I git looks forthefoufmlingcfdCoUege- int/ii(_CoIotiy" • iLiBBywsrar • DIVINITY SCHOOL TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH : THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK ¦ BOSTON • CHICAGO DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS A STUDY IN THE APOSTLES' CREED HENRY BARCLAY SWETE D.D., D.Litt., F.B.A. LATE KECilUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE HON. CANON OF ELY J HON. CHAPLAIN TO THE KING %v auipa /cat kv Tvevfia. iav h t£ wtI TrepnraruifJiev, us ai>r6s kariv iv Ty tpurl, KOLvojviav $x°P-ev M67"' o.XK^\ujv. ¦ . i ..on" - frre^rid^ Reference ISirg MACMILLAN AND CO., LTMg£iflE>Y ¦ ST MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON i9rS COPYRIGHT ECCLESIAE ANGLICANAE MATRI CARISSIMAE FOREWORD THIS book contains the substance of courses of lectures given at Cambridge in 19 13-14 to classes consisting chiefly of candidates for the ministry of the Church of England. There are few questions of more practical impor tance to Christian people, whether clergy or laity, than those which are raised by a study of the character, the work, and the functions of the Catholic Church. Upon the answer which we give to those questions depends our attitude, as individuals, towards the great society of which we are members. It determines for each of us whether he shall march in the war against sin and unbelief as a soldier in the army of Christ, under the command of its officers, conscious of the honour and the joy of serving in the ranks of a trained and disciplined force ; or as an irresponsible adventurer, brave and loyal at heart, but a member of an irregular company, which follows no leaders but such as are chosen by itself. The Communion of Saints, to which the second part of this study is devoted, stands first among the viii FOREWORD four privileges which the Baptismal Creed of the West connects with loyal membership in the Holy Catholic Church. It is perhaps less tangible, and sometimes appeals less readily to the imagination than the other three ; the Forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body, and the Life everlasting awaken in the mind and spirit a response more immediate and more distinct than the privilege of fellowship with the other members of the Body of Christ. Moreover, circum stances have led to a weakening among English Churchmen of the sense of communion with our fellow-Christians. The abandonment of public prayers for the faithful departed, however necessary or ex pedient that step may have been, could not but tend to lessen the hold of our people upon the oneness in Christ of the living and the dead ; while our present separation from the other historical churches of Christendom has shut the eyes of many to the essential unity of the Catholic Church. The purpose of these pages will be answered if they help to revive in any reader a practical faith in the great article of the Creed to which they relate. Cambridge, July, 1915. CONTENTS I. THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH i. The Church and its Notes „,_„ PAGE ' Church ' in the New Testament i The Unity of the Church 1 1 Its Holiness 23 Its Catholicity 33 Its Apostolicity 41 Its Visibility 50 Its Indefectibility 55 ii. The Church in its Life, Order, and Functions The Life of the Church - 64 Its Order 72 Its Priesthood 85 Its Work 93 Its Teaching 106 Its Authority in iii. The Church in its Relations To the Individual 119 To the Churches 126 To the World 131 To the Future Life 140 x CONTENTS II. THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS i. Meaning and History of the Phrase page In Holy Scripture - 145 In early Church writers 152 In the Western Creed 157 ii. The Communion of the Saints with God With the Father 17° With the Son 174 With the Holy Spirit 181 * iii. The Communion of Saints in the Church Militant In the Sacraments - 186 In the Spiritual Life 192 In Visible Fellowship 198 iv. The Communion of Living Saints with the Departed Condition of the Faithful Departed 210 Interchange of Prayer 220 Invocation of Saints 230 v. The Communion of Saints in the Life to Come In the Intermediate State In the Risen Life 245 252 Additional Notes (A) On Belief in the Church 259 (B) On the place of Sanctorum Communionem in the Apostles' Creed 261 Index 263 I THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH TE PER OREEM TERRARUM SANCTA CONFITETUR ECCLESIA THE CHURCH AND ITS NOTES The great society which the New Testament calls the ' Ecclesia,' the Assembly or Congregation,1 has been known to Englishmen from Saxon times as the 'Church.'2 The two names offer complementary views of the Christian brotherhood. The Greek word Ecclesia represents it as the congregation of the New Israel ; the English word Church, which means the House of the Lord, suggests a building dedicated to the service of God. Both these conceptions are Biblical, and they meet on the first occasion when the Society is mentioned in the New Testament, 1 On iKkKrio'ta see Dr. Hort's Ecclesia, c. I ; Hamilton, People of God, ii. p. 35 ff- 2 ' Church ' (kirk, Kirche), according to the best authorities, repre sents t& KvpuLxbv, ' the Lord's House,' the normal Greek name for the Church-building from the fourth century onward. Thus the Synod of Neo-Caesarea between 314 and 325 speaks of catechumens as oi eiaepxbpxvoi. els rb nvptaKov (can. 5) and the Synod of Laodicea uses Kvpiand as a synonym for iKicXritrtai (can. 28). On the later history of the word church, see the New Oxford Dictionary, s.v. 4 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH ' I will build my Ecclesia,' our Lord is reported to have said ; 1 the Congregation of His new people is an edifice to be reared by Christ Himself on the rock of an immovable faith. The Epistles retain the double