had been the same in a still earlier age : the Jews clung to the literal sense of the Old Testament and rejected the Gospel ; the Christian Apologists proved its divinity by means of the allegorical. The formal connection of this mode of interpretation with Christian theology is noticed by Porphyry, who speaks of Origen and others as borrowing it from heathen philosophy both in explanation of the Old Testament and in defence of their own doctrine. It may almost be laid down as an historical fact that the mystical interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together." We may safely say that the devotion to the study of Scripture was common in this period to all who were zealous and learned in both schools. But take the lives of three men as an illustration of Cardinal Newman's division and analysis of spiritual affinities. About the year 370, when Basil became archbishop of Csesarea, two young men were studying together at Antioch. They were intimate friends and fellow-pupils together of a man who had received a learned education at Athens, and had gained high repute through his strict life as monk and priest at Antioch, and his strenuous defence of Christian truth against the heathen THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITEEATaRE. 455 under the emperor Julian, and against heretics under the emperor Valens. Julian mocked his emaciated frame as a punishment of the gods. The great Meletius promoted him in 378 to be metropolitan of Tarsus ; as such he was present at the council of Constantinople in 381, and he consecrated Nectarius to that see on the cession of it by St. Gregory. This was Diodorus, who wrote many books, commenting on almost all the Scrip- tures, among them on St. Paul's epistles. He turned away from the allegoric interpretation, seeking to expound only the literal historical sense. Of his pupils, one was Theodore, who devoted him- self with the keenest zeal and ascetic severity to the cloistral life and study. He suffered, however, a relaxa- tion of this at one time, and was recalled to it by the earnest exhortation of his co-pupil John, afterwards St. Chrysostome. Theodore is described as a man of extra- ordinary eloquence, learning, and literary activity. But the boldness of his spirit led him in interpreting Scrip- ture and dealing with mysteries to follow his own track. Thus a very early work on the Psalms gave oflence. Cardinal Newman thus analyses his treatment: ^ " Bent on ascertaining the literal sense, Theodore was naturally led to the Hebrew text instead of the Septuagint, and thence to Jewish commentators. Jewish commen- tators naturally suggested events and objects short of evangelical as the fulfilment of the prophetical announce- ments, and when it was possible an ethical sense instead of a prophetical. The eighth chapter of Proverbs ceased ^ Arians, Appendix, 418. 456 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. to bear a Christian meaning, because, as Theodore maintained, the writer of the book had received the gift not of prophecy but of wisdom. The Canticles must be interpreted literally ; and then it was but an easy, or rather a necessary, step to exclude the book from the canon. The book of Job, too, professed to be historical, yet what was it really but a Gentile drama ? He also gave up the books of Chronicles and Ezra, and strange to say, the Epistle of St. James, though it was contained in the Peschito version of his church. He denied that Psalms xxii. and Ixix.- applied to our Lord ; rather he limited the Messianic passages of the whole book to four, of which the eighth Psalm was one and the forty- fifth another. The rest he explained of Hezekiah and Zerubbabel, without denying that they might be accom- modated to an evangelical sense. He explained St. Thomas's words, ' My Lord and my God,' as a joyful exclamation, and our Lord's, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost,' as an anticipation of the day of Pentecost. As might be expected, he denied the verbal inspiration of Scripture. Also, he held that the deluge did not cover the earth ; and, as others before him, he was heterodox on the doctrine of original sin, and denied the eternity of punishment." " Maintaining that the real sense of Scripture was not the scope of a Divine Intelligence, but the intention of the mere human organ of inspiration, Theodore was led to hold not only that that sense was but one in each text, but that it was continuous and single in a con- text, that what was the subject of the composition in THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 45/ one verse must be tlie subject in the next, and that if a Psalm was historical or prophetical in its commence- ment, it was the one or the other to its termination. Even that fulness of meaning, refinement of thought, subtle versatility of feeling, and delicate reserve or reverent suggestiveness, which poets exemplify, seem to have been excluded from his idea of a sacred composi- tion." The fellow-student and friend, whose powerful word drew back the young Theodore to the ascetic life, was St. Chrysostome, who became, as we know, the most renowned commentator on Scripture of the Antiochene school. But whUe he was the clearest exponent of the literal sense, he was free from the negative spirit of the school, being full of the love of God and man. His writings have made him a doctor of the Church ; his sufferings have placed him in the role of her confessors with the halo of a martyr. The history of Theodore is that, in 392, he became bishop of Mopsuestia, a city of Cilicia, and sat for thirty- six years, until his death in 428. He took the keenest interest in all Church matters. He is said to have written ten thousand tracts ; his comments on Scripture filled forty-one volumes ; he was the master of Nestorius, and the real author of his heresy, just before the promulgation of which he died. His writings were introduced to the knowledge of the Christians of Mesopotamia, Adiabene, Babylonia, and the neighbouring countries. He was called by those churches absolutely " the Interpreter," and it eventually became the very profession of the 4S8 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATDBE. Nestorian communion to follow him as such. " The doc- trine of all our Eastern churches," says the council under the Patriarch Marabas, " is founded on the creed of Nicsea ; but in the exposition of the Scriptures we follow St. Theodore." " We must, by all means, remain firm to the commentaries of the great Commentator," says the council under Sabarjesus; " whoso shall in any manner oppose them, or think otherwise, be he ana- thema." " No one since the beginning of Christianity," adds Cardinal Newman,^ " except Origen and St. Augus- tine, has- had such great influence on his brethren as Theodore." Theodore and St. Chrysostome belonged originally to the same school, and had the same teacher. Their lives ran out to different issues. Perhaps, however, another parallel which the life of Theodore offers to that of St. Augustine is even more instructive : Theodore was born about 350, he became bishop in 392, he lived to 428 ; St. Augustine was born in 354, became bishop in 395, lived to 430. The writings which were to form the theology of the Western church, and the writings which were to form the mind and temper of the heretical communion which, " in the time of the Caliphs, was at the head of as many as twenty-five archbishops, ex- tended from China to Jerusalem, and whose numbers, with those of the Monophysites, are said to have sur- passed those of the Greek and Latin churches together," came forth from Hippo and from Mopsuestia exactly at the same time ; were drawn by fervent minds from the ' Quoting Leugerke dc Ephraem Syro, Arians, p. 417. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 459 same Scriptures: the one guided by the ecclesiastical sense, the other by the literal sense, according to his private judgment. A striking example of the diflferent treat- ment of the same passage by the two commentators may be given here. Theodore, writing on the words, " He delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love," says, " He said not, His Son, but the Son of His love. For we do not become partakers of the kingdom of God the Word, but of the man assumed, in whose honour we participate because of the likeness of nature between us, when we shew a disposition towards Him by our works, whence, too, He called Him the Son of His love, as not being by nature the Son of the Father, but by love made worthy of adoption." St. Augustine says, " the Son of His love is no other than He who was begotten of His Substance". He^ who gave this interpretation is at present the greatest doctor of the universal Church, while a few thousands in the Kurd -mountains still pro- fess the Nestorian belief, of which Theodore was parent ; but likewise he can claim to be the father of modern rationalism, and his latest posterity bear striking marks of their descent. Almost all the writers of this period are commentators upon Scripture ; many, likewise, delivered as homilies their comments. Among the former are Eusebius of Csesarea, Athanasius, Didymus, Ephraem, Basil, Gregory ^ Theodore of Mopsuestia's Commentary on St. Paul, edited by Mr. Swete, vol. i. p. 260, to whom I am indebted for the quotation from St. Augustine De Trinitate, xv. 19. 460 THE FLOWERING OF PATEISTIC LITERATURE. of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, and especially Jerome ; among the latter are Ephraem, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, but especially Chrysostome, Hilary, Ambrose, and Augustine. Closely allied to these is a third class-*— the Preachers. Of these, the most distinguished are, in the East, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, the three Cappadocians, Basil and the two Gregories, Ephraem, Cyril of Alex- andria, Asterius of Amasea. In the West, Ambrose, Augustine, Leo I., Peter Chrysologus, Maximus of Turin. They preached on passages of Scripture, on points of belief and morals, on festivals, on martyrs and saints, funeral discourses ; and if the matter of these discourses belongs to a higher range of knowledge and feeling than anything which has come down to us from heathen Greece or Rome, so in many cases the mode of saying it equals that of those who used the two great languages with the greatest force at the time of their greatest purity. This period produces many treatises which give a compendious statement of Christian doctrine. Such are Gregory of Nyssa's greater catechesis ; Augustine's Handbook to Laurentius ; Ambrose on the offices of ministers ; Rufinus on the Apostles' Creed ; Augustine's treatises on marriage ; on the Church maintaining its unity against the Donatists; Chrysostome on the Priest- hood ; and Gregory of Nazianzum on the same subject in the verses concerning his flight ; Pacian upon Penance. Similar to these are all the works intended for the THE FLOWERING OF PATKISTIC LITERATUEE. 46 1 instruction of catechumens by Chrysostome, Ambrose, and Augustine. But amidst tbe immense inward movement caused by heresy, and the efforts to refute it, the defence of the Christian faith against the two permanent enemies outside, Judaism and heathenism, could not fail to be invigorated. Against Judaism valuable works were written by Eusebius of Csesarea, Ephraem, and in eight homilies by Chrysostome. The twenty months' reign of the emperor Julian, and his efforts to depress the Christian cause, drew, perhaps, special attention to his writings. They called forth answers from Gregory of Nazianzum, Ephraem, and especially a work of great importance from Cyril of Alexandria. The exposure of heathenism in general was conducted in the East by Athanasius in the two beautiful treatises, not the least interest of which lies in that they mark his mind before the Arian controversy arose — a mind of great ability, looking out in its virginal Christian ardour upon the heathen world, with its deceptions, impurities, and idolatries ; while Theodoret, a hundred and thirty years later, closes the lists with the most elaborate and complete refutation of Gentile maladies by the practised controversialist. Cyril of Alexandria here also dis- tinguished himself In the West, Firmicus Maternus, Commodianus, Orosius. Again, Ambrose and Pruden- tius,in their works against Symmachus, as the champion of Cicero's " Immortal Gods," the defenders of the Capitol and Patrons of Rome, in which point of appre- ciation the city prefect of the fourth century agreed 462 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. with the old Koman orator; while Augustine, in his great work, called in faith, learning, and truth in equal force to demolish the false worship whose only remain- ing root was the patriotic association with it of a lost temporal dominion. The Fathers of this period were remarkable for the unanimous impulse with which they threw themselves on the exposition of Scripture. I think they were scarcely less unanimous in the burst of praise and admiration with which they met the public manifesta- tion of the cloistral life, and that upon which it rested — the choice and maintenance of virginity. It has already been said how Athanasius, taking refuge in Rome from the persecution of the Arianising bishops, who had got possession of Constantine, introduced into the West the knowledge of St. Anthony's life in the desert. At a later period, after Anthony's death, he drew out a most attractive picture of his former teacher, which, as soon as it appeared in the year 365, was highly valued, and kindled among all ranks in East and West a fervent admiration for the ascetic life of the monks. St. Anthony himself was born in Upper Egj^t in 251, renounced the world at the age of twenty, and lived from that time in the desert, where he died at the age of 105. The renown of his sanctity, his wisdom, and his wonder-working power went through the whole empire, so that even Constantine and his sons besought, by letter, his intercession. Pachomius, born of heathen parents in the Thebais forty years later than Anthony, was the first to build THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 463 a monastery in the Nile island of Tabenna, while the monks of St. Anthony lived apart in cells. He thus founded the cenofeitic life. In the first female convent which he founded his sister also entered. He made a rule for his monks, according to which, at his death in 348, three thousand monks were living in . various houses, under the supervision of one superior abbot. A hundred years later the monks of the monasteries which followed his rule numbered fifty thousand. It is not to be supposed that the life which now shewed itself, as the choice of so many, was a new thing in the Christian Church. On the contrary, four daughters of one of the first deacons, Philip, are said to have practised it in their father's house, whilst St. PetroniUa and St. Thecla pursued it under the guidance of St. Peter and St. Paul. All through the time of persecution this life was cultivated in the secret of the domestic home, while it came occasionally to light in the splendid deeds of the martyrs ; and Agnes, the Koman maiden of thirteen, who died to maintain it, in which act she was by no means solitary, invested it with a halo of glory. But now the Church had won, in the conversion of the emperor and its consequences, what, looked at on one side, seemed to be, and was, a prodigious victory over the world ; while, looked at on the other side, it led to an inroad of the world upon the Church. For the d&rst time in Christian history, godliness might seem to have become gain, and the profession of faith in the Crucified One to lead to temporal honour and riches. 464 THE FLOWEEING OF PATRISTIC LITEEATUEE. Undoubtedly the chief danger which beset the Church through all that fourth century was the crowding of worldly men and women into its ranks, in whom the profession of the Christian faith was not accompanied by the practice of a Christian life. The most terrible of heresies itself had, no doubt, its own own secret spiritual root,^ but the extreme peril into which it brought the Church was caused by the attempt of court-bishops to use the converted imperial power for the purposes of their own ambition. They were seen at Sardica content to rend the Church in two, provided they might govern under the name of Constantius. Now, to all this the life, which arose in the deserts of Egypt, under the auspices of St. Anthony, was presently collected and ordered under the rule of St. Pachomius, and was thence spread through the world in ever- increasing numbers of male and female communities, offered the strongest opposition. It was most fitting that the first monastery should be founded at Tabenna in the year when the first councU exercised the intrinsic freedom of the Church to deliberate, so that the inherent force of grace, in its completest mastery over the springs of nature, should shew its capacity to meet and over- come all the difficulties which the freedom from heathen persecution might bring with it. If the cross could not exalt the human heart so as to fix it upon God alone, the victory over a Eoman emperor was only the passage through worldliness to decay and even dissolution. ^ A wonderful disclosure of this root may be seen in Cardinal Newman's treatise, Causes of the Rise and Success of Arianism. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 465 We may therefore feel that it was a fidelity to Christian instinct which led Athanasius, and Basil, and Gregory of Nazianzum, and Ambrose, and Jerome, and Chrysostome, and Ephraem, and Augustine, to pour themselves out in the praises of the virginal life. But the greatest of all praise is practice — and in them too the deed preceded the word, either in their first choice or, if they had failed in that, in the surrender of the whole man which they were able to offer from the time of their conversion. And in this respect I know not whether the choice of St. Augustine, when converted at thirty-two, is not as striking as that of St. Anthony when at twenty he gave up the world, and the devotion of the bishop instituting the cenobitic life in his house- iold and his clergy as remarkable as that of the ascetic in the wilderness. The type of St. Nilus, who in middle, age left his palace as prefect of Constantinople, under the counsel of St. Chrysostome, carrying with him his son to become a monk on Mount Sinai, and leading his wife to a similar choice, is as strong as that of St. Ambrose, called from the uprightness of natural justice to the episcopal throne on which he exercised all supernatural virtues, and commended the mother of his Lord as the ensample and mistress of virginity. Certainlj^ to find a Father who does not act and write in favour of the virginal life is about as easy as to find a saint who is not devoted to our Blessed Lady. St. Basil became the legislator of the cenobitic life for numberless monasteries which followed his rule in the Eastern empire. An important order of regular clergy 30 466 THE FLOWEKING OF PATKISTIC LITERATURE. took its origin from the very household of St. Augustine, and runs through the subsequent ages of the Church to the present day. The Christian ministry itself was from the beginning carried out according to the instructions of St. Paul : " Do thou then suffer hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No soldier involves himself in secular business, that he may please his Commander." But of all secular business there was none that so involved the whole life as the condition of marriage, which was a necessary and a perpetual servitude to the world. The only restriction which at first could be imposed in a society where marriage was universal, would be that bishops and deacons should be chosen from those who had only married once. But as soon as a generation had grown up which had the example of our Lord and His mother before them, the custom had become universal for the ministers of the Church to live either the continent or the virginal life. But now in this fourth century a vast accession of persons outside the ministry were being drawn powerfully to this life ; and what I would note is that the Fathers, by their example first and by their writings afterwards, ofiiered them the most cordial welcome. St. BasU, St. Gregory of Nazianzum, St. Chrysostome, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, vie with each other in drawing all who come within their individual influence in either sex to this life. Regard for it forms the very inmost texture of their minds. A ChristiaDity which ignored it would certainly not be their Christianity ; but a Christianity which reprobated it would be in their judgment an THE FLOWEKING 01' PATRISTIC LITEEATUKE. 