Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom

It would appear that the Apostles,¹¹⁸ in carrying out the divine instructions of their Master for the establishment of His kingdom, followed His own example. Inasmuch as He had given them a head, they would appoint inferior heads in the Church who should hold an order among themselves in its administration, and all refer to the Superior. In doing this they had regard to the civil disposition of the empire, using it as a model upon which they formed the exterior polity of the Church. For just as in the civil and temporal government of each province there was a mother city, the prefect of which administered the whole province, ruling under the Prince over the subordinate governors, to whom matters of more grave importance were referred, so the Apostles and their disciples after them instituted in the chief cities bishops to whom they gave all the powers of metropolitans before the name came into use, in order that ecclesiastical regulations of the greatest moment might be treated before them in union with the bishops of their respective provinces.¹¹⁹ Thus St. Paul, finding Ephesus the metropolis of Proconsular Asia, placed Timotheus to be bishop there, giving him at the same time jurisdiction over the bishops of that province, who should be drawn as it were out of the womb of the parent See; and in his first letter we find instructions as to the quality of the bishops whom he should select. In the 19th chapter of the Acts, we are told that St. Paul had drawn a great number of disciples to him, not only at Ephesus, but in nearly every part of Asia, that is, the proconsular province of that name. In the 17th chapter, at a later date, he summoned at Miletus the bishops of Ephesus and its province to meet him, calling them “all you among whom I have passed preaching the kingdom of God,” which words denote that he was speaking, not to the priests of one city, but to the bishops of a province, in which “the Holy Ghost had set them as bishops to rule over the church of God.” St. Irenæus also notes that they were bishops and elders from Ephesus and the adjoining cities. St. John recognises these bishops in the seven letters which he is ordered to communicate to the angels of the churches in the Apocalypse. At the head of these is the Angel of the church of Ephesus as metropolis. So, again, the Apostle Paul set Titus as metropolitan over the whole of Crete, expressly ordering him to establish bishops in every city, and describing what their character should be. His letters to Corinth and to Thessalonica, as well as to Ephesus, are letters to cities each of which was a metropolis. Thus the 34th of the Canons, called apostolical, runs: “It behoves the bishops of each nation to recognise him, who is the first among them, and to esteem him as their head, and to do nothing of importance without his sentence; but let each of them do only what concerns his own diocese and the places belonging to it, and not that without the agreement of all.”¹²⁰ Here is seen the discipline of the ancient church, beyond a doubt derived from the Apostles, as to the Metropolitan’s superintendence over the bishops of every province.

Thus the distribution¹²¹ of episcopal jurisdiction began with the beginning, and was the outflow of one principle as stable as it was simple. The structure of the diocese, that of the province, that of the patriarchate, that of the whole Church, was identical throughout. It was a series of concentric circles, at the centre of which was our Lord Himself. In the simple diocese He was seen as walking and teaching with His Apostles on earth; in the province the metropolitan, with his suffragans, repeated the same image; in the patriarchate, the Primate and his metropolitans; while in the See of Peter, our Lord stood by the lake of Galilee delivering with the thrice enjoined question, “Lovest thou Me more than these?” the divine pastoral power over His whole flock. This was the example of the Master Himself, which the Apostles faithfully followed.

From the beginning as to this exterior polity of His Church nothing was undefined, nothing was casual; it was the Body of Christ in its natural action gradually filling the world, by which the Head was gradually drawing man to Himself. It was the perfection of order, and yet the perfection of a divine liberty, which took hold of earthly things, such as the civil disposition of a temporal empire, to exalt it into the structure of a supernatural kingdom.

The great builders of the Middle Ages, in these stupendous cathedrals which the piety of generations raised in honour of the Mother of God, represented the Body of our Lord in that form of the cross on which He purchased our redemption. Every wall, every buttress, every chapel therein converged towards the centre, and lent its several portion of support to the whole. Therein the Church in her unity and solidarity was visibly portrayed, the Head with His members, the Mother of fair love, bearing the Divine Child, with His saints and confessors around Him. Therein the mystery of our salvation, the mystical altar of sacrifice, was ever set forth, in which the Divine Presence, the greater Schechinah of the new law, abode without ceasing. Such an intellectual and moral structure is presented to us in the hierarchy of the Church, graduated according to the system just described, from the first Apostolic Council at Jerusalem to the first General Council at Nicæa. No bishop stood apart from his fellows; no important matter of doctrine or discipline, of government or worship, was terminated by him without common council of his brethren. Every province was ranged round the central shrine, and made part of the one edifice. It was the Body of Christ sculptured, not on stone, but on human hearts, joined together by the wisdom of His saints, and cemented with the blood of His martyrs.