figure ; if ' the saints,' i.e. the body of baptized believers, are " the Israel of God," " an elect race," " a holy nation," 2 they are also represented as "built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the corner stone."3 In Him the whole building grows into a holy temple. The Church is the House of God, a great mansion replete with all things . necessary for the Master's use ; a spiritual house built of living stones, designed for holy, priestly service.4 Such passages strike the note which is taken up by the English word 'Church' and its Teutonic cognates. Nevertheless, the dominant conception of the Christian Society in the New Testament is best expressed by Ecclesia, the assembly of all who have been made disciples of Jesus Christ. The word has a significant history. It passed into Christian use from the Greek Old Testament, where from Deuter onomy onwards, it is the normal rendering of the Hebrew qahal* the usual name for the Congregation iMatt. xvi. 1 8. a Gal. vi. 16, i Pet. ii. 9. » Eph. ii. 20 f. . , Tim. iii. r5, 2 Tim. ii. 20, 1 Pet. ii. s. 6 In the earlier books cvvayuyi, is used for hnp . see Thackorav Grammar of O.T. Greek, i. p. 14. B ' lhackeray, 'CHURCH' IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 5 of Israel. No doubt the Greek translators of Deuteronomy and the subsequent books of the canon took over ecclesia from Greek municipal life, in which an important part was played by the popular assembly so named. Moreover, the early and wide acceptance of the word as a name for the Christian brotherhood may well have been due to its familiarity in the cities of Asia Minor, where the earliest Gentile Churches were planted by St Paul. In each of the Greek-speaking cities evangelized by the Apostle there was henceforth, side by side with the assembly of all the citizens which was recognized by the State, an assembly meeting under divine sanc tion — an 'Ecclesia of God,'1 composed of the citizens of the Divine City resident in the place. Neverthe less, it was as succeeding to the position and privileges of ancient Israel that the Christian Church received the name Ecclesia. The Christian use of the term was derived from the Greek Old Testament, and not directly from the municipal life of the Greek city-state. Our Lord, as it appears from St Matthew, twice spoke of the future Christian Society as the Ecclesia,2 using probably its Aramaic equivalent. There seems to be no sufficient ground for refusing to believe that He spoke in this way.3 On the lowest 1 1 Cor. i. 2 ; 2 Cor. i. I ; I Thess. i. I, ii. 14 ; 2 Thess. i. 1, 4. 2 Matt. xvi. 18, xviii. 17. Cf. M'Neile, ad loc. 3 See Allen on.St Matthew, p. 176; Stanton, Gospels, ii. p. 348 ff. ; Oxford Synoptic Studies, p. 279 ff. 6 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH possible estimate of His person and character, it is not improbable that He foresaw, as the result of His ministry, a reproduction on wider lines of the Old Testament Congregation of Jahweh, drawn together by their allegiance to Himself; that He contem plated something of this kind is confirmed by another Matthaean saying,1 in which the Twelve are represented as the future judges of the tribes of the future Israel. May we go a step further, and say that our Lord not only foresaw, but founded the Catholic Church ? If the question means, ' Did He leave behind Him a constitution or even the outline of a constitution for the new Society? did He deliver instructions relating to the organization, the ministry, the worship of the future Church, a system answering in the smallest degree to the minuteness of the Levitical legis lation ascribed to Moses ? ' the answer must be that we have no record of any such provision, and no hint that it was made. On the contrary, all that we know of our Lord's purpose and methods would lead us to suppose that no such scheme was in His thoughts.2 The working out of details was deliber ately left to the Apostles and to the future Church, taught and guided by the gift of the Spirit of Christ; the Master was content to lay down principles, and to mark out the great lines on which the Kingdom 1 Matt. xix. 28. 2 See Pastor pastorum, pp. 222 f., 236 f. < CHURCH ' IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 7 was to proceed. Yet in another sense the founda tions of the Church were certainly laid by Jesus Christ during His life on earth. In those years He gathered round Him a body of disciples, and out of the body He formed the nucleus of a ministry ; He instituted, if the Gospels are to be believed, the two great Sacraments, of which the one admits to mem bership in the Church, and the other forms the chief bond of union between those who already are its members. But the Apostolate and the two Sacra ments of the Gospel constitute the basis of the entire edifice. This basis was the work of Christ Himself, and not of His Apostles. He " did not encourage His disciples to found societies ; He instituted a society for them to belong to, as the means of belonging to Him." x In this sense, then, unless we are prepared to abandon the whole structure of the Christian tradition as unhistorical, the Church was certainly founded by our Lord while He was yet on earth. But if the Church was founded by Christ in person, He continued to build it after His Ascension by the hands of His Spirit.2 No sooner had the promised Paraclete come, than this process may be 1 Bp Gore, Ministry of the Church, p. 10. Cf. Ecce Homo, p. 92 : " It was not from accident or for convenience that Christ formed a society ... To organize a society, and to bind the members of it together by the closest ties, were the business of His life." 2 Acts ii. 41 ff. 8 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH seen at work : men were