467 obscene apostasy which proclaimed that man was in- capable of living a higher than the mere animal life. The entrance of the religious orders from the fourth century onwards, as a fresh factor into the everlasting conflict between the Church and the world, is an event of the greatest moment. These Fathers loved the religious life because they saw in it the most perfect surrender of the whole human being to God. They did not know, when they first welcomed it, that the great work of Koman civilisation was about to be overthrown in the Western empire : that France, and Spain, and Britain, and lUyria, even Africa, and last of all Italy, were about to become the prey of ruthless and savage conquerors ; that every misery would have to be endured by the inhabitants of populous cities ; that wide lands would be reduced to desolation ; that the only power left standing would be the Christian ministry in virtue of its organisation, linked together in one mass by its Primacy. Finally, that during hundreds of years the religious Orders springing up from the time of Con- stantine, and having their cradle in the deserts of Egypt, would be planted like so many fortresses of Christian life in all , these desolated lands, and gradually create a race of Christian men and women, whose law should be the law of the Gospel, whose ensamples should be our Lord and His Mother for the two sexes, out of furious and hostile tribes, rude, violent, and without cohesion. But the preference of the Fathers for the virginal over the married life was purely a religious preference. It had no political calculation in it. It had no anticipation 468 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITEUATaKE. of coming events. It may be said to be all gathered up in one word of the Teacher of the nations : "I would wish you to be without care. The unmarried cares for the things of the Lord, how he shall please the Xiord ; the married cares for the things of the world, how he shall please his wife. And he is divided. The un- married woman and the virgin cares for the things of the Lord that she may be holy in body and in spirit ; the married cares for the things of the world, how she shall please her husband." To which we may add as a comment words of the first desert-father himself : ^ " We have heard St. Paul, when he came to speak of the honours of virginity, say, I have no command of God. He had no command, because not all can bear that heavy yoke. Therefore it was left to the choice of those who can bear it. Virginity is an unbroken seal : a perfect similitude which changes not : a spiritual and holy sacrifice : a watch-tower, afibrding an outlook upon the way leading to perfection : a diadem forming a wreath of excellencies : the sweet dew which gives freshness to all creatures. It is the gospel of life which reveals secrets hidden from all ages and genera- tions. Truly the greatest inheritance and possession. He who despises it insults God and the angels." And finally a few words of the writer ^ of St. Anthony's life give the source of this wonder : " 'He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden : for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed'. What 1 St. Antonii, Serm. sect. xvii. (Migne, vol. xL p. 974). ^ St. Athailasius on Luko i. 26. THE FLOWEKING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 469 a thing is virginity ! For as to all other virtues he who will exercise them is schooled by the law, but virginity, surpassing the law,, and directing to a higher end the l)urpo3e of life, is a token of the life to come, and an image of angelic purity. Much might be said on it; but not to spend time on what is plain, I will bj^ one single remark shew the greatness of this virtue. For God, the Word, the Lord of all, when it was the will of the Father to raise up and make all things new, chose that none other than a Virgin should become the Mother of the Body He was about to bear. And so it was done. And thus the Lord sojourned among us as Man ; that as all things were made by Him, so also virginity should be made from Him, and through Him this grace further be given to men, and increase and abide among them. Now, what a glory this is to virgins, what a proof of the godhead in Him, we may know by this. If the parents of the holy martyrs are conspicuous for the fortitude of their children, and Sarah rejoices in the birth of Isaac, and they are blessed who have a seed in Sion and a household in Jerusalem (Isaiah xxxv. 10), as the prophet says. What would be the glory of the holy virgin and divine Mary,^ in that she became and is called the Mother of the Word according to the generation of the flesh ? For an army of angels hymned this divine off- spring, and the woman who raised up her voice cried, ' Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the breasts which Thou has sucked '. And Mary, too, herself the Mother of the Lord and the Ever- virgin, knowing what 1 Tijs dyias TXapBej/ov, Kal BeoeiSovs Maptas. 470 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. had taken place in her, said, ' From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed '. But what was done in Mary is a glory to all virgins. For from that stem they hang as virginal branches." The eremitic and cloistral life was illustrated by rules and precepts given for it by the great masters of it themselves, such as Anthony, Pachomius, Orsiesius, Isaias, Evagrius, Basil, the two Makarius, Cassian, whose work became of universal use in the ages following him in the West ; and again, by- lives of its founders, given by Athanasius, Palladius, Theodoret, Jerome, and Rufinus. In close connection with this stands the mystical life, of which Makarius the Great gives the first germs and principles ; while the full expansion is seen in the work of the accomplished theologian whose name is concealed under that of Dionysius, and who has given an intro^ duction to the better understanding of the symbolic acts and ceremonies of the Church, for the use of the clergy.^ With regard to history in this period, the work carried down to the peace of the Church by Eusebius of Csesarea was continued by Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret in the East ,■ by Rufinus in the West. But I must can- didly confess that if the records of the first three centuries, which are all that the learning and diligence of Eusebius could draw from the library of Csesarea, are scanty, and leave untold a multitude of things necessary to form anything like a connected history, much more ^ Nirschl, ii. 140. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 47 1 do the fragmentary and desultory statements of his suc- cessors disappoint. A real history of the period, from the time at which Eusebius ends to the death of St. Leo would be of incalculable value and interest. If we had but a Christian Ammianus to describe reigns of such importance, and events so striking as the Eastern and Western empire discarding heathenism and assum- ing the Christian faith, it would be some consolation. The ancient writers whom I have named seem to me, in these particular works, quite unworthy of the grandeur of the theme which was to be recorded. But the history of heresies, made by the same Theo- doret, by Epiphanius, by Philastrius, and by Augustine, stands on quite a different footing, and that commence- ment of a literary history made by St. Jerome in his catalogue of illustrious men. "Wherever Christian belief comes into question, there strength and accuracy appear. The failure seems to be in the historic mind, when con- sidering the causes and connection of things, and the action and counteraction of the two great societies, the natural and the supernatural, in human affairs. This power is shewn in great force in the City of God, and I doubt not that the writer of that work could have given a history of the hundred years preceding his own death which would have satisfied the need of future times. If we only possessed a picture of Rome, such as pre- sented itself to Augustine in the year after his conver- sion and his mother's death, which he spent there before he returned to Africa, and of the empire which in that very year Theodosius was delivering from the gripe of 472 THE FLOWEKING OT" PATRISTIC LITERATUKE. the usurper Maximus, and celebrating the conversion of the senate to the Christian faith, such a work would have an interest not surpassed by any which the great African has left. But neither from him nor from any other have we anything approaching to a continuous history of a time so enthralling in the revolutions which it witnessed, so terrible in the reverses of fortune, so magnificent, in the saints which it produced. There is, however, an immense treasure left by the Fathers, in the large number of letters which remain of so many. Among these we may name Athanasius, Ambrose, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, Chrysostome, Paulinus of Nola, Jerome, Augustine, Nilus, who has left more than a thousand ; Isidore, who has left more than two thousand. So far as I know, this is a mine of knowledge which has been very imperfectly worked. There is nothing in Greek and Eoman literature like these letters, except those of Cicero. And as these shed no dubious light upon the character of the great Eoman and the circumstances of Kis time, so, I doubt not that if the letters of these saints were studied as those of Cicero have been, a similar result as to their individual characters, and a great enlargement of know- ledge on scientific as well as ecclesiastical questions of their most important century, would ensue. Whether it would be in the power of anyone who had mastered their whole contents to construct a satisfactory history of the period, I can form no opinion. They rank, at any rate, among the choicest remains of ancient writings which we possess, and to live for a time, as it THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 475. were, in the bodily presence of Athanasius, or Basil, or Augustine, or Chrysostome, to catch the turn of their thoughts and the wishes of their heaxt, to see, as it were, the face of men to whom the Christian faith was the dearest of all things, is a delight which no other litera- ture affords. For on their brow the light of genius and of sanctity is blended, and the man-loving spirit of their Lord reflected. The decay of language is far more sensible in verse than in prose, as anyone may judge who will compare the forty-five sermons which have given to St. Gregory of Nazianzum the title of Theologian, with the several thousand verses in which he has described inci'dents of his life. As history, these verses are touching and instructive. It is only to be lamented that, by the fault of the age, the form is not equal to the matter. It is painful to have the admiration awakened by a fine thought chilled by a defect of metre, such as would not be suffered in the task of a school-boy now. Yet he who composed the sermons on God shews a power of language which the best writers of the classical standard would acknowledge. Something similar may be said of one with far greater poetic gift. Some may think that if the language spoken in the time of Prudentius had been that of Horace or Virgil, he might have reached the elegance of the one in his odes, or the dignity of the other in his epic. The sculptor must have pentelic marble as well as inborn genius to produce the work of Phidias. It is fair, however, to add that Claudian, whose birth. 474 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. was in Egypt, wrought with the same materials as Pru- dentius, and in the praises of Stilicho came nearer to Virgil's " Coursers of celestial race, Their necks with thunder cloth'd, and fer resounding pace," than the noble Spaniard, twice entrusted with the government of a province by Theodosius. Yet he speaks often with poetic vigour, always with the true faith of a Christian, and the thought of a statesman. No en- comium on Roman virtue, as shewn upon the phantoms which the flatterer of Augustus caused to pass before the eyes of his hero, surpasses that which Prudentius offered to the memory of his imperial patron when the last sun of temporal splendour was shining upon Rome ; at the end of the fourth century, Rome was at last, in its senate and nobility, accepting the yoke of Christ. Prudentius clearly discerned that what kept such minds as that of his adversary Symmachus in the old worship was not true belief or devotion to a worn-out imposture. What it was he says in lines which I attempt to render, since they give the view which a noble Roman held of Rome's position, and the future which he augured for it, in the interval between the death of Theodosius, and the entry of Honorius in triumph, with StUicho by his side, in the year 403.^ " The valour of the days of old, the world By sea and land subdued : these hold thee bound. Thy memory flies back to prosperous times. The thousand triumphs with their long processions, ' Lib. ii. Contra Symmachum, 577-637. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 475 The forum crowded with the spoils of kings. But hear from me, Roman, the true cause Which made thy labours fruitful ; made the earth. Which throve upon thy victories, draw thy car, God saw the nations in their tongues discordant, And severed in their worship ; and He willed To join them in one empire, and so teach Civil obedience, gentle rule of peace ; Then add religion's bond, that so one mind Might draw earth's various tribes to serve one Christ. Union of hearts is the sole way to God ; And brethren's love due worship of a Father. And in that peace earth finds tranquillity, Which wild sedition or fierce arms had scared, And feeds her children with the breasts of peace." Through all the lands which Western ocean laves, Or Eastern crimson dawn illuminates, A furious strife devoured the human race, And armed each savage hand to mutual wounds. To quell this rage God moved the nations round To bow the head beneath one yoke of laws. All should be Romans whom the Rhine and Danube, Tagus with golden sands, and mighty Ebro, The Hesperian stream with horned front uprising, Ganges, or heated banks of seven-mouthed Nile, Owned for their children. All have common rights, One name, one covmtry, and one brotherhood. In all these regions men should live as though One city held them, and one fatherland, And they themselves were brethren by one hearth. Nor only distant regions, shores divided By long sea-ranges, one tribunal find ; But arts and commerce further union make, And blood alliance blend them in one race. For mingled parents bear a common brood. Those victories and those triumphs had this end : Such was the road Christ levelled for Himself. When Rome made friends her friendship led to Christ, And the great Roman Peace served for His herald. What place could God have in a world of arms, Breasts torn with discord and competing laws. Each striving for the mastery, in old days ? In senses torn by passion, in the wild 476 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITEKATUKE. Eesentments of conflicting minds, no pure Wisdom, could entrance find, nor God be there. " But when the mihd is under highest rule, Subduing all the body's sensual force, And reason tames the conquered animal, Life takes a settled course and certain aim. The heart drinks in its God, and serves one Lord. " Almighty, Thou art here. So breathe Thy peace Upon the realm that owns Thee. Lo ! the worid Takes Thee for head, Christ ; for peace and Rome Together hold Thee. Thou hast made them head, And placed dominion here. Thou wilt have*Kome With peace : Rome's dowry gives to peace its charm.'' He has expressed the same thought with a felicity so exquisite in his hymn to the great Eoman martyr, St. Laurence, that I give it in the original : " Christe, Numen unicuni, Splendor, virtus Patris, Factor orbis et poli, Atque Auctor horum moenium, Qui sceptra Romse in vertice Rerum locasti, sanciens Mundum Quii'inali togse Servire, et armis cedere ; Ut discrepantum gentium Mores et observantiam, Linguasque et ingenia et sacra Unis domares legibus. En omne sub regniim Remi Mortale concessit genus. Idem luquuntur dissoni Ritus, id ipsum sentiunt. Hoc destinatum quo magis Jus Christiani nominis Quodcunqiie terrarum jacet Uno illigaret vinculo. Da, Christe, Romanis tuis Sit Christiana ut civitas, • Per quam dedisti ut coeteris THE FLOWERING OF PATKISTIC LITERATURE. 477 Meus una sacrprum foret. Cont'eclerentur omnia Hino inde membra in symbolum : Mansuescat orbis subditiis ; I Mansuescat et summum caput, Advertat abjunctas plagas Coire in unam gratiam : Fiat fidelis Romulus ; Et ipse jam credat Numa." Besides hig merit as a poet, Prudentius is of the greartest value as an historian and recorder of Christian facts ; as an historian who was not thinking of history, but described the life of Christians as it passed before him. In one of his hymns he mentions that he was fifty-seven years of age. This was in 405. Thus he was born in 348, six yea.rs before St. Augustine, and exactly contemporary with St. Ambrose, like whom he wa,s a Eoman nobleman and high official. In this beautiful poem lie reviews his life, his boyhood under the master's rod ; how at sixteen the toga assumed broughit with it disregard of truth ; then followed a youth, wherein he laments the stains left by dis- sipation, and this succeeded by a stormy period at the bar. Then he was twice given the government of great cities, which he administered righteously. Lastly, the emperor placed him in the highest rank next to himself, words which would seem to indicate a praetorian prefecture. Thus occupied, age, had stolen on him un- awares. "What (he concludes) will all this profit when once the body is dead ? Thy mind will have lost the world which it worshipped. These things were not of God, but thou wilt be God's. At least at the end, G 478 THE FLOWERING OF PATfilSTIC LITEEATURE. ^ sinning soul, cast off thy folly. Praise Him with the tongue, if thou canst not with deeds. Give each day to hymns ; nor let the night be silent in God's praise. Fight against heresy ; set forth the Catholic faith ; tread under foot the heathen rites. Destroy Rome's idols. Crown the martyrs with song ; praise the Apostles. So while I write or speak, let me spring up free from the bonds oi the body, and utter my last note." This is the Prudentius whom we now possess : he gives the same sort of historical testimony to the Eome of the fourth century as Horace to the Eome of Augustus, or Juvenal to the Rome of Domitian. Thus, in his hymn to St. Peter and St. Paul, he bears witness that it was the great feast of the year at Rome, kept on the same day, the multitude flocking to the two basilicas, one on each side of the river. In his best style he paints the baptistery of St. Peter, constructed by Pope Damasus on the Vatican hill, how the water flows through rich marbles, and is received into a large basin, where the splendid ceiling is reflected in its waves. " There the shepherd himself nourishes with the cooling fountain his sheep, whom he sees to be thirsting for the streams of Christ:"^ words which a late commentator explains by saying that Damasus had inscribed over the baptistery the words : " Una Petri sedes : unum verumque lavacruni " ; and that probably the famous chair of the Apostle was placed here, sitting on which the Pope gave confirmation 1 See two excellent articles in the Questions historiqties of April and July, 1884, by Allard, to whom I am indebted. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 479 to the newly baptised. As great admiration Prudentius exhibits for the BasUica of St. Paul ; " On another side the Ostian way marks the name of Paul, where the river flows against the left bank. It is a place of royal grandeur : a good sovereign ^ raised this fabric. The roof he covered with golden plates, so that it flashes like the dawn ; and under it he drew four ranges of marble pillars, with carved arches. Behold the two dowries of the faith which the Supreme Father bestowed, giving them to the worship of the city of peace. Through both the thoroughfares flock the people of Eomulus : a single day is busy with the double festival. Let us speed to both and enjoy the hymns of each. Hasten we first over the river by the bridge of Hadrian, then seek we the left bank. Watching for early dawn, the priest performs the first rite beyond the Tiber ; then comes hither and duplicates his vows. This is enough for Eome to have shewn thee : go home, and remember to keep the double festival." Here Prudentius describes the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, as he saw it at Eome, say, in the year 400. The double dowry which Eome worshipped at the two Basilicas I suppose to be the Keys of St. Peter and the Sword of St. Paul, the Teacher of the Nations, as he says (v. 7) : " Scit Tiberina palus qua flumine labitur x^ropinquo Binis dicatum cespitem tropseis Et crucis et gladii testis ". It would require a volume to illustrate Prudentius. 1 Theodosius is supposed to be intended, who in the year 386 gave orders for the construction of the biiilding thus admired. 