Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom

Again, when Herod, assembling all the high priests and scribes of the people, inquired of them when the Christ should be born, they replied to him out of the prophet Micheas, describing by this word the reign of Messiah: “Out of thee shall come forth the Captain that shall rule My people Israel.”

Again, when the last prophet saw in the Apocalyptic vision the glory of the Word of God going forth as a Conqueror, he described His power in the same expression: “The armies of heaven followed Him on white horses, clothed in linen white and clean. And out of His mouth goes forth a sharp sword, that in it He may strike the nations: and He shall rule them with a rod of iron.” Our Lord of set purpose selected the one word³⁹ which conveyed His regal dominion, and bestowed it upon Peter. Nor did He give it with a restricted but with a universal application: “Be shepherd over My sheep.” Who can refuse St. Bernard’s comment: “What sheep? the people of this or that city, or country, or kingdom? My sheep, He said. To whom is it not plain that He did not designate some, but assign all? Nothing is excepted where nothing is distinguished.”⁴⁰ On the two sides, therefore, the power is complete; in its nature, as that specially belonging to Christ; in its subjects, as universal. This one word includes in itself all inferior derivations, whether of episcopal or other subordinate power, and in virtue of it St. Peter becomes the source of the whole episcopate as well as the type or figure of every local Bishop.

If the special conversations between our Lord and the Apostles which passed in the forty days are not recorded for us in their details, as being privileged communications made only to the chiefs of His kingdom, for their guidance, and as instructions to be carried out by them in practice, yet the institution of an everlasting polity by Him is marked out in the two instances of Mission and Rule just cited, as well as in the other passages before collected. In fact, it is in the institution of such a polity that the perfection of our Lord as Lawgiver and Governor consists. Nothing in His kingdom was left to chance, or to sudden expedients arising in unforeseen dangers. All was from the beginning foreseen and provided for. When He said to Peter, “Follow thou Me,” which was His interpretation of the commission He had just before given to Peter, and a crucifixion which ensued upon a crowning in the case of the disciple as of the Master, the whole sequence of His Church through the centuries was in His mind and expressed in His voice.

3. But further, the very basis of the Spiritual Power, as delineated in the testimony of Scripture, is so laid in unity, that if unity be broken the idea itself is utterly destroyed.

“The Captain who should rule My people Israel” presents a very definite idea. “To feed the flock of Christ” is equally definite. The one is the portrait of Christ in prophecy; the other represents His kingdom in history. It is one people and one flock, as it has one King and one Shepherd. So the Rock on which the Church is built is one structure; the confirmation of the brethren is the holding together one family in that one structure. When St. Paul convoked the ancients of the Church at Ephesus, he expressed the duty of Bishops through all time and place: “Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you Bishops, to rule the Church of God, which He has purchased with His own blood.” This work of the Holy Ghost was not limited either as to time or as to place, and belongs to the Bishops of the whole world as much as to those who met at Ephesus to receive the farewell of St. Paul. In precisely similar terms St. Peter charged the Bishops whom he had planted in the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, “to feed the flock of God which is among you;” indicating at once the unity of the flock and the unity of the episcopate held by many shepherds. For it is one flock which they rule everywhere; not each a separate fold. A confederation of Bishops, each ruling a fold of his own, would frustrate the divine idea; also it would be difficult to imagine a government more futile, or a spectacle less persuasive to the world. If we take the account of the Church’s ministry quoted just above from St. Paul, its unity runs through the whole as much as its descent from above. The Body of Christ expresses both equally. If either part is taken away, the essence is gone. A ministry such as is there described, existing in a dozen different countries of the earth, even if it possessed the same succession and order would present no such idea as the Apostle contemplates, and offer no such guarantee of divine truth as he dwells upon, unless it were organically one. Its witness in one country might otherwise be diverse from its witness in another country; and as each would have the same claim to be heard, the one would neutralise the other. In fact, the Body of Christ would cease to be. So ineffaceably is the Sacrament of Unity impressed on the whole Gospel account of spiritual government. There is not a single promise made nor a single power given except to the whole Church and to the one Church.

4. The three qualities we have described, the coming from above, completeness, unity, are intrinsic to the essence of spiritual government. They form together an external relation of entire independence with regard to civil government. Nothing can by plainer than the fact that Christ came from God, and that He gave to His Apostles, and not to kings or rulers of the world, the Spiritual Power which He meant to transmit. Equally plain is it that the power so given, being complete, could derive nothing intrinsic to its essence from the Civil Authority; and its unity demonstrates in no less a degree its independence of that authority, for it is the same one power everywhere, whereas civil government is both complete and different in each separate State. Thus the independence of the Spiritual Power is essential to it, as flowing out of the qualities which make it.