baptized by thousands and added to the Church, by being made to drink of the one Spirit of Christ ; and the common life that followed bore witness to the reality of their incorporation into the one Body. The community at first regarded itself as numerically one, even when it had extended to localities remote from Jerusalem ; in the best text of Acts ix. 31 we read of " the Church throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Sam aria."1 It is not until the new movement has passed beyond the limits of Palestine and into Gentile lands that mention is made of a plurality of churches. Antioch, the mother city of Gentile Christianity, had its own local church ; 2 and the Pauline mission planted a church in every city which it visited.3 Thessalonica and Corinth had each its own 'church'; and Galatia, being a province, more than one ; the province of Asia, as we learn from the Apocalypse, a few decades later, had at least seven.4 Yet the unity of the original design was not lost through this plurality, nor even obscured. Our Lord Him self, we gather from St Matthew, had contemplated a multiplicity of societies within the unity of the one Body ; if on one occasion He had spoken of the 1 i) p.h oiv UKkqaia is the reading of NABC ; a! p.h oik eKK\r](rlai, that of the Received Text, is an obvious correction. "Acts xiii. 1. 'Acts xiv. 23, xvi. 5. 4 1 Thess. i. 1 ; 2 Thess. i. 1 ; Gal. i. 2 ; Apoc. i. 4. 'CHURCH' IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 9 Ecclesia as a single edifice, on another He had given the name to each local congregation of believers.1 Each congregation was to be a church in miniature, the representative of the One Body in its own locality ; the Church itself in all localities was to remain one and the same, since it had one Head and one Spirit.2 The members of local Christian societies are also members, through their baptism, into Christ, of the great Church which Christ founded and which His Spirit is building in all lands and all ages of the world. The Church, as conceived in the New Testament, is necessarily imperfect throughout the whole course of its history ; it is a body not yet grown to maturity, a building which is yet in process of erection. But its perfection is often anticipated by the Apostolic writers, with an idealism which transcends earthly conditions. The Mother of Christians is a ' Jerusalem above,' the true, heavenly Zion, the Ecclesia of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, the Holy City which is seen descending from God out of heaven. Our citizenship is already in heaven, wait ing to be revealed at the coming of the Lord.3 The earthly Church is the Church in making, in which 1In Matt xviii. 17 -elirov rij eKKKrialq. clearly refers to the local congregation. 2 I Cor. xii. 27 ; Eph. i. 22, iv. 4. 3 Gal. iv. 26, Phil. iii. 20 f., Heb. xii. 22 f., Apoc. xxi. 10 ff. 10 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH the heavenly ideal realizes itself ever more and more. The goal lies before us as yet; the ideal has not been attained ; yet the earthly and heavenly are one, and the earthly will one day cast off the limitation of its immaturity, and enter on the inheritance of the Saints in light. Meanwhile the Church on earth, as it presented itself to the thought of the Apostolic age, is a historical and visible Society. The Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse enable us to trace the course of our Lord's great foundation from the day of His depar ture to the last years of the first century. And it is not a vision or a mere idealism that we see, but the orderly growth of an association of men, women, and children, admitted to membership by a definite and external act, an association existing under the ordinary conditions of life, and gathered in com munities localized within the cities of the Roman Empire, officered by men appointed by the Apostles or their deputies, united in one great commonwealth by the bonds of a common faith, hope, and love. To-day the Christian Society may seem to be further from its ideal than it was in the first age. The Coming of the Lord has long ceased to be expected as an event of the near future, and with the Advent the prospect of the Church attaining her perfection has receded into a remote distance. Moreover, the divisions which St Paul deprecated have been NOTES OF THE CHURCH: UNITY n multiplied to such an extent that the historical Church barely maintains its position as the Church of the majority. Yet the institution which was founded by Jesus Christ, and built up by His Spirit is, after nineteen centuries, alive and at work in the world, and the Lord is still the Supreme Architect of His Ecclesia. We ask ourselves how this Divine foundation may be known from the many religious institu tions of human origin that now claim the name of church. What are the notes of the true Church ? A recent writer 1 has deprecated this enquiry on the ground that it ignores " the possibility that, in a disunited Church, no one division may possess all those characteristics, which are actually indispensable to the life of the whole." If this is possible, the fact sufficiently condemns the divisions that make it so. But it does not relieve us from the duty of discover ing, if we can, what the indispensable characteristics of the Church as a whole actually are. To that task we shall now apply ourselves. I. The first note of the Church of Jesus Christ is Unity. The New Testament indeed recognizes, as we have seen, the existence of many ecclesiae as well as of the One Ecclesia ; we read of ' the churches,' and not only of 'the Church.' But the conception •B. H. Streeter, in Restatement and Reunion, p. 150. 