2. The second point¹²² to be considered is the development of synodical institutions which kept even pace with the metropolitical hierarchy. As the council of his priests stood beside the bishop, so the provincial synod, the earliest form of councils, stood beside the metropolitan. From the second half of the second century these came into action for the subjugation of doctrinal errors and divisions, such as the Montanist heresy, and the contest as to the proper day for the celebration of Easter. The unity and solidarity of the churches and their bishops found more and more expression in these synods; here the heretical attack was stayed, and the common action of the bishops met the common assault of opponents. In the third century these episcopal meetings took place generally once, and in some countries twice a year. In them the bishops only had a decisive voice; priests and deacons could take part in them, the latter usually standing, while bishops and priests sat; the laity also were not absolutely excluded. The decrees of councils were usually sent by encyclical letters to other bishops. Bishops who could not appear in person had to be represented either by other bishops, as in A.D. 286 at Carthage, or by clerics of their church, as in 314 at Arles. The bishops of higher rank, who presided over the synod, generally metropolitans, were accustomed to subscribe the decrees alone. Accusations against bishops, and wrong acts on their part, were likewise examined at synods, and decided there. We no longer possess acts of the most ancient councils, except those of some African synods under Cyprian, and of that of Antioch in 269; we have 28 disciplinary decrees of the Council of Amyra in 314, and 14 of that of Neocæsarea held at about the same time.

3. Nothing sheds clearer light upon the constitution of the Church, as a perfect society, than her action in the hearing and deciding of causes.¹²³ The coercive power of the Church descends to her direct from God, and not from man, and was comprised from the beginning in the twofold jurisdiction of the external and the internal forum, the one criminal and the other penitential. The Son of God, who gave this power to the prelates of His Church, appointed them to be judges of men, granting to them full power to absolve and to condemn, and pledging His divine word that their sentences should be confirmed in heaven. The grant is recorded in the sixteenth chapter of St. Matthew, as promised to St. Peter in his quality as head of the Church, and in the eighteenth chapter as promised to the Apostles collectively, and in their persons to the bishops who descend from them. By this divine disposition they are the sole and ordinary judges of the Church who belong essentially to the ecclesiastical polity; and therefore St. Cyprian wrote: that “heresies have arisen and schisms sprung up from no other reason than the not yielding obedience to God’s priest; and from not reflecting that there is at a time but one priest in the Church, and one judge at a time in Christ’s place: to whom, if according to the divine commands the whole brotherhood yielded obedience, no one would venture to do anything against the College of Priests;”¹²⁴ that is the episcopate.

This power of the keys gave a true and proper jurisdiction as well in the criminal as the penitential forum. But the difference between the two is marked. The punishment inflicted by the Church on those who were accused and convicted in judgment was different from that which was laid upon such as of their own accord, either in public or in secret, confessed their sins. The punishment inflicted on delinquents after accusation and proof of their misconduct was called a sentence, a condemnation, a sacerdotal censure, to use St. Cyprian’s term; the other, which was laid upon any one who of his own accord confessed his faults, was properly a penitence, and never called a condemnation, but, on the contrary, carried with it a sacerdotal absolution from the soul’s stains. The former belonged to the exterior forum, judicial and contentious; the latter to the interior forum, that of conscience. There was, indeed, a great difference between the two; for the censure laid its stroke upon those who resisted and were contumacious, who refused to confess their crime, if they were once judicially convicted; but penitence was only given to those who, by confession, voluntarily disclosed their fault, and they only who were the guilty parties formed the accusers and the witnesses against themselves.¹²⁵

During the whole period of the first three centuries the Church exercised through her bishops this true and proper jurisdiction, both of the exterior and the interior forum. Instances of the former are the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira by St. Peter; of Elymas the sorcerer and the incestuous person at Corinth by St. Paul. But, further, the latter Apostle in his first Epistle to the Corinthians directed that causes of all kinds among Christians should be settled, not before the secular Gentile magistrates, but before the divine magistracy of the Church. And according to this rule the bishops in the first ages took cognisance of all causes and temporal differences, as well of clergy as of laity, and terminated them by their judgment; and this custom lasted even into the fourth century, after the peace of the Church, so that the most troublesome occupation which the bishops of those ages had was to exercise this judicial power over secular matters, as St. Augustine confesses in his own case, where he says, “They demand of us that we should occupy ourselves with their vicious and troublesome covetousness, and give them up our time; at least they press the weak, and force them to bring their causes to us; and we do not venture to say to them, ‘Man, who made me a judge or a divider among you?’ For the Apostle instituted ecclesiastical judges in such causes by prohibiting Christians from pleading before secular tribunals.”¹²⁶