When we view the Spiritual Power as possessing inalienably these four qualities, as coming from above, as complete in itself, as one in all lands, and as independent of the Civil Power, the notion of perpetuity will be found to be inherent in the thing so conceived. Again, the promises made to it last as long as the subject to which they belong. As the kingdom of Christ and the flock of Christ are perpetual from His first to His second coming, so therefore is the Bearer of the keys and the Shepherd of the flock. And yet more, the Body of Christ moves through the ages, ever growing to His full stature and measure, so that this living structure can as little fail as Christ Himself. The Head and the Body live on together. Again, the secular power also, over against which and in the midst of which in all lands and times the Spiritual Power stands, is perpetual. The promise made to the College of Apostles, “Behold I am with you all days to the consummation of the world,” is an express grant of perpetuity. The promise to Peter that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Rock, or the Church which is founded on the Rock, is a grant of perpetuity equally express. The same is implied in St. Mark’s closing words, that our Lord sat down on the right hand of God, after giving His commission to the Apostles to preach the gospel through the whole world to every creature; and that as they went forth He worked with them, confirming the word by signs following – a work and a confirmation on His part which should last equally to the end, so long as He was seated at the right hand of God. So equally the promise of the Father, the Paraclete, sent down from above by the Son, is a permanent power by which the Church was originally made and perpetually subsists. All these divine promises cohere and shed light upon each other. Thus the commission to Peter, “Feed My sheep,” is universal, not only as to its subject, which is the whole flock of Christ, but as to its duration, which is so long as there is a flock to feed. It was a charge, not only to a person, but to an office. If the thing itself to which it related was to endure, it is obvious that the longer it lasted, and the more it grew, the greater also the need of the office which should upbear it. The duration of the living organism moved by the Head, which St. Paul so strongly attests, and carries on into the unseen world, attests the reciprocal duration of the Head.

As those divine words which convey the promise or confer the gift of the Spiritual Power cohere and shed light on each other, so the impairing them in any particular destroys their idea, which is to say that they express a real and concrete existence, wherein the idea has passed into an adequate act. This is Jesus Christ in His Kingship, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

CHAPTER IV

THE ACTUAL RELATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE FROM THE DAY OF PENTECOST TO CONSTANTINE

The Transmission of Spiritual Authority as witnessed in the History of the Church from A.D. 29 to A.D. 325

It was requisite to draw out the full statement of the transmission of Spiritual Power, as recorded in the Scriptures of the Church, before passing to its historical fulfilment. How exactly the fulfilment corresponded to the promise is attested for us by an unexceptionable authority, almost at the end of the first century. This witness was given just before the closing of the Canon of the New Testament itself. It is to be deplored that almost all the early letters of the Sovereign Pontiffs have been lost, but one of the first is extant in the letter of St. Clement of Rome to the Corinthian Church. It belongs to the year 95 or 96, and was written during or immediately after Domitian’s persecution, when St. John the Evangelist was the sole survivor of the Apostolic College. Its occasion was an attempt to depose the Bishop of Corinth by a party in that Church. The matter was referred to the Roman Church, and the Pope gives his judgment in words which we will quote later. St. Irenæus,⁴¹ about eighty years after this letter was written, referred to it in these terms: “The blessed Apostles (Peter and Paul), having founded and built up the (Roman) Church, delivered up the administration of it to Linus; this is the Linus of whom Paul has made mention in his letter to Timothy. His successor was Anacletus, and in the third degree from the Apostles Clement received the bishopric, who had both seen the blessed Apostles and lived with them, having their preaching yet sounding in his ears, and their tradition before his eyes; not alone in this, for there were still many left at that time who had been taught by the Apostles. In the time then of this Clement, no slight dissension having arisen among the brethren at Corinth, the Church in Rome sent a most authoritative letter to the Corinthians, drawing them together into peace, and renewing their faith, and recording the tradition recently derived by it from the Apostles.”

The nature of the dissension which he sought to appease was a violation of the due succession in the episcopate. This fact led St. Clement to give an account of its origin. This account, be it observed, dates sixty-six years, or just two generations after the Day of Pentecost. It is an historical narration of what had intervened, exhibiting the manner in which the Apostles and their immediate successors had understood the commission given them by our Lord, the terms of which we have just been considering. There can be nothing more authentic or more valuable than such a statement coming from such a source. It is a summary at the end of the first century,⁴² giving the order according to which the Church was propagated, and it has the peculiarity of being issued by the authority which stood at the head of all.