12 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH of the One Church is prior to that of the many churches. The One Church is not an agglomeration of the many, but the ideal which reflects itself in the many, and gives them their churchly character and name.1 The unity of the Church is the unity of a single organism, the mystical Body of the Christ. "By one spirit were we all baptized into one body" ; "ye are the body of Christ, and severally members thereof." " As many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ " ; " ye are all one man in Christ Jesus." " There is one body, and one Spirit." The One Church is the union, not of all local churches, but of all their members.2 Baptism admits, not into a particular church, but into union with Christ, and therefore into union with His Body, the universal Ecclesia. The unity of the Church, strange as this may appear, has never found expression in the Western Creeds ; to give it symbolical recognition was the work of Eastern Christianity. As the East confessed One God and One Lord, so it confessed One Church.3 'Hort, Ecclesia, p. 168 : "There is no grouping of them [i.e. the local Ecclesiae] into practical wholes or into one great whole. The members which make up the One Ecclesia arc not communities, but individual men." 2 I Cor. xii. 13, 27 ; Gal. iii. 27 ff. ; Eph. iv. 4. 3 Thus the Constantinopolitan Creed : Tnareiopjev els tva 6ebv . . . els iva. Kilpioj" . . . .els p.lav . . . fanXr/a-lav. NOTES OF THE CHURCH : UNITY 13 Local circumstances may perhaps account for this insistence on unity. To the East, with its prevalent dualism and early crop of heresies and .schisms, the note of unity was of the first importance ; whereas the West, comparatively free from these dangers, and possessing a strong centre of external coadhesion, had less need to be constantly reminded of the essential oneness x of the Body of Christ. So it has come to pass that we Westerns of to-day owe it to an Eastern creed that at the Eucharist we acknowledge .the Church to be one. On the other hand, the first formal treatise on the Unity of the Church is due to the Latin West. Cyprian's tract On the Unity of the Catholic Church was called forth by the necessities of a great crisis.2 At Rome,: in a time "of persecution, the Christian camp was divided in the face of the enemy ; and Carthage was threatened with a like disaster. Cyprian saw that such offences against the unity of the body were not only injurious to the Church, but fatal to the spiritual life of the separatists. " Break a bough off from a tree, and the fruit upon it will be unable to mature itself ; cut off a stream from the fountainhead, and that stream will presently dry up. There is one Head, one Source, one Mother, 1 The unity of the Body of Christ is not accidental, but necessary ; cf. Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, p. 2 ff. ; Mason, Faith of the Gospel, p. 238. 2 See Benson, Cyprian, pp. 134 ff, 180 ff. 14 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH rich in the successive generations of her offspring ; from her we have our birth, our nourishment, our very breath." x Events proved Cyprian to be right ; Novatianism died hard, but it died in the end, while the Church, from which the Novatianist party broke away, maintained her vitality. A unity which is ultimately spiritual is compatible with much variety. As individual members of the Church may differ in character and gifts without prejudice to their life in Christ, so individual churches may differ without losing their essential unity. Diversities of gifts, ministrations, operations are pos sible, as St Paul has taught us, among those who have the same Spirit, the same Lord, the same God. Such diversities are not breaches of unity.2 Even the very serious differences which now divide the historical churches of Christendom — differences in doctrine, discipline, and worship, involving for the present loss of intercommunion — leave their funda mental unity unimpaired. The interruption of Chris tian fellowship between East and West, and, in the West, between the Roman and Anglican churches, is perplexing and deplorable, a gaping wound in the Body of Christ, into which all good Christians will according to their ability pour the oil and wine of prayer and conciliatory effort ; but it does not destroy the inner coherence which comes from the 1 De unitate, u. 5. 2 1 Cor. xii. 4 ff. NOTES OF THE CHURCH: UNITY 15 possession of the same Creeds,1 the same great Sacra ments, the same threefold ministry, the same super natural life. A more difficult problem has been raised by the multiplication of Christian societies, started since the middle of the sixteenth century by leaders who broke away from the communion of the historical Church. Many of these bodies hold the substance of the primi tive faith, and retain the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. They baptize into the Name of the Holy Trinity ; they receive, sometimes with a reverence which savours of a superstitious regard for the letter, all the canonical books of the Old and New Testa ments. But they neither possess nor recognize the Episcopate, and with the exception of the Presby terian bodies, they have abandoned the other orders of the. ministry, and the principle of succession. Can it be said that these societies belong to the unity of the Church?2 that they are 'churches' in the sense in which the local communities planted by the Apostles 1See A. P. Forbes, Nicene Creed, 276 : "Subjective unity may be suspended, while objective unity is maintained." 