480 THE FLOWERING OF PATKISTIO LITEKATUEE. I will end with his parting words to St. Eulalia : ^ " Let us venerate her relics and the altar which is placed over them. She, put beneath the feet of God, looks on what we do, is pleased with the homage of our verse, and cherishes her people." The sacrifice being offered on the stone, under which St. Eulalia was buried, he says that she is " seated under the feet of God ". St. Paulinus of Nola had said with equal felicity : " Casta tuum digne velant Altaria corpus ; Ut templum Christi contegat ara Dei ". As the human body had become the temple of Christ, so the martyr beneath the eucharistic slab was " seated under the feet of God ". The two miracles which brought down God and raised up man are seen in con- tact ; and the heathen mind, with regard to the dead body, has undergone a complete revolution, The Incarnation and the Eucharistic Presence belong to one faith ; and are here attested together by Paulinus and Prudentius. In his hymn to St. Hippolitus he notes that he had jead a great number of inscriptions on tombs ; but once he had found sixty martyrs deposited in one monument : " their names are only known to Christ, who has honoured them with His friendship ".^ This reminds of ' "Sic venerarier ossa libet Ossibus altar et impositum. Ilia Dei sita sub pedibus Prospicit hsec, populosque suos Carmine propitiata fovet." Peristephanon, iii. 211. ^ " Quorum solus habet comperta vocabula Christus, Utpote quos proprise juiixit amicitise.'' Peristephanon, xi. THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 48 1 the still visible inscription placed by Pope Pascal over the bodies of 2300 mart^'rs, which he had translated to the Church of St. Praxedes, " whose names are known to the Almighty ". It may well be supposed that Prudentius, in his prayers and praises for the city of Eome, as the head of the empire, becoming a Christian city, which event is assigned to the last fifteen years of the fourth century, looked forward to a period of great glory both for the empire and the Christian faith. Two heathens, about the same time — Claudian in describing the great deeds of Stilicho, and, what is more remarkable, Eutilius, twelve years later, and five years after Alaric's capture — speak with a sort of rapture concerning Eome, as the maker of the Eoman peace. Spain utters her voice in Prudentius ; Gaul " in Eutilius ; Egypt, it is said, in Claudian. Together they express that profound sense of the greatness of Eomandom which all the provinces composing it had at this time, and long after- wards. " It was," says Eeumont, " as if, with the calamity which was bursting over empire and city, the sense of their importance for the world was even in- creased. The Christian Church, which was destined to succeed to the spiritual inheritance of Eome, in that she continued the work of civilisation amid the ruins of the political power, strengthened and perpetuated this sense. She recognised in the laws of Eome the voice of God in the mouth of her rulers. She proclaimed that Christ had put the sceptre in the hand of Eome, and subjected the world to the toga of the Quirinal. The 31 482 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. Eoman realm remained, to human eyes, the ideal type of the commonwealth, the seat of legitimate authority, the bearer of civilisation. Whatever was not subject to the laws of this kingdom was barbarism. Barbarism had many shapes ; but the empire was unity. The peace of the world was the Eoman peace. Whom Eome bound it made brethren. This view was not merely a specifically Eoman view. For centuries the foreign populations, which had struggled against and for Eome, had uttered it by the voice of their princes in their relations with the emperors. They thought them- selves bigger by connection with Eome. Conquest seemed to them to convey no title so long as it re- mained unconfirmed by the Eoman emperor." Now to speak of this vast movement of mind, this scintillation of intellect, which appears in the Church between her first and her fourth Councils, what is the nature of it ? In the first Council, which the newly converted Eoman emperor was the instrument of calling, but which he called in perfect union with Pope Sylvester, and Alexander of Alexandria, and Eustathius of Antioch, the Church appeared in her imperial power. Attack had been made on the faith by which she had subsisted through the long conflict with the heathen State. The attack was repelled. Then a time of fiercest trial ensued. The doubtful language of many bishops — we must even add their doubtful mind — was aggravated by the conduct of certain emperors, who had a most fixed intention to subjugate the Church. The whole doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation was passed THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 483 under strictest review. The doctrine, also, of grace : the doctrine of the Church's unity. Heresy and schism were cast out and condemned, but, ere they departed, they tore and rent their victim, whom the arm of Christ raised up and restored. In this long process the language of the Church became more definite, while her doctrine was unchanged. TertuUian and Cyprian, had they lived in St. Augustine's time, would have exulted in his doctrine. Clement and Origen would have been by the side of Athanasius. As a general result, where- ever there was imperfect expression or incomplete idea in the Antenicene writers, it was amended, and the whole idea precisely articulated. Cardinal Newman dwells on " the wonderful identity of type which charac- terises the Catholic Church from first to last ". " It is confessed on all hands, by Middleton, Gibbon, &c., that, from the time of Constantine to their own, the system and the phenomena of worship in Christendom, from Moscow to Spain, and from Ireland to Chili, are one and the same." But, further, "as to the system of Catholic worship, the idea of the Blessed Virgin was, as it were, magnified in the Church of Eome as time went on, but so were all the Christian ideas, as that of the Blessed Eucharist ", In this last sentence I find a fact stated which occurs so constantly in the period under review, that it seems to me to be its most salient characteristic. In the period between Mcsea and Chalcedon all doctrines tend to in- crease and come out more and more. Discussion enu- cleates them. Immense is the advance in distinctness with which the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity comes to 484 THE FLOWERING OF PATEISTIO LITEEATDKE. be held in consequence of the attacks made upon it. In this way Arius and Macedonius have elucidated the Second and Third Persons, Nestorius and Eutyches have led St. Leo to define, in imperishable language, with uncontroverted authority, the doctrine of our Lord's divine Personality and two Natures : Nestorius has further fixed for ever the title of Mother of God, which he strove to take from our Blessed Lady, and the Divine Maternity shines through the Godhead of the Son, revealing an infinite greatness bestowed upon the creature. Pelagius has done a similar benefit to the doctrine of grace, to our knowledge of the fall of man and its results. The Eusebians and the Donatists brought out into clearest light the unity of the Church : the former set a brand upon Greek schism five hundred years before Photius was able to accomplish it ; the latter, in all their course, most of all in the destruction which -they wrought, condemned the attempt to found national churches. The reward of Donatus was Genseric. The Primacy, both at Ephesus and at Chalcedon, received the full confession of two councils, almost all whose members were Eastern bishops, who thus branded also the schismatic council at Philippopolis, which frustrated for the moment the work intended to be done at Sardica. The authority which Pope Julius mentions so gently in his letter to the bishops forming the heretical party at Antioch is expressed in no ambiguous language by Pope Celestine, ninety years later, in the instructions given to his legates for the Council of Ephesus ; and the Council, with St. Cyril at its head, receives them with THE FL0WERIN3 OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. 485 the greatest 'deference ; while Cyril terms the Roman Pontiff, dwelling in a Rome almost under the feet of barbarians, "archbishop of the whole world". The whole process of defining doctrine brings out the autho- rity of the Primacy, as is seen in the great letter of St. Leo ; and every danger of the Church has the same result. Thus, the extreme peril with which the Church was threatened, of consenting to heresy in a general council legitimateljr called, as was the Ephesine Council of 449, was dissipated by St. Leo's peremptory act, an- nulling its decrees. The act which saved the Church exhibited the supreme authority, of her pastor. In these hundred and thirty years especially the Church learnt to fix her eyes upon her centre of unity, to learn by ex- perience where her strength lay, and to declare that she was built upon the Rock of Peter. "All Christian ideas," to use Cardinal Newman's words, " are magnified in the Church." The Fathers of this period, further, give us the strongest witness as to their cultus of the saints, and as to their belief in the Blessed Eucharist. Ideas in the Church are magnified, I suppose, because the Church is a kingdom. But it is to be noted that in all heresies and schisms exactly the opposite effect is to be seen. Such communities in pro- cess of time lose their grasp of the very truths which they once held. It is not only that they lose what they themselves, by the nature of their heresy or schism, dis- card, but they lose also what they most prized, or at least seemed to prize, when their heresy or schism began. Thus, the very documents which initiate their separated 486 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. existence may express the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, and, after the lapse of a few generations, if they survive so long, those who use them will be honeycombed with disbelief, both in the Trinity and the Incarnation. Minds nurtured in heresy and schism have become unfitting and unequal to such grandeur. So again a community, which begins with denying pur- gatory as a human invention, will end in flying back to an invented purgatory as a consolation from the thought of eternal justice in the punishment of sin. This it will repudiate, as unfitting such a character of God, as its feebleness is able to reach. Heresy and schism begin their course by imposing new opinions of their own as if they had been sanctioned by divine authority, but end by representing heresy and schism themselves to be legitimate exercises of private judgment. In a society where they dominate the wildest of errors will be lauded as the prerogatives of free thought. AU which, I sup- pose, is only an illustration of the fact that, while the Church is a kingdom which grows through the ages, heresy and schism are to perform their office towards the world in one country after another by the ever-repeated process of self-destruction. The ultimate result is that they recommend the infallibility of the Church by their confusion, and her unity by their division. The Church remains the kingdom, and points back to their carcases in the past centuries of her enduring life, lying outside her in their putrefaction. Vincent of Lerius, an author who lived in this period, and was noted for his learning and sanctity, and for THE FLOWERING OF PATKISTIO LITEEATUEE. 487 renouncing high secular rank in order to enter the reli- gious life, has left, in the single work which hands down his name, a passage which, for the purpose of dis- tinguishing true from false development, is without its like in the whole patristic literature. Written in 434, it exhibits the formation of the Eule of Faith, in terms which might serve for an exact history of the work done from the council of Nicsea to that of Chalcedou. In this point of view I quote it. " ' Timotheus,' the Apostle says, ' keep the deposit, avoiding profane novelties of words.' Who is now this Timotheus ? Either in general the whole Church, or specially the whole body of prelates who are bound to possess themselves, or infuse into others, the entire science of divine worship. What means ' Keep the deposit ' ? Keep it against thieves, against enemies, who, while men sleep, oversow tares upon that good seed which the Son of Man sowed in His field. ' Keep the deposit.' What is the deposit ? That which was entrusted to you, not what you found out. What you received, not your own brain-work. Produce, not of genius, but of learning ; not of private interpretation, but of public tradition ; not what you produced, but what came down to you. In which you are to be not author, but custodian ; not beginner, but follower ; not leader, but led. ' Keep,' he says, ' the deposit.' Pre- serve, inviolate and untouched, the talent of the Catholic faith. What was put in your trust, keep in possession and hand it down. Gold you received, render back gold. I will have no alteration, neither the impudent 488 THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITERATURE. substitution of lead, nor the fraudulent substitution of gilding. I will have not what looks like gold, but what is gold. Timotheus, be thou bishop, writer, or doctor, if a divine gift has made thee capable, by genius, by exercise, by learning, be the artist of the spiritual taber- nacle. Finish off the precious gems of the heavenly doctrine. Put them together faithfully, set them skil- fully, so adding to them brightness, grace, and elegance. Let the clearness of your exposition bring out what faith believed while it was obscure. Let those who come after be thankful to you for comprehending what those who came before respected without comprehending. Yet teach the same which you learnt, so that, if the expression be new, the meaning be old. " But some one may say, Shall there then be no pro- gress of religion in the Church of Christ ? Certainly there is, and a very great one. For where is he, so envious of man, so hateful to God, who would attempt to prevent it ? But then it must be a true progress, not a change of faith. For it belongs to progress that a thing's own nature supply the material of its growth : to change, that it be altered into something else. There- fore, let there be growth, and great and powerful pro- gress in the individual and in the mass ; in every man and in the whole Church, as generations and centuries succeed. Progress in intelligence, in knowledge, in wisdom, but ever homogeneous ; that is, progress in the same dogma, the same sense, the same intention. Let the soul in religion imitate the body in growth. The body, in the course of years, unfolds its proportions, which THE FLOWERING OF PATRISTIC LITEEATDRE. 489 still remain the same. Great is the difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age. Neverthe- less, those who were youths become old men. There is a change in the man's condition, but his nature and his person remain one and the same. The nursing baby's limbs are small, the grown man's great. But they are the same. The infant has so many joints as the man. If - - anything be produced by maturing age, it was seminally there already. Thus in the old man nothing is exhibited which was not latent in the child. No doubt then we have here a right and legitimate rule of progress, a settled and beautiful order of growth, if advancing age unfold in larger size the parts and forms which creative wisdom had first placed in miniature. But if the human form be changed into something not of its own kind, or at least some member be added or taken away, the whole body will either perish or become monstrous, or at least debilitated. In the same way dogma in the Christian religion should follow these conditions of advance. Let years consolidate it. Let it broaden out with time. It will be bigger as it ages. But it must remain unchaDged and untouched. It must be full and perfect in all its proportions, limbs, and several senses. It must admit no alteration, no loss of property, no variety of circum- scription. For instance, our ancestors sowed of old in this field of the Church wheaten seed of faith. It would be iniquitous and incongruous that we their posterity should reap error for truth, tares for genuine wheat. A due and proper sequence would require that first and last should not disagree ; that from good wheat 490 THE ELOWERING OF PATKISTIC LITEEATUKE. so\vii we should gather the full ear of wheaten dogma. So when in process of time the seed gives increase, shews a fair harvest and ripening, there shall be no change in the quality produced. A clearly defined shape and beauty may come out, but each kind must remain the same. God forbid that the rosebuds of Catholic planta- tion be turned into thorns and thistles ; that the spiri- tual paradise of cinnamon and balsam be filled with shoots of darnel and aconite. Thus, whatever the faith of our fathers sowed in this culture of God's Church, let the industry of their children ripen and guard. May it flower and mature, progress and be perfected. For it is right that in process of time the original dogmas of that divine philosophy receive cultivation, finish, and smooth- ness ; it is wrong that they be changed, cut short, or mutilated. In evidence, in clearness, in distinctness, they may advance, but let them keep their fulness, in- tegrity, and proper character. For if once this licence of impious deceit be allowed, I shrink from uttering what danger of destroying religion will ensue. For if any part of Catholic dogma be given up, others and others again, and further others, will follow from that allowance. If one pait after another be rejected, total repudiation in the end must ensue. Again, if once new be mixed with old, foreign with our own, profane with sacred, that custom will become universal. The sanctity, purity, integrity, spotlessness of the Church will all be lost. The shrine of holy truth will be turned into a den of debauchery for impiety and error to revel in. May the divine piety save His own from this and leave it to THE FLOWERING OF PATBISTIO LITERATURE. 49 1 the rage of enemies. But the Church of Christ as a careful and cautious guardian of the dogmas entrusted to her never changes aught in these. Nothing does she take away, nothing add ; she does not cut off what is needful, nor put on what is superfluous. Her own she does not lose, nor take that of others. All her in- dustry is directed to this one thing, to deal faithfully and wisely with her inheritance. If anything has come down to her unformed or embryonic, she works it into shape. What has already form and expansion, she presses together and strengthens. She preserves what is already strong and definite. In fine, what did she ever strive for in the decrees of. councils but to form a simple into a more accurate belief ; to rouse a keener interest in what may have been slackly taught ; to cul- tivate with more anxious care what had been held before in security. This, I repeat, and nothing more, has the Catholic Church, roused into action by the innovations of heretics, effected by the decrees of her councils. What she had received from those before her on tradi- tion alone, she set her seal upon for posterity by the handwriting of Scripture also.; and therein she compre- hended a vast matter in a few words, and generally marked out a sense to be believed which was not new by using a new expression which cast upon it a revealing light." ^ ^ Part of the above passage is quoted, as a description of true progress, in the Vatican Council. 492 ST. LEO THE GREAT. CHAPTEE XL ST. LEO THE GREAT. " In the Robber Council of Ephesus, when all the bishops and even the patriarchs were failing, if the great Leoj imitating Him of whom it is written, 'The Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered, ' had not been divinely stirred up to open his mouth, and to rouse the whole world and the emperors themselves, and to move them to pious action, the Christian religion would have perished." — Pope Nicolas I. to the Emperor Michael, A.D. 847. No such intellectual outburst of vigour as we have been trying to describe in the period from Athanasius to Leo is to be found in the Church after this age until eight hundred years had expired. Then in certain great minds of the 13th century, especially the three chief schoolmen, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and Scotus, a work was effected which may be compared in certain respects with the result of the hundred and fifty years succeeding the Nicene Council. The gigantic intellect of St. Thomas rose, as it were, upon the shoulders of St. Augustine,^ and laid out in orderly disposition the fabric which his genius had prepared. But now, in the year 440, there was placed at the head of the intellectual work achieved, and of the vast 1 A similitude suggested to me by the windows of Chartres, where the evan- gelists are seen raised upon the four great prophets in the Sanctuary Virginis pariturae. ST. LEO THE GREAT. 