St. Clement⁴³ there enjoins obedience within the Christian body, referring to the discipline of the Roman army, in these terms: “Let us take service, therefore, brethren, with all earnestness in His faultless ordinances. Let us mark the soldiers that take service under our rulers, how exactly, how readily, how submissively, they execute the orders given them. All are not prefects, nor rulers of thousands, nor rulers of hundreds, nor rulers of fifties, and so forth; but each man in his own rank executeth the order given by the emperor and his commanders. The great without the small cannot exist, neither the small without the great. There is a certain mixture in all things, and therein is utility. Let us take our body as an example. The head without the feet is nothing, so likewise the feet without the head are nothing; even the smallest limbs of our body are necessary and useful for the whole body; but all the members conspire and unite in subjection, that the whole body may be saved. So, in our case, let the whole body be saved in Christ Jesus, and let each man be subject unto his neighbour, according as also he was appointed with his special grace.

“Forasmuch, then, as these things are manifest beforehand, and we have searched into the depths of the divine knowledge, we ought to do all things in order, as many as the Master⁴⁴ has commanded us to perform at their appointed seasons. Now the offerings and liturgic⁴⁵ acts He 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. They, therefore, that make their offerings at the appointed seasons are acceptable and blessed; for while they follow the institutions of the Master they cannot go wrong. For unto the high priest his proper liturgic acts are assigned, and to the priests their proper office is appointed, and upon the levites their proper ministrations are laid. The layman is bound by the layman’s ordinances.

“Let each of you, brethren, in his own rank give thanks to God, maintaining a good conscience, and not transgressing the appointed rule of his service, but acting with all seemliness. Not in every place, brethren, are the continual daily sacrifices offered, or the free-will offerings, or the sin-offerings and the trespass-offerings, but in Jerusalem alone. And even there the offering is not made in every place, but before the sanctuary in the court of the altar, and this too through the high priest and the aforesaid officiants, after that the victim to be offered has been inspected for blemishes. They then who do anything contrary to the seemly ordinance of His will receive death as the penalty. You see, brethren, in proportion as greater knowledge has been vouchsafed to us, so much the more are we exposed to danger.

“The Apostles evangelised us from the Lord Jesus Christ: Jesus Christ from God. So then Christ was sent forth by God, and the Apostles by Christ. Both therefore came of the will of God in the appointed order. Having therefore received a charge, and having been fully assured through the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and confirmed in the Word of God with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth with the good tidings that the kingdom of God was about to come. So preaching everywhere from country to country and from town to town, they went on appointing their first-fruits, when they had proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons for those that were to believe. And this they did in no new fashion; for indeed it had been written concerning bishops and deacons in very ancient times: for thus saith the Scripture in a certain place, I will appoint their bishops in justice and their deacons in faith.

“And what marvel if they who were entrusted in Christ with such a work by God appointed the aforesaid persons, seeing that even the blessed Moses, who was a faithful servant in all his house, recorded for a sum in the sacred books all things that were enjoined upon him. And him also the rest of the prophets followed, bearing joint witness with him unto the laws that were ordained by him. For he, when jealousy arose concerning the priesthood, and there was dissension among the tribes which of them was adorned with the glorious name, commanded the twelve chiefs of the tribes to bring to him rods inscribed with the name of each tribe. And he took them and tied them, and sealed them with the signet-rings of the chiefs of the tribes, and put them away in the tabernacle of the testimony on the table of God. And having shut the tabernacle, he sealed the keys, and likewise also the rods. And he said unto them, Brethren, the tribe whose rod shall bud, this hath God chosen to be priests and officiants unto Him. Now when morning came, he called together all Israel, even the six hundred thousand men, and showed the seals to the chiefs of the tribes, and opened the tabernacle of the testimony, and drew forth the rods. And the rod of Aaron was found not only with buds, but also bearing fruit. What think ye, beloved? Did not Moses know beforehand that this would come to pass? Assuredly he knew it. But that disorder might not arise in Israel, he did thus, to the end that the Name of the true and only God might be glorified: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

“And our Apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife over the dignity of the episcopate. For this cause, therefore, having received complete foreknowledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons, and they established a succession, that if these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their liturgic function.⁴⁶ Those, therefore, that were appointed by them, or afterward by other men of repute, with the consent of the whole Church, and who performed their office blamelessly to the flock of Christ, with lowliness, gentleness, and a generous spirit, and for a long time have borne a good report with all, these we judge it not consonant with justice to deprive of their office. For it will be no light sin in us to deprive of the episcopate those who offer the gifts blamelessly and holily. Blessed are those presbyters who have gone before, seeing that their departure was fruitful and ripe, for they have no fear lest any one should remove them from their appointed place. For we see that you are displacing certain persons who were living honourably from the office which they had blamelessly performed.”