2 Lindsay (The Church and the Ministry, p. 13 f.) seems to place the unity of the Church in the personal union of its individual members with the Head : "It can never be adequately represented by any outward polity, but must always be, in the first instance, at least, a religious experience." It would be truer to say that the unity of the Church is an objective fact, which religious experience proves true, but which exists before it is experienced, and rests on the truth that the Church has one Head and one Spirit, 1 6 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH were churches, i.e. that they represent in their" several localities the One Society founded by Jesus Christ ? In endeavouring to answer this question care must be: taken to distinguish' between the relation in which the members of non-episcopal societies stand to the Church, and that which belongs to the societies them selves. Baptized members of such societies are by virtue of their baptism members of the Body of Christ ; for according to the ruling of the Western Church the act of Baptism, if administered according to Christ's ordinance, is not invalidated by irregu larities in the status of the minister.1 But this is not equivalent to an acknowledgement of the claim of these societies to be ' churches ' in the New Testa ment sense of the word, i.e. local representatives of the One great Christian brotherhood. As a matter of convenience or of courtesy an inexact use of the name may pass unchallenged ; but it is important to note that as a matter of fact the societies known in England as ' the free churches ' have little in common with the local churches of the Apostolic age. The latter, so far as we can gather, were in every case founded and guided by Apostles or Apostles' deputies, or at least by persons in communion with them ; and before the first generation passed away, pro vision was made for the continuity of the Apostolic 1 Such is practically the judgement of the Western Council of Aries a.d, 314 (can. 8). NOTES OF THE CHURCH : UNITY 17 ministry. "The Apostles" — so writes Clement of Rome1 before the end of the first century — "received the Gospel from the Lord Jesus Christ ; Jesus Christ was sent forth from God. So then Christ is from God, and the Apostles are from Christ. Preaching everywhere in town and country, they appointed the first-fruits of their labours, when they had proved them by the Spirit, as bishops and deacons of those who should believe . . . and afterwards they issued a direction 2 to the intent that when these fell asleep other approved men should succeed to their ministry." Each of the primitive churches thus organized was the sole representative of the Ecclesia in its own locality ; such a spectacle as is now pre sented in every English town and almost in every English village, of dissident denominations and rival places of worship dividing among them a. population baptized into the One Christ, was nowhere to be seen in the first days of Christianity. The Epistles of the New Testament indeed refer frequently to the evils of party spirit within the Church, and even speak of divisions and schisms, which they denounce in no measured terms;3 but the spirit of disunion had not yet gone to the length of breaking up the assembly 1 1 Cor. cc. 42, 44. 2 Reading iicivopvipi = (?) ivivon'iSa : the old Latin version has legem. Lightfoot, reading (wiiJAvrpi , translates ' continuance.' 3Cf. e.g. Rom. xvi. 17 f., 1 Cor. i. 10, Gal. v. 20, Phil. ii. 1 f., Jude 19. 1 8 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH which met to celebrate the Eucharist.1 If some Christians had begun to absent themselves from the meetings of the brethren,2 there is no sign that as yet congregation was set up against congregation. Nor, if such a thing had occurred, can it be conceived that St Paul would have called the separatist congrega tions ' churches of God.' It is not of course to be forgotten that in our case the blame cannot be laid only to the charge of the separatists : the represen tatives of the historical Church must bear their full share of it. Moreover, the older non-episcopal bodies have rooted themselves so firmly in English soil, and spread so widely, that their members not unnaturally regard their claims as equal to those of the Church, and may be acquitted of any direct or conscious act of schism. Nor ought we to overlook the high moral and spiritual level attained by many of these communities, or the manifold works of piety and the evidences of personal sanctity which abound in them, or the contributions which they have made to sacred learning, or lastly and chiefly, the splendour of their achievements in the foreign mission field. For all these signs of the working of His Spirit in non-episcopal bodies we thank God, and we recognize those who manifest them as brethren in Christ, whose 1 At Corinth, for instance, there were axlffpara and apparently alpto-ea, but the whole church met iv (KKKtialq. for the Agape and Eucharist. 2 Heb. x, 25. NOTES OF THE CHURCH : UNITY 19 faith and love we desire to follow. But the fact remains that the position occupied by these separatist bodies is not that of the churches described in the New Testament, and would not have been recognized as legitimate by the Christian commonwealth of primitive days. They are voluntary associations of baptized Christians, religious societies which have shewn themselves capable of doing much admirable work ; but they lack the note of unity which charac terizes the historical Church. ' Churches,' in the strict and Scriptural sense, they are not.1 The Church preserves her unity by maintaining continuity in faith and order with the Society which was founded by our Lord and planted in the world by His Apostles. Continuity in order and also, to a great extent, in faith, is maintained through the Episcopate. So far all the historical churches of Christendom are agreed and have been agreed from the second century onwards. The Roman church stands alone in adding a further condition. The Episcopate and the Church itself must have a single visible head. " The Pope," it is claimed, " as 1 Mr. Streeter (Restatement and Reunion, p. 151. f.) appears to me to confuse the issue when he writes : ' ' Where these — the fruit of the Spirit — abound in a community, it is surely to run the risk of blas phemy against the Holy Spirit to deny it to be a veritable branch of the Church of Christ." That individuals — even (if it be so) the majority of individuals in a community — bear the fruit of the Spirit is no proof that the community as such is a ' church ' in the New Testament sense of the word. 20 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH successor to Peter, and the true and legitimate Vicar of Christ, presides over the Universal Church, the father and governor of all the faithful." 