493 society out of whicli it had sprung, a man, from the strength of his character one of the greatest rulers to be found in any age, and from the quality|of his mind as fit to be judge in works of intellect as to direct in practical government. St. Leo the Great bore at once the Keys of Peter and the Sword of Paul. And he bore them one-and-twenty years without haste, without passion, without fear, with the serene dignity of one whose eyes were ever fixed upon the Lord whom he represented, in the days of Attila and Genseric, when the race of Theodosius ended in uttermost shame and ignominy at Rome, ended also at Constantinople in the noblest of his descendants, the empress and virgin Saint Pulcheria. At the moment of Leo's accession, what remained of the Western empire had been governed since 425 by the empress Galla Placidia, the only surviving child of the great Theodosius, as guardian for Valentinian, her son by Constantius, who had obtained her unwilling hand as the most valiant Eoman general of the time, and the mainstay of her brother's throne. France was occupied by German races, Burgundians, Franks, Ale- mans, Alans : the Visigoth kingdom, whose seat was at Toulouse, while recognised by Rome, had scarcely more than nominal connection with it. The Vandals and the Sueves were in Spain ; but, worse yet, Genseric had invaded Africa in 429, and after a warfare of ten years had obtained full possession of it. Carthage was his. Britain had already been lost to the empire when Stilicho had been reduced to withdraw the Roman 494 ST. LEO THE GEEAT. forces for the defence of Italy. Western Illyricum had been ceded to Theodosius II., when after the death of his uncle Honorius he had overthrown an usurper and placed his aunt, Galla Placidia, with her infant son, on the throne. From that time forth the emperor at Constantinople acted as a sort of superior Lord^ over the Western empire. But by Leo's time it was well-nigh restricted to Italy, which itself, by the loss of Africa, Eome's chief granary, was reduced to a state of constant alarm lest the means of subsistence should fail. What Prudentius could say in 403 was no longer true : Respice num. Libyci desistat ruris arS,tor Prumentis onerare rates, et ad ostia Tibris Mittere triticeos in pastum plebis acervos. — 2 Con. Sym. 936. Leo was elected when absent from Rome, having been sent by Valentinian III. into Gaul to reconcile, if possible, the two imperial generals, Aetius and Albinus. In fact, what empire remained depended upon the great ability of Galla's minister, Aetius, who repeated in a singular manner the story of the triumphs, the sus- pected loyalty, and the unseemly death of Stilicho in the previous reign. On two men, Stilicho and Aetius, in lineage half barbarians, but far surpassing any native of Eome or Italy in warlike genius, political ability, and the power to sustain a falling empire, that empire rested for such political life as it continued to have from the death of Theodosius until his unworthy grandson slew 1 Reumont, i. 775-780. When Anthemius was made emperor, 467, in den Vei'sen des Galliers (Sidonius Apollinaris) klingt nur zu setr durch was schon die Geschichte von Anthemius' Erhebung verkundete, dass das neue Rom an der Oreuze zwischen Europa und Asien das Scepter fuhrte. ST; LEO THE GREAT. 495 Aetius, as Honorius had slain Stilicho ; and as Stilicho was avenged by Alaric, so was Aetius by Genseric. On both these great men rests a suspicion that they had failed in perfect fidelity to the sovereigns whom they served — a suspicion which those who have most warmly sympathised with their great actions have not been able to dissipate ; but it is certain that from the death of Stilicho the reign of Honorius was an unvaried series of disasters, while the assassin's stroke, which Valentinian had dealt upon Aetius, destroyed himself at once, and after a few years, in which successive emperors were murdered, put an end to the empire itself ; or rather, strictly speaking, left to the ruler at Constantinople the sole title to what was still called the Eoman empire. The state of the Eastern empire at Leo's accession was different. Theodosius II. had succeeded Arcadius in 408, at the age of seven, had been wisely and carefully educated by his minister the regent Anthemius, and then by his sister Pulcheria, who was made empress at sixteen. The two together had done alt for him that loyalty and affection could do. But he had inherited no spark of genius from the grandfather whose illustrious name he bore ; no particle even, it would seem, of his mother's spirit, the beautiful and wilful daughter of Bauto, the Frankish general. As soon as he came forth from the hands of Anthemius and Pulcheria, the only function of which he seemed capable was to be clothed in the imperial robes, stiff with jewels, to wear the pui"ple buskins, to ride in the golden carriage, and be waited on and advised by obsequious courtiers and 496 ST. LEO THE GREAT. eunuchs, and those who were worse than both — time- serving bishops looking for promotion. Thus he had reigned for thirty-two years, at first by his regent and his sister, then himself, a man of personal piety, but Avho had the ill-luck to be ever on the wrong side in ecclesiastical affairs — a result due no doubt to the parties prevailing in a court directed by the three sorts of councillors above described. He had, however, just brought back with honour the relics of the great saint whom his unhappy parents, Arcadius and Eudoxia, had so ignobly persecuted to death, and had placed them with the honours due to confessorship in the Church of the Apostles, sepulchre of the bishops, and of Constan- tine's line. The empire of which he stood at the head had passed under his father and himself through times of great peril. It had, however, contrived to turn the greed of Alaric away from itself upon the realm of Honorius. It had looked upon the dissolution of the Western empire almost with feelings of jealous satisfaction, in so far, at least, as first Goth and then Hun seemed to be diverted from its own shoulders. On the death of his uncle Honorius, the nephew, a young man of twenty-two, had thought of taking the West under his immediate control. But his courage or his strength failed, and he was con- tent to invest an aunt and a child-cousin with the imperial title, and to place them over a diminished domain. But though East and West had been under separate administrations since the death of Theodosius, the Roman empire, in the mind of its rulers, was one ST. LEO THE GREAT. 497 and indivisible. This was a fixed principle through all the changes of dynasty which succeeded at Constanti- nople, even down to the time when Leo III. set the imperial crown on the great hero, so far more powerful that the Eastern Csesar. But now, while Galla Placidia and her son Valentinian, ruled by the arm of Aetius only, the emperor at Constantinople was at the head of a still mighty realm, containing the richest provinces and the fairest countries in the world. Theodosius possessed Asia Minor, from the Egean-Sea to Lake Van, and be- yond, with the wealth and civilisation of seven hundred years from the time of Alexander ; with its store of Grecian cities, one of which alone, Pergamos, recon- structed by the touch of an architect to its ideal beauty, is enough to astonish the mind. Theodosius, dwelling in the impregnable city of the Bosphorus, the bride so often wooed by every imperial lover, from his day to our own, was undisputed lord over a multitude of cities such as Pergamos. Egypt was his, Syria was his, and the great Balkan peninsula, from Dyrrachium and Sirmium to the Euxine Sea and the Malean promontory. As the West fell to pieces, the East formed itself more and more into an empire under its new capital. The grandson of Theodosius needed only to be a ruler such as his grandsire was, to secure the prosperity of the wonderful domain which he inherited. Such was the political condition of the East and West ; but what were the circumstances of the Church in July, 440, and particularly the position of the Eoman pontiff ? 32 498 ST. LEO THE GREAT. In regard to this, the acts of the Council of Ephesus in 431 seem to me of supreme importance, as being, when it was held, the first Council since the Nicene in which the East and West had met together. It must be remembered that the council of Sardica, called in 343, by common consent of the emperors Constantius and Constans, at the wish of Pope Julius, was intended to be an ecumenical council, like the Nicene, and to terminate those controversies which had arisen in the eighteen years passed since that Council. But this intention was frustrated by the intrigues of the Euse- bian bishops, who had at their command the tyrannical power of the Eastern emperor, Constantius. Again, the council at Eimini was intended by its contrivers to be an ecumenical council, but instead bipartite councils were held, one at Eimini, the other at Seleucia. The council of 150 bishops, called by Theodosius at Con- stantinople, in 381, was never intended to be ecume- nical, no Western bishops were invited to it, and it was composed of Eastern bishops alone. At Ephesus this council was passed over in silence. Nothing could be more obnoxious to St. Cyril than a canon which it made, elevating the upstart see of Constantinople above his own see, the second in the Church from the time of the Apostles, and above Antioch, which was the third, equally from St. Peter's time. Accordingly, when the Council of Ephesus was held in 431, no one thought of the council of 381 as ecumenical.^ Thus the actions of 1 Observe that Eutyches, in appealing to Pope Leo in 448 (Ep. xxL), while pointedlj' referring to the Councils of Nicaea and Ephesus, entirely passes over ST. LEO THE GREAT. 499 the Council of Ephesus exhibit the Church as meeting for the first time in plenary synod since that of Nicaea, which was held a hundred and six years before. In that cen- tury there had been great contentions. The most violent of heresies had shaken the Church to its foundation, not by its intrinsic force, but because the despotic power of emperors had been placed at its disposal. Especially this power had been invited by Eastern bishops to act against the Eoman Primacy ; and an emperor had sent a Pope into banishment. When the Church met at length in 431, the city of Eome had descended very low from the political position which it occupied down to the foundation of Constantine's Nova Eoma. The East had been formed into a new empire, with a capital of its own. The political influence of that capital had raised its bishop from a suflfr&gan, unknown to previous history, until he had become the greatest ecclesiastical personage of the East. A man of remarkable eloquence, who was brought, like St. Chrysostome, from Antioch, and was expected to equal his renown, had been placed by imperial favour in that most coveted see. He was the choice of Theodosius II. himself He had begun his episcopate by assaulting the dignity of the Mother of God ; the Church had met to judge him. He was de- posed, and the sentence ran : "Compelled by the canons, and the letter of our most holy Father and Colleague, Celestine, bishop of Eome, we have with many tears come to this painful sentence. Our Lord Jesus Christ, that of Constantinople in 381. He speaks of holding " the faith which was set forth by the holy Council at Nicsea, but confirmed at Ephesus ". 500 ST. LEO THE GREAT. whom he has slandered, decrees by this holy Synod that Nestorius be deprived of episcopal dignity and all sacerdotal communion." ^ The letter of Celestine, thus referred to, was an act of plenary authority by the bishop of Rome, declaring the bishop of Constantinople to be degraded unless within ten days he acknowledged and abjured his error. At the head of the council was St. Cyril, acting as the Pope's representative, together with other legates from Rome, who stated, in precise terms, that the Pope sat in the see and place of Peter : statements accepted without discussion by the council. All, therefore, who receive the existence of the Church as a continuous corporate body must hold that by this, the first plenary council of the Church after the Nicene, the Pope's position, with all the claim made in the letters of the Popes as to the origin of their authority, was admitted by the Church as an existing thing, not a thing which the Church granted, but a thing which the Church acknowledged. This condemnation of Nestorius had taken place in spite of all the opposition which the court party and the emperor himself could make to it. Theodosius had throughout been on the side of Nestorius. Eighteen years later he was to be equally on the side of Eutyches. And, in all the violence used by Dioscorus and his council, he was on the side of Dioscorus. On these several occasions he is believed to have been misled by the intrigues of his court, which did not allow the feeble ^ Hefele, ii. 172. ST. LEO THE GREAT. 50 1 spirit of the absolute prince to have a mind of his owns Nine years therefore before the accession of St. Leo, the full position of the bishop of Eome, as Primate sitting in the See of Peter, had been acknowledged by an irrevocable authority. Eome, as a city, was living from hand to mouth. Its sovereign was usually seeking security between the marshes of Eavenna and the sea ; he did not venture to dwell on the Palatine hill in the palace of Augustus. Its Bishop was acknowledged as sitting and ruling in the seat of Peter by episcopal descent from him : acknowledged by the East, in the bishops who were the subjects of the Eastern emperor, as well as by the bishops in the "West, who, amid barbarian invasions, looked to the bishop of Eome as the sole remaining symbol of imperial power, but much more as the maintainer, champion, and standard of their episcopal authority, and of the Christian faith. On the death of Sixtus III., in August, 440, Leo, a deacon, son of Quintianus, a Eoman, was unanimously elected Pope, being then absent in Gaul, under a commission from the emperor. His age at this time can hardly have been less than fifty. He is believed to be the Leo who, in 418, is mentioned as an acolyte, the bearer of a decree from Pope Zosimus, as well as of a letter from Sixtus, then a priest, afterwards Pope, to Aurelius of Carthage. On this occasion, the future great Pope would come in contact with the greatest of the Fathers ; and it is well to bear in mind that, for at least forty years, Leo and Augustine were contemporaries. 502 ST. LEO THE GREAT. In the time of Pope Celestine, 422-432, lie was arch- deacon of Rome ; and in this character was addressed by John Cassian, in dedicating to him the work on the Incarnation, as " My dear Leo, the honour of the Roman church and the divine ministry. You call upon me to raise my feeble hands against this novel heresy, this new enemy of the faith (that is Nestorius) : I obey your entreaty ; I obey your command."^ During the pontificate of his predecessor Sixtus, 432-440, Leo was a man of great influence. St. Cyril addressed to him a letter against the design of Juvenal of Jerusalem to get for himself the rank of patriarch. Leo was recalled from Gaul, when engaged, as we have seen, in political matters of the utmost importance to the empire ; and Prosper says: " More than forty days the Roman church was without a bishop, awaiting, with wonderful peace and patience, the arrival of the deacon Leo". On his arrival he was consecrated bishop, and mounted the throne of St. Peter at a time of extraordinary danger both to the empire and the Church. His first years- were occupied in maintaining faith and discipline against the Manichseans, who had come in large numbers to Rome upon the capture of Carthage by Genseric the year before, and against Pelagians in Upper Italy, and Priscillianists in Spain. In the first ten years of his episcopate, besides the terrible deeds of Genseric by land and sea, who harried all that came within his reach with the ferocity of a Barbary pirate, the whole empire, both in the East and West, was ' Cassiau, de Incamatione ; Preface, Migne, voL 1., p. 14. ST. LEO THE GREAT. 503 held in panic by the immense hosts of Attila, who had joined under his single command the Scythian and the German tribes. He spread the most fearful havoc over the Eastern empire, from the Adriatic to the Black Seas, and Aetius with difficulty, aided by Visigoths and Franks, rescued the West, in 451, from an age of Scythian barbarity on the plains of Chalons. These were the times in which St. Leo delivered at Eome those ninety-six sermons which have come down to us : some on the great festivals of our Lord ; a good number on His passion ; on the festivals of- Kome's patron-saints, St. Peter and St Paul ; on the anniversa- ries of his own consecration ; on the fasts of the Church. Wherever he dwells on dogma or on devotion, on the several duties of Christian life, on the Person of our Lord, on the characters of His saints and martyrs, it is the voice of one speaking with consummate dignity, with the most finished theological accuracy, basing moral duties upon Christian mysteries. These sermons are acts of a ruler, whose mind is absorbed without effort or consciousness in the work of his ofl&ce, to teach, instruct, support, as one who sits in the chair of the chief Apostle, and whose domain is the imperishable Church of God. Scarcely does he ever mention the secular troubles which made the Palatine hill no place for a degenerate emperor to occupy. The Eome of Leo is fenced by myriads of martyrs ; and the earth over which he stands is full of the relics of saints. Of them and of their work, and of the Lord who bought them and made them, he speaks ; and fear of the barbarism 504 ST. LEO THE OEEAT. surging round him or of " change perplexing monarchs" is unknown to him. He has left likewise a hundred and forty-three letters, of great importance for the history of his time. Some are dogmatic, some historical ; some dwell on questions of canon law and discipline. They exhibit very dis- tinctly the position which he held towards the imperial personages of his day: to Theodosius, Pulcheria, Marcian, in the East ; to Valentinian, Galla Placidia, Eudoxia, in the West. They give his instructions to Julian, bishop of Cos, in whom he may be said to have instituted the race of nuncios. His language in them to various bishops, metropolitans, patriarchs, indicates, without arrogating, a supreme authority. They are instinct throughout with his own great character ; . we forget the anthor in the man ; we know him as an author only because he was the ruler. One of these letters, the 28th, is that in which he set forth to Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, the true doc- trine of the Incarnation, when it was impugned by Eutyches. It was afterwards received by the metropoli- tans and bishops of the Church as the test of the true faith. Of all documents issued by the ancient Popes it remains the most famous. There is one thing in it specially remarkable. The division of the East and West, which became permanent upon the death of Theodosius, had put an end in great part to the knowledge of the Greek language, which had been cultivated for so many centu- ries in Kome ; for Eomans were no longer sent to hold great oflfice among Greek-speaking populations. Greek ST. LEO THE GREAT. 50S is specially the language not only of poetry but of meta- physics and theology ; able by its almost infinite subtlety and variety to express whatever thought can conceive. St. Leo knew no Greek ; but in this dogmatic letter he has set forth the incomprehensible mystery on which is centred all the hope, the faith, and the love of Christians, with the clearness, accuracy, and simplicity of Athanasius or Basil ; and for once the language of Eome in the mouth of a Eoman in the fifth century has equalled the language of Greece in the mouth of those who used it with the greatest effect. The whole history of the Nestprian and Eutychean controversies shews the great danger in which these two opposing heresies, one arising from the perversion of the Antiochene school, the other from the perversion of the Alexandrine school, involved the Church. The great patriarchate of the East was shorn of its glory and finally shipwrecked by the one ; the great patriarchate which Athanasius and Cyril had ruled with such honour was lost in the other. Leo pointed out that each of these errors destroyed the very substance of the faith. In one passage of a letter^ to the empress Pulcheria he has de- scribed in singularly few words the two aberrations which have been so fatal : " While Eutyches considers himself to have formed a more religious judgment upon the majesty of the Son of God, by not affirming that our nature was really in Him, he supposed that the whole of what is comprised in ' the "Word was made flesh ' belonged to one and the same substance. And far as Nestorius ^ Ep. xxxi. 506 ST. LEO THE GREAT. falls from the truth in asserting that Christ was born of His mother only man, equally far does he too deviate from the path of Catholic doctrine, when he believes that it was not our substance which was brought forth from the same virgin. His meaning is that that substance should be understood of the Godhead alone. So that what ' bore the form of a servant,' and what was like and conformable to us, was a sort of likeness of our nature, not its reality." In these few words the Pope fathomed the whole abyss of error in the two opposing heresies, and shewed how each destroyed the Incarnation. Their subsequent history therefore is no wonder : that the one set up against the Body of Christ a false church from Antioch to China ; the other tore Egypt from that same Body of Christ. The cause and the effect were adequate. When Leo became Pope Cyril was in the last years of his episcopate, possessing the great consideration which his presiding at the Council of Ephesus had given him, over and above the rank of his see. He died four years afterwards, and was succeeded by his archdeacon Dio- scorus. We have a letter-^ from St. Leo to Dioscorus, in which he certainly uses the language of a superior. He says that he writes to him " to confirm his beginnings ": that as St. Peter had received from his Lord the Princi- pate, and the Eoman church remained constant to all which he had instituted, so it would be a crime to sup- pose that St. Mark, his disciple, and the first bishop of Alexandria, followed any other tradition : adding, " This ST. LEO THE GREAT. 