St. Clement, in the above passages, states in few but precise words how the whole Christian ministry was appointed by Christ with the most exact order. “The Master commanded the offerings and liturgic acts 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.” We have seen that only the appointment of the supreme authority – that of St. Peter and the Apostolic College – is recorded in the Gospels and Acts. All details are omitted. But this does not mean that such details were either unimportant or left to be developed casually. Here it is expressly said that our Lord appointed them all, and left strict injunctions both as to the persons who should execute them and the things to be done. And then St. Clement assumes rather than states – so entirely uncontested and acknowledged seems it to be in his mind – that the Christian order succeeds the Mosaic in the triple division of high priest, priest, and levite. “They therefore that make their offerings at the appointed seasons are acceptable and blessed; for while they follow the institutions of the Master they cannot go wrong.” He speaks of a present, not a past time; of an actual, not a typical order, continuing thus: “For unto the high priest his proper liturgic acts are assigned, and to the priests their proper office is appointed, and upon the levites their proper ministrations are laid. The layman is bound by the layman’s ordinances. Let each of you, brethren, in his own rank, give thanks to God, maintaining a good conscience, and not transgressing the appointed rule of His service, but acting with all seemliness.”⁴⁷ It cannot be denied that these are injunctions issued to those to whom he was speaking. And the tacit appropriation of the Jewish names and offices to the Christian order, with the injunction of present obedience, all based upon the direct institution of “the Master,” is every way to be noted. But he proceeds to say that, if the Mosaic services are accurately performed according to a divine rule, much more should the Christian be. “Not in every place, brethren, are the continual daily sacrifices offered, or the free-will offerings, or the sin-offerings, and the trespass-offerings, but in Jerusalem alone. And even there the offering is not made in every place, but before the sanctuary in the court of the altar, and this too through the high priest and the aforesaid officiants, after that the victim to be offered has been inspected for blemishes. They then who do anything contrary to the seemly ordinance of His will receive death as the penalty. You see, brethren, in proportion as greater knowledge has been vouchsafed to us, so much the more are we exposed to danger.”

How, it may be asked, comes it that he mentions the worship at Jerusalem as going on when the city and temple had been destroyed twenty-five years before?

I would suggest that St. Clement is considering the whole order of the Aaronic priesthood and worship as a divine appointment. In this point of view, it is apart from time, that is, he mentions it ideally as a divine institution. Moreover, he clearly considers it as carried on in the Christian ministry, as having found in that ministry its complete fulfilment. In this aspect it was of no importance that the worship at Jerusalem, to which he referred, had ceased by a divine judgment to be any longer in existence. It had fulfilled its work; the blood of bulls and goats, which typified the most Precious Blood, was offered no more; but instead the sacrifice to which it had pointed. He quotes it for what had not passed, the divine institution of a certain order in it. If, for the violation of this order, death was inflicted, how much more should those who transgressed the Christian institution, as having been vouchsafed greater knowledge, be exposed to danger. Moreover, was not the fact of Jesus being the Christ a basis in St. Clement’s mind for the belief that the Mosaic worship was carried on, with the requisite change, in the Christian? How deeply lay in his mind the feeling that the Christian Church was a continuation of the Jewish – the child coming forth from the embryo of the Jewish womb – is apparent through the whole letter.

The third point, then, which we note is, that the ordinances of Christ, in all that concerns the priesthood and the rites of His Church, were to be observed according to the rule which “the Master” Himself had given even more accurately than the Mosaic ritual, though that also was of divine institution, had been observed.