2 No equally short proposition ever bristled with a greater number of contentious points. It assumes, in the first place, that our Lord appointed a vicariate on earth, over and above that of the Paraclete who was sent in His name ; and that He made Peter' His first vicar, with the power of transmitting the office to his successors. It assumes, further, that the Bishops of Rome are the successors of Peter, not only in the episcopate, but in the vicariate, and are thus governors of the whole Church on earth. To us Anglicans the first of these assumptions appears to rest on a false exegesis, and the second on a historical fiction. It is fully admitted that from early post-apostolic times the Roman church enjoyed an honorary primacy among the churches of the Empire, and more especially in the West, partly as the church of the capital, partly because tradition ascribed its foundation to the two great Apostles, St Peter and St Paul. It was natural and suitable, as Irenaeus points out, that all the churches should forgather to the Roman church in view of its pre-eminence;2 that Western Christendom 1Catech. Rom. II. vii. 25. 2 Irenaeus, haer. iii. 3. 2 "ad hanc enim ecclesiam propter potentiorem principalitatem necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam." On princi- palitas, 'precedency,' 'preeminence,' see Benson, Cyprian, p. 537 ff. Cf. Mr. Turner in Camb. Medieval History, i. p. 172: "from the NOTES OF THE CHURCH: UNITY 21 should look to Rome for leadership, adopt its creed, seek its help, respect its authority. It was however the Roman church rather than the Roman Bishop, the foundation of St Peter and St Paul rather than the successor of St Peter, that received the homage of Christendom in the first three centuries. Even Cyprian, who interprets the Lord's promise to Peter as emphasizing the unity of the Church by basing it on one of the Twelve,1 and who regards the Roman Bishop as occupying the chair of Peter, shews no disposition to accept the ruling of Rome on a dis puted point of order;2 in the judgement of the great African saint, the last word lies not with the Bishop of Rome, but with the Episcopate as a whole.3 There were not indeed wanting, even before the end of the age of persecution, tokens of a disposition on the part of some of the Roman Bishops to claim powers in excess of the legitimate influence which all were willing to concede to the first see in the Empire ; witness the intolerance of Victor (190-199) and of second century onwards a catena of testimony makes and acknowledges the claims of the Roman Church to be, through its connexion with St. Peter and St. Paul, in a special sense the depository and guardian of an Apostolic tradition, a type and model for other churches." 1 Cyprian, ep. lix. 14 "ecclesiam principalem, unde unitas sacerdotalis (the one Episcopate) exorta est." Cf. de unit. 4. 2 See e.g. his letter to Stephen (ep. lxiii. ), noting especially his attitude in the last clause of the letter (§ 3) ; and cf. Benson, Cyprian, p. 307 ff. 3 Cyprian, de unitate, 5. 22 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH Stephen (254-257). But it was not till after the conversion of Constantine, the founding of a new capital, and the weakening of the Imperial power in the West, that the Papacy was able to convert its primacy into a supremacy ; and not before the days of Hildebrand and Innocent III. that the Papal supre macy grew into an autocracy which provoked the reaction that culminated in the great revolt of the sixteenth century. In that revolt not only the supre macy of Rome vanished in a great part of Western Europe, but by a just nemesis she lost also the primacy which was generally conceded to her in early times. She has consoled herself by declaring all churches which renounce the Roman obedience to be cut off from the unity of the Universal Church. But the sentence has no terrors for those who like ourselves have retained the historic Episcopate and the faith of the ancient Creeds. Reunion with Rome on the basis of an acceptance of the Papal pretensions is neither possible nor to be desired. It is the will of the True Pastor of the Universal Church that His flock shall be one, but He does not require that it shall be included in a single fold.1 Each national church is left free to mould, in non-essentials, the particulars of worship and discipline, in such wise as experience shews to 1 John x. 16 yerfio-ovTai p.la nolpx-n (one flock), eh Trot/ify. He does not say y. pia ai\ri (one fold). NOTES OF THE CHURCH : HOLINESS 23 be most edifying to the faithful within its limits. To this extent independence is not only permissible but salutary, and is no detriment to catholic unity. Nevertheless, the restoration of intercommunion between the historical churches is much to be desired. The presentation by a Catholic Christian of com mendatory letters from his own diocese ought to secure admission to the full privileges of the Church in every other diocese of Christendom.1 There seems to be no sufficient reason why this primitive order should not eventually be restored. It would be a simple recognition of the essential unity which binds the churches together, notwithstanding great diversi ties of ritual and doctrine. It would not necessarily involve on either side the acceptance of beliefs or customs which were not held by both in common. There need be no compromise of principle in such aa exchange of hospitality. But it would go far towards fulfilling the Lord's prayer that His disciples might be one, so that the world might believe that He was sent by the Father. 