507 we do not suffer," but " it is our will that you also should keep what has been handed down from our Fathers ". Nothing certainly but the possession of St. Peter's pastorship would justify such language used to the second bishop of the Church. After the deposition of Nestorius, and the interval of Maximian's brief episcopate, St. Proclus had succeeded to the sec of Constantinople, in which he sat with great dignity and renown for twelve years. He was in the middle of these twelve years at Leo's accession. It is astonishing how little the rank and influence of his see had been affected by the ignominious deposition of Nestorius. It would seem that when there is a close union between the civil and the spiritual powers, com- bined with an absolute monarchy, the influence which naturally attaches to the bishop of the capital, when the capital is also the monarch's residence, can not but con- tinually increase. It is certain that, in the court of Theodosius, Proclus was eminent. He was succeeded in 446 by Flavian, who was scarcely seated when the aged and highly-considered abbot Eutyches began to stir up ,the heresy which bears his name. This was condemned by Flavian in his Eesident Council in November, 448, but Eutyches did not submit. The matter was reported to Rome both by Eutyches and by Flavian. The words of the latter to the Pope are : " The cause only requires your consolation and defence. Your consent will bring everything to tran- quillity and peace. For thus the heresy which has arisen, and the disturbances which it has caused, will be most So8 ST. LEO THE GREAT. easily destroyed by the divine co-operation, through your most sacred letters. The council also, which is talked about, will be put aside, so that there may not be universal disturbances in the churches." ^ When, seventeen years before, the heresy of Nestorius had been reported to Pope Celestine by St. Cyril, the Pope issued a letter of condemnation requiring Nestorius to retract within ten days or else pronouncing him to be deposed. This was the Pope's action in regard to the bishop of Constantinople, high in the favour of the emperor, who was the same then as now. In the present case of an abbot at Constantinople, whom likewise the emperor strongly supported, St. Leo, after jfirst fully informing himself upon the whole matter, issued to Flavian the letter which he had asked for, and which is so renowned in the history of doctrine. No one, I think, can read this letter without astonishment at the power of language shewn by the Pope. He has to ex- pose and destroy two heresies, and to exhibit in full proportion the divine and transcendent mystery which lies between them. Each sentence cuts through error like the clean sweep of a scimitar, and in so doing delineates the truth. I suppose that the power of antithesis is pushed to the utmost. But this document, received by all the bishops, and read for hundreds of years in churches, has put on St. Leo's head an imperish- able crown : that of establishing for ever by the testi- mony of Scripture tha force of Tradition and the authority of the Primacy exhibited in it, the Godhead 1 Ep. xxvi. ST. LEO THE GKEAT. SO9 and Manhood of his Lord in the work of human salva- tion. It was the completion of St. Peter's confession — " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God " ; and the bishops at Chalcedon echoed their consent to.it in the words — " Peter has spoken by Leo ". But Eutyches had got the emperor Theodosius IL on his side, and, notwithstanding the words of Flavian to the Pope, that his letter would render a council un- necessary, a council was called at Ephesus, to which the Pope agreed to send his legates, though he thought it unnecessary, and only consented to it for the sake of peace.^ "On the 8th August, 449, the council was opened in St. Mary's church at Ephesus. The previous imperial decrees had indeed given to understand that the chief occupation of the council would be to extir- pate Nestorianism. But the negotiations shewed plainly that the Monophysite condemned in Byzantium, plum- ing himself on the reputation of Cyril and the council held eighteen years before in the same place, was bent on sitting in judgment upon the doctrine of the Two Natures, and would spare no violence in procuring a triumph. Dioscorus, who had already declared Flavian's judgment null and void, was made by the will of the emperor president of the council. The Eoman legates were only able to be witnesses of a domination bearing down all before him. The fifth rank only was assigned to Flavian, in clear proof that Alexandria had not recog- nised the rank given to his see in 381. As Chrysostome had been treated by Theophilus, so he was now put as 1 1 take the following account from Hergenrbther's Photius, i., p. 62. SIO ST. LEO THE GREAT. an accused person, whose bitterest opponent was his judge. Dioscorus and his guard of soldiers, and fana- tical monks, allowed themselves the grossest acts of violence. The Papal letters were not even read. Eutyches was heard, not his accusers. He was acquitted, they were condemned, Flavian among them. The doctrine of the Two Natures in Christ was formally proscribed, and many bishops compelled to subscribe the decrees of Dioscorus. The Eoman legates had vainly protested against this tumultuous and illegal proceeding. One, the Deacon Hilary, fled to Eome, and gave an accu- rate account of it to Pope Leo. Flavian, also, had in vain appealed to Pope Leo and a council to be held in Italy. He died shortly afterwards, in consequence of the ill- treatment received. The whole Eastern church fell into uttermost bewilderment. The majority of bishops yielded to the ruling party. The emperor who, with his want of understanding, was wholly in their hands, did not hesitate to set the seal of his imperial authority upon the unexampled violence of the Alexandrine patriarch. " If ever the necessity of the Papal Primacy came out clearly it was at this moment. It alone would bring help to the Easterns even in such a case. The best of them had fixed their eyes upon it. Theodoret of Cyrus, whom the synod of Dioscorus had even in his absence deposed, as it had many others, appealed from the unrighteous sentence by letter and messengers to Eome, as the emperor forbade him to go thither in person. In this letter he points out how St. Paul, in . ST. LEO THE GREAT. 51I the contest about the law, betook himself to Peter. So much more must he turn for help to the Apostolic See, to which in all things the Primacy belongs.^ He de- scribes the grandeur of Eome in eloquent words. It owes its highest glory to the Apostle Peter, and is especially distinguished for its unshaken faith. This has shewn itself afresh in the wonderful letter to Flavian. He then recounts the proceeding of Dioscorus and his own previous life. He assures the Pope that he waits for the decision of the Apostolic Chair, and desires to be informed whether he should acdept or not his deposition. He will yield entire obedience to the Papal decision. " The clergy and people of Constantinople and a majority of the bishops of the provinces of Pontus, Asia, and Syria sought for Leo's help." This, then, is the precise moment of which Pope Nicolas I. speaks to the emperor Michael, who, four hundred years after this, was bringing about the Greek schism at the instance of Photius. Of this he uses words most remarkable in the mouth of a Pope : " If the great Leo had not been divinely moved to open his mouth, the Christian religion would have perished ".^ But the Pope acted. " In October, 449, he held a council at Eome, ' against not the judgment but the violence ' enacted at Ephesus, and rejected all the ^ Ata Trdvra yap xifuov to irpoyreveiv ipfiorrei. — Ep. lii. of St. Leo. ^ ' ' Eeligio Christiana penitus coiTuiaset. "—St. Leo's own words to the emperor ahout what was decreed in the Latrocinium are as strong—" Quoniam revera omne Christianse fidei sacramentum, quod absit a temporibus vestrse pietati.«, exscinditur, nisi hoc scelestissimum facinas, quod cuncta sacrilegia excedit, aboleatur '' — Ep. xliv. 512 ST. LEO THE GREAT. decrees passed under the presidency of Dioscorus. In liis own name and that of this council he wrote to the emperor Theodosius II. On the one hand he urged his own supreme judicial authority, which after Flavian's appeal was bound to take effect according to the canons of Sardica ; on the other he endeavoured to move the emperor to give up the Eobbe]- Council and consent to a council to be held in Italy. Until this all should remain in the condition in which it was before that assemblage had taken place. In the same terms he wrote to Pulcheria, whose interest with her brother he asked for. The deacon Hilary did the same. He had not been able to bring over to her the former letters of the Pope. He now informed her of the state of things, to obtain her co-operation in correcting what had hap- pened. At the same time the Pope warned also his vicar, Anastasius of Thessalonica, against an incautious acceptance of an unjust judgraent, and against every error from the true faith. He consoled Flavian under his bitter persecution, for he was not yet aware of his death, and assured him of assistance. He encouraged his Nuncio, bishop Julian, the abbots, monks, and people of Constantinople to remain firm in the faith, and to trust in God's help for the victory of the truth, on which he counted without fail. ' We must, therefore, hold what we held, and in the raging of a single tempest embrace the perfect tranquillity of faith, until the truth pours its rays on every side and consumes the darkness of unbelief'^ In this hope Leo used every effort to 1 Ep. ilviii. ST. LEO THE GREAT. 513 defend orthodoxy, to relieve the innocent who were persecuted, and to annul the influence of the Eobber Council. " Events in the Eastern empire tended to increase perplexity. The power of the violent bishop of Alex- andria seemed to increase when an Alexandrine priest, Anatolius, who had been up to this time agent of Dioscorus at the court, was put in the place of the deceased Flavian in the chair of Constantinople, and consecrated by Dioscorus himself before the end of the year 449. By this the see of the capital seemed to be placed in a certain dependence upon the Egyptian patriarch. He took, moreover, a further step towards ecclesiastical supremacy ; for Dioscotus, upon hearing that the Pope had annulled his synod, took upon him to issue an anathema against Leo himself, in a council of his adherents held at Nicsea. The emperor Theodosius, led by this party, seemed still less inclined to do justice to the Pope's demands. The Pope wrote again on the 25th December, 449, and assured him of his unalterable fidelity to the Nicene definition. The Monophysites were accustomed to represent their opponents as infring- ing this. " In February, 450, the emperor Valentinian III. came to Kome with his mother Galla Placidia and his wife Eudoxia. The Pope, with the bishops about him, in- duced them to write to Theodosius II. in the same sense as the Pope had written. The Western emperor put forward specially the Primacy of the Papal See, which has the right and faculty of judging upon the faith and 33 514 ST. LEO THE GREAT. bishops, and he urged the appeal of Flavian. All the three letters,^ and that of Eudoxia to Pulcheria, express most decidedly their conviction of the supreme authority of the Eoman bishop. But Theodosius remained deaf to these representations also. He rests, in his reply, on the fact that peace has been restored by the punishment of the innovator Flavian ;- that the Council of Ephesus was entirely free ; that its decrees were most orthodox ; that fuU account of them had been already sent to the most reverend patriarch Leo.^ The Pope's zeal was comforted only by the steadfastness of Pulcheria, who wrote in assent to him, and that of the clergy, monks, and people of Constantinople. These the Pope encouraged by further letters." • " In the meantime great changes were about to take place at Constantinople. The eunuch Chrysaphius, the chief support of the Eutycheans, fell under imperial displeasure, and was banished. The empress Eudocia withdrew to Jerusalem. Pulcheria, as great in ability as zealous for the faith, recovered all her influence. Her brother fell from horseback and died suddenly, July 28th, 450 ; she succeeded to the throne, and raised to it with herself the general Marcian, one of the ablest men in the empire, whom she took for husband, with the condition that she should maintain her own virgin estate. The new rulers declared unreservedly 'Ep. Iv.-lvii. Valentinian's words are "QuatenusbeatissimusRomanEecivitatis episcopus, cui principatum sacerdotii super omnes antiqiiitas contulit, locum habeat ao facultatem de fide et sacerdotibus judicare". — Ep. Iv. 2 Ep. Ixii. ST. LEO THE GREAT. SI5 Catholic intentions. They recalled the deposed and banished bishops. They brought back the bones of the confessor Flavian, and interred them in the church of the Apostles, the usual burying-place of bishops and emperors. Marcian forthwith announced his accession to Pope Leo, recommended his government to his prayers, and intimated his wish to restore peace to the Church by a council to be held under the authority of the Eoman See. The Eastern emperor's words to the Pope are : " We have thought fit, in the first instance, to announce this to your Holiness, who holds the office of bishop and ruler over the divine faith "} On which the comment of Theodoret is : " Marcian and Pulcheria wrote to' Leo, acknowledging in him the fulness of power ". Marcian and Anatolius received with honour the Papal legates who had been sent to Theodosius IL Anatolius, if not from conviction, moved at least by the force of circumstances, accepted the Pope's dogmatic letter to Flavian, in a synod held before the end of November, 450,' while he condemned Nestorius and Eutyches. The letter was sent to be subscribed by the Eastern metropolitans, as it had already been by ,the Western bishops. Many bishops who had followed Dioscorus testified repentance, and begged for the communion of the Apostolic See. The emperor and empress announced this happy change to the Pope, and '■ TTjV re (TTjv iyiaxrivriv ■ emcrKOTrcvovaav koI apxovcrau ttjs 6eias Tricrrems Upois ypajifiauiv iv Trp&Tois SUawv ^yrjcrdpeBa npocremeh. — Ep. Ixxiii. , edition Migne, p. 900. Theodoret, fragment, Migne, 86, p. 168 : eypa-^av Ae'oj/Ti . . jratrav avrco avBevriav Trapexovres. Compare the words of the Eastern emperor with those of the Western, just cited : " principatum sacerdotii super omnes ". 5l6 ST. LEO THE GREAT. invited him to a . council to be held in their empire. Anatolius sent three ecclesiastics to Rome, with letters bearing full attestation of his orthodoxy. Thereupon Leo acknowledged Anatolius, accepted what had been done at his synod in favour of the repentant bishops, who should be contented for the present to be maintained in their churches. He ordered the names of Dioscorus, of Juvenal of Jerusalem, and Eustathius of Berytus, the heads of the Robber Council, not to be recited any more in the Diptychs. The further correspondence of the Pope with the Eastern emperor discloses only one point of difference between them. Marcian considered a fresh council in the East desirable, and even necessary. Leo, who had before wished for a council in Italy, considered it now superfluous and inexpedient, as he had on a similar former occasion. For the memory of Flavian was restored. Most of the Eastern bishops had subscribed Leo's dogmatic decision, which amply secured the faith. Eusebius of Doryloeum, who was in Rome, enjoyed the communion of the Church. Theodoret of Cyrus was restored. The condemnation of those who had fallen was prepared. Then a new discussion on the dogmatic question seemed dangerous and unallowable, since the Church's decision, already issued without a general council, could not be reconsidered. All that remained was indulgence to those in fault, a matter entrusted to the new Papal legates together with Anatolius, in which Leo only reserved to himself the decision upon Dioscorus and the other heads of party. Moreover, the ST. LEO THE GREAT. 517 Western bishops could hardly leave their dioceses through an incursion of the Huns. Under these circum- stances, Leo desired at least a postponement of the council to a more suitable time. But, as the emperor had already, on the 17th May, convoked a council for the 1st September, 451, to Nicsea in Bythynia, before he had received the Pope's dissuading letter of the 9th June, Leo acceded to his appointment, in spite of the alleged and other difficulties. The emperor's zeal in- duced him to this, and, in addition to the already appointed legates, the bishop Lucentius and the priest Basil, he appointed Paschasinus, bishop of Lilybseum, and the priest Boniface, who, with Julian of Cos, should represent him at the council. Paschasinus was to preside. He only regretted, in a letter to Anatolius, of June 26th, that the short time appointed by the emperor would prevent the attendance of the Western bishops. He also wrote to the council a letter for his legates to deliver. He declined personal attendance on the ground of old custom, and the necessity of his presence in Italy. But he claimed decidedly, in virtue of his Primacy, the right of pre- siding for the legates who should represent him. He set himself earnestly to work, in order to efface the bad effects of the Robber Council, and to distinguish the innocent from the guilty ; and gave to that end wise advice to the council. He enjoined especially not to reconsider what was already decided, and to maintain the old statutes of Nicsea. Further, to restore the bishops who had been unjustly condemned. The conr 5l8 ST. LEO THE GKEAT. demnation of Monophysitism should not assist the opposite extreme of Nestorianism. And he added a warning against ambitious transgressions of the ancient hierarchical order, which were not rare in the East, and doubly to be feared since the bishop of Constantinople had made a nomination to the Chair of Antioch. " At the council of Chalcedon, to which place the council originally invoked for September at Nicaea had been transferred, the faith of the Church was solemnly pronounced against Nestorius and against Eutyches by condemnation of the Robber Council, and by an explicit dogmatic decision. It was the most numerous and brilliant assembly of bishops which the East had ever seen. And here it was that the rank and the supremacy of the Roman Chair came most clearly forth, in spite of various intrigues and petty struggles of the Eastern jealousy, sometimes breaking into tumult. At the demand of Leo's legates, who presided, Dioscorus had to give up his place among the bishops. His tranS' gressions were brought to light. He was expressly censured for having attempted to direct a general council without being charged to do it by the Roman See : a thing which had never been permitted. He had suppressed Leo's letter, and not communicated it to the assembled bishops. He had even ventured to excom- municate the Pope. Dioscorus was punished with complete deposition. The partners in his guUt, Juvenal of Jerusalem and Thalassius of Caesarea, were more mildly treated. Flavian and Eusebius were pronounced innocent : Theodoret and Ibas restored to their sees. ST. LEO THE GREAT. 519 Leo's dogmatic letter was received with loud acclamation as rule of faith. The bishops exclaimed, ' This is the faith of the Fathers ; this is the faith of the Apostles ; Peter has spoken by Leo '. It was only considered further to satisfy the doubts of certain less intelligent prelates. The Roman legates carefully maintained their right, and the council expressly recognised the Primacy of Eome by solemnly asking for the papal confirmation of its decrees. " The words they use in their synodical letter to the Pope are : ' You are the interpreter to all of the voice of St. Peter ; you attract to all the blessing of his faith ; you are the originator of good ; you lead us, as the head leads the members ; you are he intrusted by the Saviour with the guardianship of the Vine ' ; and they end with the words — ' we recognise in you the whole force of our acts, for their confirmation and establish- ment'."