In the next section St. Clement states very concisely, but with the greatest energy, that quality in the transmission of spiritual power on which we have dwelt in drawing out the scriptural record, that it came altogether from above, not from below: “The Apostles evangelised us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ from God. So then Christ was sent forth by God, and the Apostles by Christ. Both, therefore, came of the will of God in the appointed order. Having then received a charge, and having been fully assured through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and confirmed in the word of God with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth with the good tidings that the kingdom of God was about to come.” As the whole appointment proceeded originally from Christ to the Apostles, so in the appointments of the Apostles it proceeded from them to those whom they chose. Authority, therefore, in the kingdom of Christ, pursued throughout one descent: it came by the mandate of superiors, not by the election of inferiors. Thus St. Clement restates the Apostolic mission as recorded by St. John: “As My Father hath sent Me, I also send you.” But he adds a fact to a principle – a fact which, recording as it does the whole order of the propagation of the faith in the first two generations from the day of Pentecost, is of the utmost value. “So preaching everywhere from country to country, and from city to city, they went on appointing their first-fruits, when they had proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons for those that were to believe.” That is, the Apostles when they came into a town, preaching as St. Paul and St. Barnabas are described as doing at Iconium, at Lystra, and at Derbe, were guided by a special inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the choosing of future rulers among those who heard them and listened to them. These “first-fruits” of their labour they invested with the episcopal consecration and office, and themselves passing on to other places, left the bishop and his deacons to form the future people. In the bishop they planted the root of the complete tree; from his person radiated the priests and deacons; from his mouth came the tradition of the divine doctrine, and thenceforth in that place all Christian ordinances began to exist and to be exercised. The bishop is the ecclesiastical unit, the father and generator after the pattern of Christ, whom he represents. The process is entirely different from another which has often in thought been substituted for it, according to which an existing number of believers might elect their superiors, and the ecclesiastical rule be exercised in virtue of a sort of imagined social compact. But the words of St. Clement are precise in excluding any such origin of Christian mission: he says that the Apostles appointed their first-fruits to be bishops and deacons of those who were to believe, not of those who believed already; they created the ministry, that the ministry might form the people as yet future.⁴⁸ All this, he adds, was in accordance with ancient prophecy.

He then proceeds to draw attention to the most remarkable origin of the Jewish hierarchy, in that Moses determined the devolution of the high priesthood to Aaron by appealing to a miraculous judgment of God in causing his rod to bear fruit among the rods of the chiefs of the tribes. In truth, there is no act recorded more strikingly typical of the divine economy in the mission of our Lord than the creation of the whole Jewish priesthood in the person of Aaron. In that one act the entire Jewish ritual, with the doctrine which it upheld and propagated, proceeded by a divine interference attested in a miracle from above, exactly as in the Person of our Lord and from His sacrificial act as Redeemer the whole Christian hierarchy and the doctrine which it upbears came forth from the God and Father of all. Under this example, and as an instance of power coming from above, St. Clement places the conduct of the Apostles in determining the appointment and the succession of rulers in the Church. “And our Apostles knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife over the dignity of the episcopate. For this cause, therefore, having received complete foreknowledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons, and they established a succession that, if these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed to their liturgic function.”

Thus before the end of the first century we have a historical statement of the universal and regular appointment of bishops throughout the world by the Apostles in consequence of “complete foreknowledge received” from our Lord Himself. The principle on which they proceeded is clearly defined; the generation of the Christian people from a hierarchy existing before itself is marked out. This is said to be in accordance with ancient prophecy, and follows the great example of God, who created by the hand of Moses the order of the Aaronic priesthood, the precursor and preparer of the Christian, in which it was merged, when the High Priest at length appeared and consummated the act which the whole Jewish ritual was formed to symbolise.

In all this statement St. Clement not merely confirms the scriptural record, but he supplies those details which it enveloped in general heads. Titus and Timotheus are instances of episcopal appointment in the writings of St. Paul, and the bishops or angels of the seven Churches in the Apocalypse; but here the appointment is recorded as general, as everywhere carried out by the Apostles in each city according to the special instruction of our Lord.

Scarcely less remarkable is the manner in which this Pope, the third from St. Peter, exercises in the lifetime of St. John the supreme pastoral office, the creation of which that Apostle has recorded. The question to be decided is the deposition or the maintenance of the Bishop at Corinth, and there follows immediately upon the text above cited the act of authority. “Those, therefore, that were appointed by them or afterward by other men of repute, with the consent of the whole Church, and who performed their office blamelessly to the flock of Christ, with lowliness, gentleness, and a generous spirit, and for a long time have borne a good report with all, these we judge it not consonant with justice to deprive of their office. For it will be no light sin in us to deprive of the episcopate⁴⁹ those who offer the gifts blamelessly and holily.” He who speaks in this language intimates thereby that he has power to deprive of the liturgic office, that is, of the episcopate, and acknowledges that he will have to answer for the exercise of that power.

But further, the sentence thus given he declares to be the sentence of God Himself. “Receive 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 regretfulness 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. But if certain persons should be disobedient unto the words spoken by Him through us, let them understand that they will entangle themselves in no slight transgression and danger; but we shall be guiltless of this sin.”⁵⁰ Further on in the letter he continues: —