2. The One Church is " Holy." Holiness was perhaps the most characteristic note of the Church 'Cf. Acts xviii. 27, 2 Cor. iii. 1. The epitaph of Avircius bears witness to this universal intercommunion of Catholics : irUrris irAvrq Si irpoTJye \ nal irapiBrjKe rpotprjv irivTin, 'Ix^vv ^""^ irt^yris, \ iravpeyiBi), KaOapbv, bv idpd^aro irapdivos ayvfj' j koX tovtov tire'SwKe K^pairpa SidoS&a pter' Uprov (Ramsay, Cities of Phrygia, ii. p. 723). 24 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH as she presented herself to the thought of the first age. If the exact phrase 'holy Church' is not to be found in the New Testament, the members of the 'Church are from Acts ix. 1 3 commonly called " the saints " (/.*. the holy) ; while collectively they are described as a ' holy nation,' a ' holy city,' a ' holy sanctuary.' 1 The sub-apostolic age applied the term to the Ecclesia, whether local or universal. Thus Ignatius writes to " the holy church which is in Tralles"; Hermas in the Shepherd speaks of the Holy Church as the crowning work of God, for the sake of which the creation was made.2 At Rome before the middle of the second century the candidate for Baptism confessed his faith in ' the Holy Church.' 3 No other title was given to the Church so widely or at so early a date. The holiness of the Christian Church is a note inherited from its predecessor, the Church or congrega tion of Israel. Israel was called to be a holy nation, and in that sense the whole congregation of the Lord was holy.4 The Old Testament conception of holi ness, so far as it can be judged from the etymology of the Hebrew word, is that of separation, aloofness, xEph. ii. 21, 1 Pet. ii. 5, Apoc. xxii. 2. 2 Ignatius, Trail. I ; Hermas, vis. i. 1,6; 3, 4. 3Tertullian, adv. Marc. v. 4 "quae est mater nostra, in quam repro- misimus sanctam ecclesiam." 'Exod. xix. 5 {., Numb. xvi. 3 ; cf. Dent. vii. 6, xiv. 2, etc. NOTES OF THE CHURCH: HOLINESS 25 isolation.1 The God of Israel, in the infinite majesty of His uncreated being, is in a unique sense ' the Holy One'- — unapproachable, transcending all finite creaturely existences ; the very seraphim round His throne cry " Holy, Holy, Holy," realizing the aweful solitude of the Divine life. In a secondary sense this character belongs to persons and things dedicated to God, and separated from common use to His service. Israel was thus consecrated, made a ' people for God's own possession,' 2 separated from all other peoples by their singular relation to Jahweh. Places where God revealed Himself became " holy ground " ; and in like manner we read of " holy bread," " holy flesh," " holy vessels," " holy garments," " holy days." s In the case of dedicated persons the word came to bear an ethical sense. It was seen that God's own aloofness rests on the basis of His infinite moral purity, and that men who are engaged in His service must be holy as God is holy. The prophets labour to impress this new ideal upon Israel, and draw pictures of a coming age 'See Brown-Driver-Briggs, Lexicon, s.v. ^Jp ; cf., however, Hort on I Pet. i. 15 : "The meaning does not appear to be 'separate' in the sense of aloofness or remoteness, but rather of eminence or perfection. " 2 Exod. I.e. \abs irepioiaios : cf. I Pet. I.e. \. els irepnrol-qo-iv. 3 Cf. Kautzsch, Religion of Israel, in Hastings, B. D. v. p. 682. Kautzsch points out that " the filling up of the concept of ' holy ' with moral contents" is most marked when the word is transferred to God. But "expressions about the holiness of God are at first very rare'' (cf. Exod. xv. n, Josh. xxiv. 19, 1 Sam. ii. 20). 26 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH when God will give the nation a new heart and a new spirit, cleansing their sins, and causing them to walk in His statutes and to be His people indeed.1 The New Testament carries forward this advance and converts the vision into a reality. The Church inherits the position of the ' holy nation,' and realizes the moral significance of holiness as it could not be realized even by the prophets of the older Israel. The Incarnation, and the relations with God into which it has brought the Church of Christ, have emphasized infinitely the call to sanctity. Those who have been baptized into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost are pledged to newness of life by a threefold bond : as the sons of God, as the members of Christ, and as the temples of the Holy Spirit. "Ye shall be perfect," our Lord teaches, " as your heavenly Father is perfect." " As He which hath called you is holy (St Peter exhorts), be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living." 2 Further, as the Bride and the Body of the sinless and glorified Christ, the Church must make it her aim to live as He lived on earth, and to attain to the life which He now lives in heaven.3 Lastly, as a habi tation of God in the Spirit, the Church is not only called to holiness, but endowed with it ; the Source 'Jerem. xxxi. 33, Ezek. xi. 19 f. 2 Matt. v. 48, 1 Pet. i. 15. 