^ The synodical letter of the council of Chalcedon to Pope Leo stands as an imperishable witness of the Patristic Church to the Primacy of Peter. It is herein acknowledged by the East as well as the West. It is acknowledged in language which no heretical ingenuity can parry or cut through ; for what can a council say to a Pope more than " you lead us as the head leads the members ; you are entrusted by the Saviour with the guardianship of the vine " ; in which the episcopal descent from Peter, with all its consequences, as claimed by the line of Popes down tO" St. Leo's time, is compre- ^ HergeniCther, Photius, i. 70. 520 ST. LEO THE GREAT. bended ; and " we refer- the whole of our acts for con- firmation and establishment to you ". But among these acts referred to the Pope for bis confirmation we must take note of the three canons, the 9th, 17th, and 28th. Leo, in his instructions to his legates, as read at the council by one of them, the Koman priest Bonifacius, had said : " You are not to allow the constitution of the holy Fathers to be violated or infringed by any rash aggression. But preserve in all respects the dignity of our Person in yourselves, whom we have deputed to represent us. And if, per- chance, any, trusting in the splendour of their own cities, attempt an usurpation, reject it, with the firmness which becomes you." The bishop, the clergy, and the court of Constanti- nople were, in fact, bent upon obtaining a legal sanction for the great authority and ever-increasing influence which had been wielded by the bishop of the capital since the time of the great Theodosius, and the canon of the 150 Fathers, passed at Constantinople in 381, but never accepted, nor even presented for acceptance, at Kome ; never accepted at Alexandria, but bitterly resented by the successive patriarchs, Theophilus and CyrU. In spite of all this, the force of the Eastern absolute monarchy, and the identification of the bishop's influence with the sovereign's authority in the East over the bishops, had made that bishop, in the seventy years from 381 to 451, not only practically a patriarch, on an equal line with the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioeh, but by the continual action of the Eesident CouncU at ST. LEO THE GREAT. 52 1 Constantinople had given him opportunities, carefully used even by the best bishops, such as Atticus, Proclus, and Flavian, of interfering with episcopal causes even beyond the jurisdiction of the three great sees, of Ephesus, Csesarea in Pontus, and Heraclea. Not only had he made for himself a patriarchate over these, but Anatolius, the newly-appointed bishop in succession to the martyred Flavian, had gone to the length of appoint- ing Maximus to the patriarchal see of Antioch, in defiance of the old right of the metropolitans to elect to the great see of the East. " Now, by the canons 9 and 17, it was first of all distinctly expressed, ' If a bishop or an ecclesiastic has an accusation against the metropolitan of his province, he shall appeal either to the exarch of the diocese, or to the chair of the imperial city, Constan- tinople, and be judged by him '. The see of Con- stantinople thus obtained the right of judging over all the Eastern exarchates, and even over the patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch. It is true this was only facultative, as the right of option was granted to the complainant between the archbishop of Constan- tinople and the superior metropolitan. But it was a great privilege that a metropolitan not belonging to the Thracian diocese, the jurisdiction over which had been ceded by the archbishop of Heraclea to Constantinople, could be tried by the archbishop of the capital. At the same time his jurisdiction, and that of his standing Qouncil, up to that time customary, and originally one of arbitration, was confirmed and extended. Party 522 ST. LEO THE GREAT. spirit led to a frequent preference of it before that of the patriarch or exarch. But even this was only a prelude to the further step taken in the famous 28th canon, on the privileges of the church of Constantinople. Herein not only was the third canon of 381 at Constan- tinople, which had been received neither at Eome nor Alexandria, confirmed ; but the church of Constantinople was made the second in rank, the first after the Eoman, and distinguished with similar privileges. To mark the parity between them, the pri^dleges of Rome were deduced from its being the capital of the empire. If the canon of 381 said the bishop of Byzantium shall hold the next rank after the Roman, because his city is New Rome, this canon said the Fathers gave its privi- leges to Old Rome because it was the imperial city. Secondly, the right to confirm and consecrate all metro- politans in the three exarchates was recognised to belong to the see of New Rome. These exarchates were thus entirely subjected to him. Further, the archbishop of New Rome was to consecrate all bishops in the countries occupied by barbarians. " There can be no doubt that this canon, while it became in later times the great support of Byzantine claims, did. not as yet give any equality with the Roman bishop as to the primacy of jurisdiction, but only ex- pressed the primacy of rank. It had chiefly in view to confirm the rank already conceded to Constantinople, and to give him material support and a firm basis by the formal subjection to him of the three exarchates. But its wording was only too favourable to further ST. LEO THE GREAT. S23 claims. Aftertime used it for the most thoroughgoing deductions, according to which it was alleged not only against the two elder Eastern patriarchs, but against the Roman. It was attempted by means of it to derive his prerogatives only from the gift of the Fathers and the rank of capital. As Old Rome was no longer the resi- dence of the emperors, the privileges of the capital passed to Byzantium. Photius drew this last conclu- sion. For the present no one attempted to put in questian the higher jurisdiction of the Roman See. The gxeatest gain to the bishop of Constantinople was that he now obtained a chartered- right to be the supreme metropolitan of the three exarchates. He was thus put on equal level as to jurisdiction with the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch. But by means of the prece- dence over them given to him, and the influence of his standing council, and the facultative right of judgment given to him within their jurisdictions, which they did not possess in his, he overshadowed and overshone them." 1 " The time was most favourable for the success in the council itself of this scheme for the aggrandisement of the see of New Rome, urged on by the bishop, the clergy, the people, and the virtuous sovereigns, Marcian and Pulcheria. Dioscorus, the patriarch of Alexandria, had just been deposed, for his unheard-of misdeeds. The new patriarch of Antioch, Maximus, had been irre- gularly appointed by Anatolius, on whom he depended. Juvenal of Jerusalem had been for twenty years trying ^ Pliotius, i. 74. 524 ST. LEO THE GREAT. to get himself made a patriarch, and he succeeded now. The see of Ephesus was vacant. The archbishop of Heraclea was not present, and could hardly have offered opposition. The bishops present found nothing contrary to the custom under which they had grown up in the exaltation given to the see of the capital, or were in fear of deposition for the share they had taken in the Robber Council. All agreed, except the Eoman legates, who had taken no part in passing these canons. Several bishops, especially the lUyrian, and Thalassius of Caesarea, had not subscribed. The legates obtained a fresh sitting on the 1st Novem- ber, and attacked these canons passed the day before. The legate Lucentius said the 28th canon was against those of Nicgea, on which occasion were cited as from the acts of that council the words, " the Roman church always had the Primacy " : words which the Greeks did not refuse. They denied that they had been compelled to pass the canon. They had done it freely and canoni- cally. The bishop of the capital had long possessed these privileges, and the 3rd cahon of 381 expressed them. The legates rejected this canon and the alleged custom. If those privileges were already valid, they re- quired no confirmation ; if they were not, they were to be rejected as an uncanonical innovation. Finally, the imperial commissioners declared, that the Primacy over all, and the highest rank, belonged to the archbishop of Old Rome ; that similar rank should be allowed to the archbishop of New Rome, and the right to consecrate and confirm the metropolitans in the three exarchates. ST. LEO THE GREAT. 525 The Eastern bishops agreed to this. The legate Lucen- tius demanded the rejection of the canons passed in the absence of the Roman legates ; otherwise they protested and gave in their protest to the acts. With this protest the council concluded. The synodical letter of the council, together with its canons and acts, were carried at once to Rome, and the assent of the Pope to the canons passed in favour of the bishop of Constantinople was hoped for in spite of the protestation put in against them by his legates. The letter pleaded that if the council had confirmed the old custom that the metropolitans of the Pontic, Thracian, and Asian exarchates should be consecrated by the bishop of Byzantium, it was not so much a favour granted to this see, as a provision made against disturbance being caused in the particular metropolis by the choice. They had also confirmed the canon of the 150 Fathers upon the rank of the see of Constantinople immediately after the Apostolic See of Rome, " in the confidence that you have so often extended to the church of Constanti- nople the radiance of your own apostolic dignity, because you impart without grudging a portion of your own goods to your household ". " Be pleased, therefore, most holy and blessed Father, to give your consent to what we have determined for the removal of confusion, and the strengthening of good order in the Church. For the legates of your Holiness have warmly opposed these decisions, undoubtedly with the purpose that every good thing should proceed, in the first place, from your care ; so that, as in matters of faith, so in discipline, all success 526 ST. LEO THE GREAT. should be ascribed to you. We are but carrying out the desire of our sovereigns, of the senate, of the whole imperial city, in giving this honour from the ecumeni- cal council, as proceeding in the first instance from your Holiness, being well aware that all the good which happens to children is set down to the account of their parents. As we then have left the decision to the head (K€^aX^), let the head (Kopvcjiri) also fulfil its part to the children. Thus our sovereigns will be obliged, who have made the decision of your Holiness a law of the State. The see of Constantinople will be rewarded for the zeal with which it has fulfilled the direction of your piety. To assure you that we have done nothing through favour or through enmity, but by guidance of the divine will, we have made known all our acts to you, for your confirmation and acceptance." With this most flattering exposition to the Pope it was sought to win from him the approval which his legates had refused ; since, without this, the privileges of Constantinople could never meet with general recogni- tion. The letter of the council was also accompanied with a letter from the emperor Marcian, and one from Anatolius himself, carried by the bishop Lucian. Ana- tolius, ia asking the Pope's confirmation of the privileges to his see, says, " The see of Constantinople has for its parent your own Apostolic See, having specially joined itself thereunto " ; and expresses his confidence that " your Holiness will reckon as your own the honour done to the see of Constantinople, inasmuch as your Apostolic See has long treated it with affectionate care, ST. LEO THE GREAT. 52/ and has imparted to it ungrudgingly assistance as it needed ". " Anatolius was urgent. He hoped to reach his end before the see of Alexandria was filled up. He oflfered everything to gain Eome's consent. He had even got the Papal Nuncio Julian on his side, to intercede with Leo for him. Marcian and Pulcheria, whom Leo could hardly refuse, joined their requests to his, and many Eastern prelates whose interest was against this canon. Everything seemed to work in his favour, and the reite- rated assurances of attachment to the Eoman See calcu- lated to set the Pope's mind at rest as to ulterior designs." "But all this was unable to prevail on Leo to approve an innovation in the Church.'^ He perceived the point to which the efforts of the Byzantine bishops, too long endured, would lead in the end ; what disadvantage they would bring to the peace of the Church ; what a danger was prepared for the East in such a violation of the rights of its oldest and most illustrious sees. He absolutely declined the requests made to him. In his letters to the emperor, the empress, to Anatolius, and to Julian, dated 22nd May, 452, he set forth, in detail, the grounds which determined him to reject that augmenta- tion of power in the see of Byzantium, so ardently de- sired at Chalcedon. First, Constantinople had no claim to such an exaltation of power and rank. It is an imperial residence ; it is not an Apostolic See. Temporal precedence cannot furnish a basis for spiritual. Secondly, the canon directly contradicts the privileges of Alex- 1 Photius, i. 80, translated. 528 Sr. LKO THE GREAT. andria and Antioch, as well as the rights of provincial primates, the sixth canon of the Nicene Council, and all the constitutions of the Fathers. Thirdly, the pretension of Anatolius could not be supported by the canons of Eastern bishops in 381, which had been by no means recognised. Fourthly, the whole decree was the result of ambition, and tended to the confusion of the Church. Fifthly, Anatolius, from the very beginning of his episcopate, had no reason to aim at any advance but that of virtue ; and his pretension was so much the more blameable that he would not give it up even at the representation of the Eoman legates ; and he had already done too much against the canons for this new attempt to be allowed to pass uncensured. Sixthly, many bishops had been frightened and seduced into subscribing these decrees : except for this, it was im- possible that they would have accepted them. Again, it was unjust to use the humiliation and vacancy of the see of . Alexandria to infringe its rights, and a council assembled only on matters of faith for purposes of self- exaltation. It was a most dangerous example for the future. Imitation of it could only lead to the greatest perplexity. It was injurious to Anatolius himself, who risked losing what was his own in stretching after what did not belong to him. Lastly, the Pope was preserver and protector of the ancient law : he would be wanting to his holiest duties if he acceded to such an innovation or endured it. He could not, and dared not, prefer the wishes of an individual to the good of the whole House of the Lord." ST. LEO THE GREAT. 529 In writing to the empress Pulcheria,^ Leo says : " What desires the bishop of the church of Con- stantinople more than he has obtained ? What will satisfy him, if the greatness and glory of such a city are too little for him ? To attack the primacy of so many metropolitans, to bring a war of confusion into the provinces arranged in peace by the moderation of the Nicene Council, and to produce the consent of certain bishops, to which effect has been denied during so many years ; for it is about sixty years since this connivance on their part is boasted of by him, but it avails him nothing for some one to attempt what no one has been able to gain. What has been obtained from the bishops, disregarding the rules of the Nicene Council, we annul by the authority of the Apostle St. Peter." While to Anatolius himself nothing can be more severe than the letter which he wrote censuring his arrogance and ambition. And he confirmed only the decrees of faith as passed in the council of Chalcedon. Thereupon Anatolius was so angry at the Pope's censure of himself, contained in this letter, that he would not promulgate it. In consequence, the Eutychians began to rumour that the Pope rejected the council. So the emperor Marcian, in a letter dated 15th February, 453, besought the Pope to confirm the council in a letter which should be read in all churches. This formal request of the Eastern emperor throws light upon the fact that the Nicene Council must have been confirmed by Pope Sylvester.^ Anatolius at last was obliged to excuse himself to ' Ep. cv. " This is remarked by Hefele, i. 42. 34 530 ST. LEO THE GREAT. Leo, in his letter, April, 454.^ He was deeply troubled at the Pope's silence : he was quite innocent, as an individual, of any desire to aggrandise his see. It was the clergy of his church and the bishops in those parts who had been so eager for this ; and even so the force and confirmation of their acts had been left to his Holiness. The Pope replied to the emperor that he had already, in his letters, issued a confirmation of the dogmatic decrees of the council, which Anatolius had concealed, in order not to disclose his own shame ; but that he would do this again, in order to dissipate every doubt as to his own mind. He did this in a letter to all the bishops who had been present at Chalcedon. In the first part he approved all the decisions of the council in matters of faith ; while he rejected what had been passed against the canons of the Mcene Council, and he added to his letter a copy of the former letter to Anatolius, which had been suppressed by him. It has been remarked that Leo found it harder to prevail over the pride of Anatolius than over the savage temper of Attila. But at last the full reception of Leo's decision by the emperor Marcian made him give way, and, as said above, he resumed his correspondence with the Pope. In this great battle the Pope obtained a brilliant victory. The 28th canon seemed to be entirely given up. Down to the time of Photius it was not taken into the collection of canons. It had no legal force. But the ^ Ep. oxxxii. ST. LEO THE GUEAT. 53 1 principles which led to it continued to work on. The usual Byzantine employment of "accomplished facts" took place. Emperors less loyal than Marcian arose. The whole subsequent .history justified the conduct of Leo, and shewed his penetration of the design fostered at Constantinople, by the plotting of future patriarchs from Acacius to Photius, by the tyranny of Byzantine monarchs, and the imitation of their Eussian successors. Leo had detected, censured, and chained down for the time the spirit of schism. Recapitulate the facts just passed in review. At a great crisis in the history of the Church an Ecumenical Council had been legitimately called. Papal legates had attended it. A patriarch of Alexandria had presided. It acquitted the heretic abbot, and persecuted, even to death, the orthodox bishop who had brought him to judgment ; and it established the heresy which denied the true faith of the Incarnation. As soon as this was reported to the Pope, by one of his legates who fled from the council, he annulled its decision by a plenary act of authority. The reigning emperor took part against him ; but he died by a sudden accident. His sister, and the husband she had chosen for the good of the empire, succeeded him. They called a fresh council, which undid the wrong. This council accepted and subscribed the Pope's letter upon the great doctrine at issue. This letter of the Pope determined for ever the true expression of the Church's faith upon that very mystery in virtue of which the Church exists. The Council further addressed a synodical letter to the Pope, 532 ST. LEO THE GREAT. an act which expresses in the highest degree its own authority. In this letter it acknowledges the Primacy of the Pope as the authority of a father over his chil- dren, and as descending from the direct gift of Christ ; and they are Eastern bishops who say this. But, besides, the Council beseeches the Pope to ratify certain canons which it has passed, the scope of which was to increase the authority of the bishop of Constantinople, on the ground that his see was the capital. The emperor and empress, the latter being that grand- daughter of the great Theodosius who alone of his race inherited his genius together with his faith, beseech the Pope to consent. The senate, clergy, people of Constantinople join ; the bishop professes himself his most humble servant ; the other bishops of the Council are eager to exalt the chair of the capital over the sees of their ancient patriarchs, descending, like the Pope, from St. Peter. What does the Pope ? Declaring himself the guardian of that constitution which had come down from the beginning, and which was exhibited in the decrees of the Mcene Council, he replies that it is contrary to his duty to allow any such exaltation of a new see at the expense of the whole hierarchic order, which had sub- sisted from the time of the Apostles to his own. He refuses his consent, and the offending canons are ex- punged. The emperor, the empress, the bishops of the Council, the senate of Constantinople, and, last of all, the bishop himself, give way. But by what power did Leo accomplish this ? There ST. LEO THE GREAT. 