3Cf. Forbes, Nicene Creed, p. 277: "The graces poured forth on the human nature of our Lord are reflected and imaged forth in His Body." NOTES OF THE CHURCH : HOLINESS 27 of all spiritual grace, the Power that creates anew the likeness of God in human life, is within her at all times. The compilers of the early creeds rightly made belief in the Holy Church to follow immediately after belief in the Holy Ghost.1 The holiness of the Christian Church is an infused gift, the fruit of the indwelling of the Spirit of God and of Christ. Together with new relations to God, the Church has gained a new conception of the nature of holiness. The idea of separation from the world, through consecration to the service of God, holds its ground ; thus St Paul does not hesitate to say to the Christians in the great heathen city of Corinth, " Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers ; for what fellowship hath righteousness and iniquity, and what communion hath light with darkness?"2 Yet the same Apostle writes elsewhere to the same Church, "If any of them that believe not biddeth you to a feast, and ye are disposed to go, whatever is set before you eat, asking no questions for conscience sake " ; 3 i.e. he permits believers to accept the hospi tality of unbelievers, and to partake of food which, for all they knew, might have been offered in heathen temples. The separateness of the Church, then, differed widely from the exclusiveness of the syna gogue. The Church held rigorously aloof from the 'On exceptions to this rule see Pearson's note (Art. ix. ad init.). 2 2 Cor. vi. 14. 3 1 Cor. *. 27. 28 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH vices of heathendom, and from its idolatries, but manifested none of the Pharisaic exclusiveness which forbade a Jew to associate with men of another race or creed.1 Tertullian can say to pagan assailants of Christianity, " We live with you side by side ; we share your food, your dress, your institutions." 2 Or, as another early Christian writer puts the case : " Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind, either in locality or in speech or in customs ; they follow the customs of the place in dress and food and the other arrangements of life." 3 The Church desired to erect no unnecessary barrier between herself and the world ; she knew that the world itself had been redeemed, and that the gates of the kingdom of heaven stood open to men of all nations. Her separateness was due, not, as the heathen supposed, to hatred of mankind, but to hatred of the evil with which heathen society was everywhere permeated. The Church, then, was not called to go out of the world, but rather to leaven it by her presence and intervention in its business, its work, and its daily life ; the hermit's cell and the coenobite community were unknown in the earliest days of Christianity. Nevertheless, the early Church lived a life which was not the life of the world, and which involved a 2 Acts *.. 28 6,8ip.iTbv tanv dvSpl 'lovbaltp Ko\\S.£. NOTES OF THE CHURCH: VISIBILITY 51 surroundings the life of the Eternal Son, in a glory which could be seen only by the faith of the elect, so His Church possesses an invisible life of the Spirit which the world cannot apprehend. Not to speak now of the ideal Church, which is invisible because it exists only in the purpose of God and has not yet been realized, nor again of the vast majority of Christians who have passed from us into the unseen world, the Church on earth is already a spiritual body, possess ing powers and relations which the world regards as negligible because they are invisible, but which in truth constitute the raison d'etre of the visible society. The Visible Church is the manifestation in human life of the spiritual and invisible. She consists of visible members, who are knit together by visible sacraments ; she has a visible ministry ; she is a force in the visible world which meets the eye, and at the same time she belongs to the eternal order of things which eye hath not seen. nor ear heard. She exists in the world, and is left in it by the Master's will to be the light of the world, to leaven the whole lump with the leaven of her life in God. It was not long before the Church recognized that many of her members were unworthy of the Christian name ; and the number of such members constantly tended to grow larger as conversions and baptisms were multiplied. Ancient Christian writers shew no disposition to conceal this fact. Augustine, for 52 THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH example,1 distinguishes with almost unnecessary sharpness between the communion of the sacraments and the communion of saints. But neither Augus tine nor any other teacher of the ancient Catholic Church had recourse to the expedient of dividing the visible Church from the invisible, as if they were two bodies, and not one and the same, viewed from dif ferent standpoints. Nor did the greater Reformers of the sixteenth century go to this length. The true author of the modern doctrine of the invisibility of the Church appears to have been Zwingli,2 who has found a large following from the sixteenth century onwards. The idea, however, is at variance not only with the consensus of pre-Reformation teaching, but with the New Testament itself. The Apostolic writings know but one great Christian Society, including all the baptized, good or evil, sincere or insincere, who have not been cut off from the communion of the Church or cut themselves off by open apostasy. The True Vine has branches in it that bear no fruit and are practically dead ; yet until the Husbandman sees fit to take them away, they, remain in the Vine.3 There are not two vines, but one, the Visible Church with its external order and its spiritual life, although of the latter true members alone partake. 1 See Robertson, Regnum Dei, p. 194 ff. 2 Robertson, op. cit. p. 354 ff. 3 John xv. 2 -WO.V K\7)p.a. iv ip.ol ^