533 is only one possible answer. The Primacy, which the synodieal letter of the Council acknowledges, was seated in the mind and heart of the Church at large. St. Peter Chrysologus wrote from the see of Ravenna to Eutyches, starting his heresy: "We exhort you, honoured brother, obediently to attend to the words of the most blessed Pope of the Roman city ; for St. Peter, who lives and presides in his own see, grants the truth of the faith to those who seek for it ". So Theodoret cried out from his see of Cyrus beyond Antioch to Leo : " I wait for the sentence of your Apostolic See, for it behoves you to have the Primacy in all things ". So the Syrian church placed in its very devotions the words of its great teacher Ephraem : " Simon, my disciple, I have made thee the foundation of holy Church. I have already called thee the Rock, because thou shalt sustain my whole building. Thou are the bishop of those who build me a Church on earth. Through thee will I give all nations to drink." This belief was everywhere, and in virtue of this Leo annulled the Robber Council. In virtue of this he set forth the true faith of the Incar- nation. In virtue of this he defended and maintained the true constitution of the Church, and censured the innovation of Greek despotism. In virtue of this he prevailed. But we must also bear in mind what his own temporal position and that of Rome itself was. In this year, 451, of the council of Chalcedon, it hung as it were on a single thread, for Attila was expected. In the next year, 452, Leo had gone to Mantua to meet his advance 534 ST. LEO THE GREAT. upon Rome after he had destroyed Aquileia. All Rome's defence then lay in the prayers and the presence of her Pontiff. Even if it were only a poetic legend that the " Scourge of God," when Leo in his sacerdotal robes approached him, saw the two patron saints of Rome above his head, and therefore listened to his request to spare the city, it was Leo's act which obtained that result. Had Attila marched forward to Rome, there was none to stay him. Had he entered Rome it would have been a Mogul massacre and destruction, not a Gothic levying of blackmail. He would have left the city of Peter, not as it was after the three days' plunder of Alaric, or after the fourteen days of Genseric, but as he left so many cities of the West : Rome would have been as Babylon and Niniveh are. Leo returned to Rome its saviour, in 452. In 455 he saved it again from Genseric. In the interval of these years he refused to give up to human ambition, pregnant with future schism, the original constitution of the Church ; he refused to suffer " the vine entrusted to him by the Saviour Himself," in the words of the council, to be laid waste.- And he did all this when the condition of that very Rome, in which he dwelt as the citadel of the Christian faith, was not safe for a day from barbaric threatening. The facts which took place in these years are frightful. In 454 Leo confirmed the doctrinal decrees of Chalcedon. In that same year the emperor Valentinian, as if he had been an assassin, plunged his sword in the body of Aetius, who had been for twenty years the support of the empire which remained to him. ST. LEO THE GREAT. S3S He then brought about his own murder, by the vengeance of an outraged nobleman, who seized the throne, and compelled the widowed empress to accept him for her husband. She is said to have invited the Vandal Gen- seric to come from Carthage and avenge her dishonour. He came, and the emperor of two months was killed ; while St. Leo saved his city from destruction, but saw it submitted to the plunder and cruelty of the Vandals during fourteen days. Thus in one year he witnessed the miserable end of the Theodosian line in Valentinian ; the usurpation and murder of his successor, Maximus ; the captivity of Eudoxia, a second time widowed, and with her daughters carried away to Carthage ; and a new emperor, Avitus, who in the next year (456) was killed by Eicimer. St. Leo saw another emperor, Majorian, sent to Rome by the new emperor of the East, who suc- ceeded Mareian in 457. His murder also, after four years' reign full of promise, St. Leo witnessed before he ended his own time of twenty-one years in 46 L In the midst of such scenes St. Leo spoke and acted as if the peace of God ruled all around him. He legislated for the Church as for a kingdom set for ever. No mention is found in his works that he had twice saved Rome from destraction. We are now in a position to review the whole four generations which passed from the Nicene Council to that of Chalcedon. In Pope Leo the Roman Primacy has become the Church's centre of gravity, the Church's centre of life. At Nicsea it stood at the head of the episcopate which had sprung out of its own bosom. 536 ST. LEO THE GREAT. What were the causes, either of internal action, or of external events, or of both together, which produced this development ? Was it aimed at by the Pope ? Did it come to him through means which he had sought ; by the force of events which he desired ? Was it fore- seen or unforeseen ? Conscious or unconscious ? The work of friends or of enemies ? I shall proceed to give what I think will furnish some sort of answer to these questions. First, I will take the great line of thought and doctrine in the Church. During fifty years, which date almost exactly from the founding of Constantine's new capital, the Church was vehemently agitated by the Arian heresy and its ofishoots. The Eusebian bishops, acting upon the jealous and tyrannical spirit of the emperor Constan- tius, moved him, at the time of the council of Sardica, against the Roman Primacy, and had well-nigh antici- pated the division of the East and West. The Church was delivered from schism as well as heresy by the sudden death of that emperor, at the age of forty-four, in 361. During the whole period, the condition of the great Eastern sees had been calamitous. At Alexandria, Athanasius, hero and saint as he was, not only suffered five banishments, and was for years in peril of his life, but men of evil doctrine and evil life, a Pistus, a George, a Gregory, were successively thrust into his see, and at his death, in 373, he was succeeded by the heretic, Lucius. The ruin caused by these successive inroads in the diocese of the great confessor, and in the province ST. LEO THE GREAT. 537 over which it presided, cannot be expressed. It was worse still at Antioch, where, after the unjust deposition of Saint Eustathius in 330, first Euphronius, then Flaccil- lus, thirdly Stephanus, all of Arian opinions, were thrust into the third see of the Church. Stephanus was de- posed even by Constantius for a scandalous act of villany perpetrated in Antioch upon a bishop, who was also an ambassador, bearing the decrees of the council of Sardica. Then came Leontius, another Arian, and of immoral life. He was followed by Eudoxius, who had come from the see of Germanicia, and went on to that of Constantinople. Thereupon the Arians made Mele- tius bishop, supposing him to be one of themselves. Finding out their mistake, they substituted Euzoius for him. As the orthodox elected Paulinus, Antioch had three bishops at once. Worse yet, if worse could be, was the history of the see of Constantinople from the death in 337 of its first virtuous bishop Alexander, whose prayer delivered the Church from Arius, to the time when St. Gregory, in 379, set up in a private room his small church of the Resurrection. During all that time it was the chosen home of heresy and faction. The whole recrudescence of the Arian heresy sprung from that Eusebius who, was not satisfied with the see of Nicomedia when Constantius moved his court to the new capital. He succeeded in obtaining that see ; then Macedonius, and thirdly Eudoxius made it infamous. Constantine found his deceiver, Constantius and Valens their worst instruments, in its bishops. In the meantime a succession of men of highest 538 ST. LEO THE GREAT. character sat in the Roman See : Sylvester, Marcus, Julius, Liberius, Damasus. When Theodosius termi- nated the course of official Arianism, he referred his subjects to the doctrine taught by Damasus at Rome, who continued the institution of the chief Apostle, and by Peter at Alexandria. In the strain of the Arian tempest, Rome had held fast to her moorings : Liberius upon his return had rejected the council of Rimini, and died reputed a saint by St. Ambrose, Pope Siricius, Theodoret. The result of the Arian heresy had been to re-establish with double force that Primacy which the bishops of the Eusebian party had done their utmost to disparage. A generation later, the Pelegian heresy called out, as we have seen, in Africa, the efforts of two large councils, which condemned it, and sent their decrees for approval and confirmation to Pope Innocent. Thus in his later years St. Augustine was led naturally and unconsciously to delineate the special powers of that Roman Princi- patus which he had ever acknowledged. The like is the result of his long contest with the Donatist schism. By it he was led deeply to probe the nature of the Church's bond over her children : and to lay down in controversy with those schismatics principles which exhibit in the clearest light the Roman unity. Thus he shewed that the possession of the sacraments, and a valid succession to priesthood and episcopate by those who are in a state of schism, far from alleviating, intensified the guilt of the parties concerned. The Pelagian heresy and the Donatist schism served equally to bring into stronger ST. LEO THE GREAT. 539 light the functions and attributes of the see which presided over unity and truth. At the same time another heretic, seated on the see of Constantinople, attacks the faith of the Church. He is supported by imperial favour at New Rome ; he is struck down by the sentence of the bishop in Old Eome. A council, the second from the Nicene, sits. Composed entirely of Eastern bishops — subjects of the emperor who supports the heretical tenant of the see to which his own favour has exalted him — it acknowledges in express terms that Pope Celestine sits in the See of Peter. Thus it makes up for whatever has been lost by the non-existence of the acts of the first council. A child and his mother, not 'daring to occupy Rome itself on account of its insecurity, sit on the remains of the Western empire, while the great Eastern capital suffers the deposition of its bishop, whom all the private favour of the emperor is unable to save. The second see of the Church, an Eastern see, is prominent in acting under the guidance of the first see. The heresy of Nestorius illustrates the Petrine monarchy, as the stability of Rome, the Apostolic See, marks the inconstancy of imperial Constantinople. Once more. A fourth heresy has its birth at Constantinople. The abbot Eutyches is reserved, in his old age, to produce from the new capital the opposite error to Nestorius. This time, strange to say, the great see of Athanasius and Cyril is involved in the guilt of a heresy which denies the Incarnation. The bishop of the new capital is martyred for his 540 ST. LEO THE GREAT. defence of it. The bishop of St. Mark's see takes strongest part against that of St. Peter ; is ruined by his folly ; he deals a blow thereby at the see which these two great Doctors made so illustrious — a blow from which it is destined never to recover. But the blow which he aimed at St. Peter's See results in causing its bishop to be proclaimed, by the largest council which ever sat in the East, as the father of the assembled bishops, as the man intrusted by Christ Himself with the guardianship of the Vine. And incidentally the whole scheme of exaltation devised by the bishops and emperors of New Eome, for the exaltation of its bishop, is brought forth to light, censured, and rejected. What could be more opposed to the wishes and the efforts of the Popes during these hundred and twenty years than the several heresies and schisms just mentioned ? They combated them resolutely, and, by the help of God, overcame them. It is a collateral result that their own constancy in all this time worked upon the mind of the Church, and drew from her a deeper and larger acknowledgment of the power stored up in the See of Peter against the time of danger. These are internal causes which I note, as tending to bring the Primacy into full action between 325 and 451 : they belong to the inward life of the Church, and betoken her progress as a spiritual kingdom. I turn now to outward events, the fluctuations and transitions of temporal power. The reigns of the sons and grandsons of the great ST. LEO THE GBEAT. 54 1 Tiieodosiua witnessed not only the final division of Constantine's empire, but the dissolution in the Western half of the imperial power itself, as well as the exaggera- tion in the East of monarchic power, which we term the lower or Byzantine empire. By Leo's time Gaul and Spain, lUyricum and Africa, had been seized by various settlements of the Northern tribes. But the bishops in these various countries looked to Eome at once as the symbol of the empire, the last remaining link of the great civilisation which supported their natural life, and the origin and perpetual source of the spiritual discipline and doctrine in which they were bishops. The whole course of events in the "West led its bishops to rally round the bishop of Eome : to seek, at, his hands, for solution of all emerging questions of discipline or doctrine. Not only was there no see to compete with his, but his name expressed to their ears everything that was dear in religion and in country. The Arian Visigoth or Vandal was equally frightful as heretic or as barbarian. Again, Honorius and Valentinian were not masters in the West, as Arcadius and Theodosius II. were in the East. In the West the bishops advanced in freedom in the same proportion as they declined in the East., While Eome witnessed their involuntary emancipation from a weakened lord, Constantinople locked them up in an iron despotism. The bearing of the West and the East in the two councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon is strikinglj'^ different. There was no imperial Comes to affect Western minds, as he expressed the imperial pleasure to the bishops of the Eastern patri- 542 ST. LEO THE GREAT. archates : the Eoman legates did not submit to his ordering. This brings us to the most grievous alteration which the successors of Theodosius were bringing about in the Church's hierarchy. The wish to concentrate all power in Constantinople, for the purpose of banding their empire into one, against the Persian empire, threatening with a rival despotism on the East, and the Gothic or Hunnic thundercloud ever ready to burst from the North, — this real and ever-pressing danger led them , one and all, to increase the power and influence of the bishop in the capital. He was the first member of their court. 'They appointed him ; they counted on him. The Alexandrine bishop was at the head of the most turbu- lent of cities, the most inflammable of peoples. The Anti'ochene bishop presided over eleven great provinces in the very neighbourhood of the Persian enemy. The emperor's hand could not be laid upon them, as it lay ever on the bishop of Constantinople. Thus St. Leo had reason to speak of that " connivance " in the seventy years preceding which had looked with indulgence upon a bishop building himself up on an illegitimate canon, making himself the body of a patriarch out of the subjected exarchates of Ephesus, Csesarea, and Heraclea ; finally deposing the two sees which ran up to Peter under the magnificence of the royal city, which domi- nated all the East, and took the place of Rome, twice captured and plundered. The alteration was indeed significant between the great position held at Nicsea by the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, when the bishop ST. LEO THE GREAT. 543 of Byzantium was unnoticed, and the position of those bishops at Chalcedon : Dioscorus, patriarch of Alex- andria, deposed ; Maximus, the new patriarch of AntiOch, fearful for his illicit ordination,' by the hand of the bishop of the capital ; while Anatolius was moving emperor, empress, senate, and bishops to get a charter for the encroachments of seventy years, sanctioned by an ecu- menical council. In the first case, Eome, Alexandria, and Antioch stood at the head of a hierarchy, descending without break in its constituted order from the begin- ning. In the second, the See of Peter stood at the head as before, but over against him was the ex-sufiragan of Heraclea, claiming the second place as bishop of Nova Eoma, and aspiring to lead the East as Eome led the West. The key of the latter's position was that, while the bishop was named, the emperor was meant, and the Eastern bishops were ready to submit to the decision of the Eesident Council in the capital, because the decision of the Council signified the favour of the emperor. The temporal circumstances thus touched upon em- brace six distinct but closely connected elements of change. They are : — 1. The weakening and at length overthrow of the imperial power in the West. 2. The barbarian, which are also Arian, settlements in Oaul, Spain, and most of all in Africa. 3. The uncertain and perilous position of the bishops in these several countries, over against the new princes. 4. The political peril and degradation of Eome, unsafe and exposed to danger as a city, while it continues the 544 ST. LEO THE GREAT. sole point to which the bishops of the various provinces could look for support and guidance. 5. The position more and more assumed by the bishop of Constantinople, in which he stands as the leader of the whole Eastern episcopate. 6. The cowering of the Eastern bishops under the Byzantine despotism. Not one of these changes but was the cause of anxious solicitude to the bishop of Eome. He had made no one of them. They were in his eyes the most terrible cala- mities. He struggled against them with his utmost power. But in like manner as the heresies and schisms first mentioned, so the collective effect of these external changes was to enhance the relative position and power of the Pope in the Church, and to make his see, as we have called it, the centre of gravity and action. We have now noted an assemblage of internal and external causes independent of the action of any parti- cular Pope, or of the collected action of the Popes, in the years which elapse between the two great councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon. In that period what may be termed the patriarchal constitution of the hierarchy is not only completed but terminated. The simple pro- gress of events has shewn its insufficiency to meet the danger and necessity of the times. One might say that Constantino's selection of a new capital, the division of the empire thence resulting, the Eastern jealousy which thenceforth enthroned itself on the banks of the Bosphorus, led to results which shewed this insufficiency in open light. Not only did the great ST. LEO THE GREAT. 545 sees of the East fall a prey to heresy and scliisra, so that the whole Eastern hierarchy, which had ranged itself so grandly in battle an-ay at Nicsea, appeared in rout and disorder when Theodosius was raised to the throne, but Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople from that time further fell into continual rivalry with each other. The greater see, which was above all rivalry, was needed. And thus the course, both of internal and external events, without any intention or ambition of the Popes them- selves, had in St. Leo's time fully, revealed the power which the Divine Providence had put from the beginning in His Church. When the empire came into the Church it called into fresh and necessary action the bishop who presided in the Church as the emperor presided in the State. This was henceforth the normal condition of things. But then the rule of bad emperors, such as Constantius and Valens, and the rule of weak emperors, such as Arcadius and Theodosius II., made even more evident the need of a counterpoise in an equivalent power for good. It demanded at once the generative, moderating, also protective and defensive, authority of St. Peter ruling in his See. For as the emperor's power in the Church, accruing to him as a Christian, was universal, so it required to be balanced by a power not confined to a single patriarchate, but. extending over the whole Church. And this is an important lesson which we learn from the history of the first century during which the empire came into union with the Church. A few words must now be said on the particular qualities of the individual who was raised up to sit in St. 35 546 ST. LEO THE GREAT. Peter's See at a time so exceptional as the twenty-one terrible years of St. Leo's pontificate. First I wonld remark that St. Leo exercised no power which the whole line of his predecessors had not claimed before him. I have before touched upon the letters of the Popes, and drawn out from them sufiiciently the- nature of the authority which they set forth. Here, therefore, I need or^ly say that the continuous series from Siricius, strictly carrying on what Damasus, Liberius, Julius, had written before him, and the first instance of which is found in the letter of Pope Clement, at the end of the first century, bases the authority of the Popes upon one, and only one, foundation. That foundation is the descent from Peter, sitting as bishop in the See of Eome, and the inheritance of Peter's uni- versal Pastorship ; his being the Eock on which the Church is built ] his having the keys of the kingdom of heaven on earth placed in his hands to open or to shut ; the perpetual ofiice of confirming his brethren, which the Lord confided to Peter, and which the need of the Church made perpetual. This is what the Popes one and all wrote to the bishops all over the world ; and the bishop is yet to be discovered who wrote back to them either of these two replies — Peter received no such charge, or you have inherited none such from him. Surely we may take the riinswer of the most eminent Father of the West as speaking for all : " The Apostolic See always had the Principate," and his delineation of that Principate in meeting the heresy of Pelagius as sufficient and accurate. And we may allow St. Cyril, the stoutest of Alexandrian ST. LEO THE GREAT. 547 patriarchs, being also himself the next in rank to the Eoman bishop, to call St. Celestine, a Pope contemporary with St. Augustine, "archbishop of the world". It seems to me that, as to patristic authority, as to his- tory, and as to the Church's voice pronounced at Ephesus in 431, at Chalcedon in 451, we may say, " Causa finita est ". If there be in the whole world a man illogical enough to accept the doctrine declared at Chalcedon because of the authority of the Church pro- nouncing it, but to deny the Primacy acknowledged at Chalcedon, we can but leave such a man in his error, wherein it is clear that solicitude for truth does not guide him. St. Leo maintained to the whole world, to the Eastern and Western emperors and empresses, to Theodosius II., who was indisposed to listen, though he did not venture to deny ; to Marcian and Pulcheria, who were loyal and devoted ; to the insolent Dioscorus, Cyril's unworthy suc- cessor; to the aspiring Anatolius, who suggested a future Photius ; to aU the bishops who would put up an imperial Constantinople in the face of an Apostolic Eome, that he inherited St. Peter's universal Pastorship. He claimed as much as this, and no more. So had his whole line claimed. But what the whole line had claimed, he was enabled by the force of things around him, by unex- ampled transitions of power, by terrible calamities, to exercise in the face of the whole world. His firmness of character, his great legislative spirit, his keen doc- trinal accuracy of thought, his fearless and majestic demeanour and language, produced this result. In the §48 St. LEO THE GKEAT. interval between Attila and Genseric, when Eome trembled at the prospect of coming destruction, he asserted that Rome, by the gift of God alone, was the centre of the spiritual power which God had set up, and Constantinople in all the pride of empire, her princes, her senate, and the senate of the Church, acknowledged the truth of his assertion. If he had not so acted, if he had failed in one iota of the power which he claimed and exercised, where would the Catholic Church have been ? She would have been involved in fatal error at the Latrociuium, an error into which the Eastern emperor had plunged himself head- long. She would have submitted at Chalcedon to an usurpation, which, when partially effected four hundred years later, tore from her body a vast number of bishops, and has had for its ultimate result to make the city of Constantine the chief seat of the anti-Christian theocracy ; wherein, moreover, the so-called successor of Anatolius exercises whatever authority he claims to possess as a Christian bishop, by grant of the mortal enemy of Christianity, who struck down Constantino's successor and put himself in his place. The tribes who were settling in the various provinces of the Western empire would have broken up such an episcopate as they chose to retain into as many petty jurisdictions as represented their own transitory power. Had this been effected, who would have made those tribes into nations ? Who would have given cohesion to the ever-dividing Teuton ? Where would have been either a Christian Europe or the world's actual civilisation ? Where also ST. LEO THE GKEAT. 549 would have been the kingdom of Christ, and the Stone cut without hands from the side of the mountain ? By Leo's vigour, his clear intellectual vision, his im- passive moral courage, truth and unity were saved together. We possess them by inheritance from him : precisely in virtue of that succession which he main- tained. And as the fourth council acknowledged all that he claimed when it welcomed his great dogmatic letter with the words, " Peter has spoken by Leo," so, fourteen centuries after his time, the universal Church exults when he who sits at the helm of Peter bears the name of all others in that unending line most renowned for fortitude and wisdom. INDEX. Alexandria, the second see, its bishop called to account by the Pope, 84, 94 ; degraded by the rise of Con- stantinople, 158 ; its position at the Nicene Council, 217 ; and at the council of Chalcedon, 543 ; its sufferings in the five banishments of Athanasius, 223 Alexandria and Antioch, their several schools, 452 Ambrose, St., his election, daily life, influence, writings, 432-5 ; acknow- ledges the Pope as the Doorkeeper and Shepherd of the Gospels, 329 ; deduces the whole order of the hierarchy from the Pope, 256 Anastasius, Pope, universal authority claimed in his single surviving lettei", 330 Antioch, heresy and schism at, for fifty years, 220 ; deplorable state in 346 ; degraded by Ihe rise of Constanti- nople, 158 ; its position at the Nieene Council, 217; and at the council of Chalcedon, 543 Athanasius, St., elected in 428 arch- bishop of Alexandria, 166; threatened by Constantine with deposition, 166 ; refuses to attend a council at Caesarea, 167 ; attends a council at Tyre, and is deposed, 1 70 ; appeals to Constantine, and is banished to Treves, 171 ; returns, and is attacked byEusebius, 179; flies to Rome, and is acquitted by Pope Julius^, 1 79 ; returns in 346 after his second exile, 186 ; attacked by Constantius at the synods of Aries and Milan, 1 89 ; his judgment respecting Pope Liberius, 197 ; driven from Alexandria in the night attack, 200 ; declares the Church's independence of the empire, 202 ; an outlawed fugitive for five yearS) 203 ; retw'ns by Julian's, decree, 203 ; banished a fifth time, by Julian, but soon restored, 210 ; reverence of St. Basil for him, 211"; his five banishments, and the suffer- ings of Alexandria, 223 ; his life, character, and style, 411 ; describes the virginal life, 317, 469; his first two treatises, 461, 399 Atticus, his episcopate, 306 Augustine, St., exponent of the union of Church and State, 289 ; his letter to Macedonius, 290 ; and to Count Boniface, 292 ; appeals to the actions of Jewish and heathen kings, 293 ; to the conversion of St. Paul, 296; welcomes the rescripts of Pope Innocent in 417, 335 ; six points in which the Principate of the Apostolic See is' accepted by him, 337-.i4i ; draws the City of God from the fall of Rome, 361 ; his conversion, life, and works, 440-5 ; contrast of his life and writings with those of Theodore of Mopsuestia, 458 Banishment of Bishops by emperors, what it meant, 226 Basil, St., describes the persecution of Valens, 231 ; liis homage to St. Athanasius, 211 ; his life and works, 421 Boniface I. , Pope, expounds the Mcene Constitution, 66 ; defines the Roman Primacy at the fall of the city, 362 Cclestine I., Pope, his Primacy com- pletely acknowledged at the council of Ephesu.s, A.D. 431, 499-501, 312- 315 ; his charge to his legates at this council, 311 Claudian suiyasses Prudentiusin style, 474 ; compared with Prudentius and Rutilius as to Rome's position, 481 552 INDEX. Chrysoalome, St. John, his birth, life, and writings, 429 ; parallel of his life with that of Theodore of Mopsuestia, 458 Church and State, their union set forth in the imperial letter of 430, 281 ; held unanimously by Fathers and emperors, 282, 2S6, 288; imperial power guardian of the union, 287 ; St. Augustine its exponent, 289-297 ; maintained by the laws of both powers, 298, 300, 302 ; pro- duces a State-made patriarch in the East, 322 ; their reciprocal attitude to each other, 300-304 ; requires the equipoise of the Papacy for the safety of the Church, 544 Clement I. , Pope, his letter, 96 CoHstantine, his position and design when sole emperor, 127 ; his le};isla- lation, 129-135,265; his sovereignty, 136-145, 265 ; moves the imperial residence from Rome, 147, 160 ; con- secrates Constantinople as Nova Roma, 149 ; oppresses the Church in his later years, 163-175, 216-217, 267 ; joined, originally, the empire of the world with the advocacy of the Church, 265 ; misled by Eusebius, 266, 163; frustration of his intentions in founding Constantinople, 271, 222 ; accepted the Church as the bearer of the one divine revelation, 287, 303, 145 Constantinople, rise of the see, 152, 305, 317 ; becomes at once the central field of heresy, 154, 253; in Arian hands for forty years, 221 ; exalted by every Byzantine emperor, 261, 322, 542 ; internal administration of the diocese, 319 Constahtiits I. , his person and character, 187, 190 : attacks Pope Liberius, 193; is denounced by Hasius and Athanasius, 202 ; receives clinical baptism from an Arian, and dies, 200 Council of Niccea, an epoch in history, 29, 71 ; on six points, 383-7 ; aspect of the Church when it was convened, 34 ; viewed as proof of the Christian people, 36; viewed as a witness of the Church's previous history, 43 ; attests the whole system of the hierarchy, 56 ; meaning of the sixth canon, 61 ; marks the public in- troduction of monastic life, 386 ; and the first stadium of Theology, 400 Ooundl of Constantinople in 38 r, its creed but not its canons received, 241 ; its third canon, 259 Council of Aries, A.D. 314, quoted, 33, 312 Council of Tyre, 170 Council of the Encaenia, at Antioch, 180 Council of Sardica, 181, 185 Covrndl of Ephesus, a.d. 431, 311-315 Council of Ephesus (Latrocinium), a.T). 449> S°9 > annulled by St. Leo, 511 Council of Aguileia, 256 Councils, General, how far and why convoked by emperorSj 285 Cyril of Alexandria, St., his time, character, and works, 446 ; brings the heresy of Nestorius before Pope Celestine, 310; deputed by Pope Celestine to preside at Ephesus, 381 Cyril of Jerusalem, St., his life and cateohetic doctrine, 426 Damasus, Pope, his letter to the Eastern bishops, 325 ; declares in synod, a.d. 369, that the Nicene Council was directed from Rome, 35, note Decretal Letters of the Popes, lost from St. Clement to St. Julius I., 328 ; a continuous series from Pope Siricius, 328 ; part of the administra- tion of Peter, 345 ; combine f^ith and discipline, 347 ; strengthen the "compages" of the Church, 348; nine characteristics of them in a.d. 385-440, 366-377 Diomjsius, the Areopagite, works of the so-called theologian, 470 Dioscorus, Archbishop of Alexandria, conduct at the council of Ephesu.s, 509 ; addressed by St. Leo as one subordinate, 506 ; deposed and punished by the council of Chalce- don, 518 Ephraem, St., his life and writings, 417; his testimony to St. Peter's Primacy, 419; to the Eucharistio Presence, 420 ; to the seven sacra- ments, 420 Epiphanius, St., his life and witness, 428 Episcopate, the, its universality, com- pleteness, subordination, and unity, 48, 56 ; maintained by willing obedience in times of persecution, 79 ; the Eastern, disorganised by Ariauism, 237, 249 INDEX. SS3 ^uselritis, of Nicomedia, model of the court-bishop for after ages, 178 ; deposes Eustathiusof Antioch, 164 ; leads Constantino to attack the hierarchy, 173; attacks Athanasius, '65, 179 ; his instrnment in violating the Church's constitution, 237-9 ; a forerunner of Mahomet in doctrine, of Photius in government, 240 Factors, the three, which form the Apostolic Primacy, 15 ; their action in the eight periods of history, 26 ; in the period from a.d. 325-431, 381 ;' between the Nicene Council and that of Chaloedon, 535-45 Gregory, St., the Great, makes the Church to be established on the so- lidity of the Prince of the Apostles, who has one see in three places, Kome, Alexandria, and Antioch, 53 Gregory of Naziamzum, St. , his life and works, 423 ; on the faith of Rome and of Constantinople, 264 ; on epis- copal councils on his time, 234 ; on the bishops at the council of Con- stantinople in 381, 235 ; describes the Arian tyranny, 236 Gregory of Nyssa, St., his life and works, 424 Heresy, promoting theology, 387, 393, 398, 484 ; bearing on the whole movement from Mcsea to Chalcedon, 482 ; its defeat a mode of the Oiurch's advance, 275 ; coiTupts the ideas which the Church magnifies, 485 ; recommends infallibility by -con- fusion and unity by division, 486. Hergenrother, Cardinal, his account of the Latrocinium, 509-513 ; of the council of Chalcedon, 514-519, 520- 528 ; of the internal administration of the see of Constantinople, 319- 322 ; his history of Photius, quoted psissim Hilary, St., his time of confession and work, 413 ; describes the councils of his time, 204 History, in patristic times, 470 ; great failure of it in fourth and fifth cen- turies, 471 ; how the Nicene Council makes up for its want in ante-Nicene times, 45, 56, 69, 71 Honus, denounces the tyranny of Con- stantius, which cost him his life by cruel treatment, 201 Ignatius, St. , of Antioch, alludes to St. Peter and St. Paul at Eonie, 120 Infallihility demanded and exercised in the first centuries, 102 Innocent, Pope St., I., A.D. 402-417 ; on the see of Antioch, 54 ; boars witness to tradition, 89 ; his pontifi- cate and letters, 330-333 ; creates an apostolic vicar over ten provinces, 342 ; letter to the patriarsh of Antioch, 2,A9 Jerome, St., his life and writings, 437 ; Erasmus on his style, 439 Julian, the twenty months of, 207 Julius I., Pope, A.D. 337-352; his great letter, 90-5, 181 ; to be con- sidered with that of Pope Clement I., 96 ; obtains the council of Sardica, 182 Leo, St., the Great, sums up the history of 300 years to the bishops of Italy assembled at Rome, 110-115; his statement of his own ofBce re- cognised by the council of Chalcedon, 8-10 ; bears witness to apostolical tradition, 87 ; the times at his accession in West and East, 492-497 ; the Papal Primacy at his accession, 498 ; elected during his absence as imperial commissioner in Gaul, 501 ; his writings the acts of a ruler who knows not fear, 503 ; they indicate .supreme authority, 504; speaks in Latin ns Athanasius or Basil in Greek, 505 ; speaks as a superior to the archbishop of Alexandria, 506 : invited by the archbishop of Con- stantinople to terminate, by his letter, the heresy of Eutyches, 507 ; his great dogmatic letter censuring two opposite heresies, 308 ; necessity of his Primacy at the Latrocinium, 509 ; rejects a council ecumenical in its convocation, which would have destroyed the Chm'ch, 511, as asserted by Pope Nicolas I., 492 ; his Primacy at the council of Chalcedon, 518, S31-3 ; is entreated to sanction the 9th, 1 7th, and 28th canons,' 525 ; he refuses his consent, 527 ; he annuls these canons in a letter to the empress, 529 ; the emperor Marcian beseeches him to confirm the council, 529 ; he con- firms the dogmatic decrees, and rejects the three canons, 530 ; his 35A 554 INDEX. confirinatioii and rejection accepted, S30 ; his Primacy exercised between Attiia and Genseric, S33"5 > ^^ '^ become the Church's centre of gravity and life, 535 ; internal and external causes leading to this, S35-545 ; Leo exercised no powers bnt what his predecessors claimed, 546 ; what he did for his own and all succeeding times, 548 Letters ofFaihers, a wonderful and still unexplored storehouse, 472 Liberius, Pope, a.d. 352-366, banished by Constantius, 196, 228 Zitterce formatce, 73 Makarms the, Great, St., 470 Monastic and Virginal Life, its public introduction, 386 ; universal praise of it by the Fathers, 462 ; and for its spiritual beauty, 467 ; its political importance unforeseen, 467; described by St. Anthony, 468 ; said by Athanasius to be created by our Lord in taking flesh of a Virgin, 469 ; ancient masters of it, 470 Mother and Daughter Churches, 74 Newman, Cardinal, quoted, 11, 13; the snow-penance of Napoleon, 16 ; the martyrs around their King, 393 ; on principles of interpretation iu the ancient schools, 453 ; on Theodore of Mopsuestia, , 455, 458; on the spread of the Nestorian heresy, 458 ; where he discloses tlie spiritual root of Arianism, 464 ; describes Tradition, 405 ; his notes on Athanasius con- tain a view of the Antenicene Church, 407 ; gives the character and writings of Athanasius, 411 ; identity of type in the Catholic Church, 483 ; all Christian ideas magnified in the Church, 485 Nicoea to Chalcedon, the intellectual movement, 481, 535-545; itshistory, by St. Vincent of Leiins, 487-491 Nicolas I., Pope, his letter to the emperor Michael, 63-67 ; declares that Pope Leo I. saved the Chui-ch from destruction, 492, 511 Papal Dignity, development of, in A.D. 325-381, 242-274 ; in 385-440, 366-382 PatriarcTiate, the triple Petrine, 49, 53 Patriarchates, the Eastern, inadequate to meet the imperial power, 544 Patristic Literature, its chief period, 3S8 ; makes a gieater Hellas, and a greater Rome, 390; its unifying spirit, 392; called forth in part by heresy, 393 ; a continuous contest for life or death, 394-8 Periods, eight, in the history of the Church, 20-26 Peter, St., alone stands at the head of an episcopal line, 58 ; his Principate the fountainhead of. ecclesiastical mle, 95 Prir/iacy, a Divine institution founded on three words of Christ, 1-3 ; the three words coinhere, forming one indivisible oflSce, 4 ; effect of the three words through eighteen cen- turies, 5 ; the Church's recognition of a second Factor, 6-1 1 ; its third Factor, Divine Providence, as shewn through ages, 11-16; concurrent witness of three Factors, a proof of it beyond impeachment, 17-19 ; its sovereign action in the most diver- gent times, 26-28 ; evidence of it at the Nicene Council in the triple Petrine patriarchate, 49, 53, 63 ; in the sixth Nicene canon, 52, 61 ; in the rule of founding bishoprics fol- lowed by the Apostles, 58; the whole hierarchy drawn from it, 67-9, 95 ; its growth in the time of persecution a certain proof, 77 ; stronger even than in the case of the episcopate, 84 ; its exercise, proportionate to the condition of the Church, 98 ; how exercised in the first three centuries, 99, 123 ; the root, bond, and crown of the hierarchy from the first, 104, 109 ; recognition at the council of Ephesus, 312-314, 499-5°i ; recog- nition at the council of Chalcedon, 8-10, 518-533 ; how understood by St. Augustine, 337-341 Proclits, St. , his twelve years' episcopate and influence, 317, 507 Provincial Synods, 75 Prudentitis, encomium of the Roman Peace, translated, 474-6 ; hymn to St. Laurence, 476 ; value as an his- torian, 478 ; description of the Day of the Apostles at Rome, 479 ; joins the Real Presence with the worship of reliques, 480 ; compared with Claudian and Rutilius, 481 Pulcheria, St. , ascends the throne, and with her husband, Marcian, supports St. Leo, 514 INDEX. 555 Hcsidont Synod, rise of, 155 ; chief instrument in exalting the bishop of Constantinople, 520, 523, 543 Bcumont, attachment of the provinces to the empire, 481 ; Eastern emperor Oberherr of the West, 494 Borne, splendour of the city in 357, 243 ; sti'onghold of heathenism in Con- stantine's time, 248 ; spiritual life advances while temporal power de- cays, 246-8, 376-7 ; its political position very low before St. Leo's time, 490 ; living in 431 from hand to mouth, when the Pope's Primacy was acknowledged, 501, 314-5 ; the same in a.d. 451, in St. Leo's time, 534 Russia, its autocracy a transcript of Constantine's, in all its parts, 143 Scriplure, universally studied by the Fathers, 4C4, 459 ; its key, the ecclesiastical sense, 406 Slilicho, the Western empire resting on him, 494 Theodorct, his life and works, 447 ; ap- peals from the Latrocinium to Pope Leo, 510 Theodosms I., made emperor, 213 ; his law of 380, 214 ; his difficulties, 277 ; condition of the empire in his reign, 351 ; gives Roman commands to barbarian chiefs, 353 ; his death, followed by the agony of the Western empire, 357 Theodosius II., reign and character, 495 ; on the side of Nestorius, 500 ; on the side of Eutychcs, 500, 508 ; makes Dioscorus president of the Latrocinium, 509 ; supports him against Pope Leo, 513 ; falls from horseback and dies suddenly, 514 ; his letter of a.d. 430 convoking the council of Ephesus, 28 1 Tradition in doctrine, government, and life, the Church built upon it, Ii8-i2i ; what it was which formed the basis of the patristic mind, 449- 455 ; Scripture studied for its sup- port, 404 Valens, liis oppression, 209, 211 ; burnt to death, 212 Valentinian I. , his government, 208 VaUntinian II., murdered, mourned by St. Ambrose, 435 Valentinian III., fears to live in Rome, 501 ; his miserable end, 495, 534 Vincent of Lerins, his history of the Church's doctrinal progress in the ^ first four centuries, 487-491 Cornell Catholic Union Libraiy.