Jurisdiction is defined to be “cognition of causes belonging to the magistrate by right of his office.”¹²⁷ Such a cognition was exercised by the bishops over every sort of cause among Christians in the first centuries. Aristotle says, “Those are most properly to be called magistrates whose function it is to deliberate, to judge, and to command, but especially the latter, as being more characteristic of them.” And when St. Paul writes, “Obey those that are set over you, and be subject to them; for they watch as those who will give account of your souls,” he says the same, since by the force of relative terms there cannot be the duty of obedience on one side without the right to command on the other. This episcopal magistracy was executed in four degrees, corresponding to the hierarchy and the councils as they have been just described. First, in his diocese the bishop was the proper judge, as Origen in his answer to Celsus draws a parallel between the bishop with his presbytery in each particular city and the chief magistrate of that city with the council. Secondly, the metropolitan with his council of bishops, so that the apostolical canons enjoin that if a bishop be accused by persons of the faith, worthy of credit, he should be brought and judged before that tribunal.¹²⁸ Thirdly, if a metropolitan were accused, the higher tribunal of the Primate and his Episcopal Council would intervene. Fourthly, if a Primate, or one of those afterwards termed Patriarchs, were in fault, as Paul of Samosata, holding the See of Antioch in the third century, a council of still greater rank would meet to judge him; and in this case even the secular sovereign, the Emperor Aurelius, recognised that the episcopal house ought to belong to the person indicated by the bishops of Italy, that is, the Pope.

4. The fourth point which I will endeavour to sum up is the practice of the Church in the period preceding the Nicene Council as to the election of bishops and the other ministers of inferior rank to the bishop from the priest downwards, together with the principle on which this practice was founded.

It has been shown above how the first bishops were planted by St. Peter, St. Paul, and the other Apostles, who chose by direction of the Holy Spirit, in the cities wherein they preached, those whom they would invest with the plenitude of the priesthood, to be sources of future spiritual rule and centres of Christian life. But when successors to those had in the course of time to be appointed, what rule was followed?

The form of the sacred elections in those first ages was this: when a bishop died, the bishops of the province, together with the metropolitan, assembled in the city of the defunct prelate. They here took information from the clergy and the people respecting the persons who were considered worthy of episcopal rank. The bishops deliberated by themselves on the matter, and then proposed in public the person whom they considered worthy of the bishop’s seat. They heard thereupon the opinion and the wish of the clergy and the faithful people. Having heard these, they issued their judgment, in which the sentence of the metropolitan had the larger share; and the new bishop being elected, they at once consecrated him. As to the election of the priests and the other inferior clergy, the same order was pursued in consulting clergy and people, and the whole judgment was ultimately reserved to the bishop.

St. Cyprian has left us in his 68th letter a most lucid testimony to this being the custom in his day, not only in the Churches of Africa, but in all other provinces. “We must,” he says, “diligently observe and maintain the custom which has come down to us by divine tradition and apostolical observance, which is kept among ourselves and in almost every province. In order that ordination be rightly celebrated, the nearest bishops of the province must assemble among that people for whom a superior is to be appointed. The bishop must be chosen in the presence of the people, which has the fullest knowledge of the life of every one, and is thoroughly acquainted with his conduct by his acts.” He supports the custom by the example of Eleazar, who, though chosen to be high priest by Moses alone, in obedience to a divine command, was yet set before the people, to show that sacerdotal ordinations should be made in the presence of those who by intimate knowledge can testify the merits of those chosen; and, again, by the example of the Apostles, who, in the election as well of St. Matthias as of the seven deacons, called together the people and heard their testimony, “that no unworthy person might find means to be advanced to a higher rank or the sacerdotal dignity.”

The outcome of these three centuries is, that the election of the bishop lay in the hands of the metropolitan, assisted by the bishops of his province, and that the election of the metropolitan lay in the synod of his bishops, but confirmed by the bishops of the first Sees, to whom belonged the consecration of metropolitans.¹²⁹ This was the discipline in the East, while in the West the Roman Pontiff, through the dignity of his throne as head of the whole Church and of all particular Churches, did not personally intervene in the election of bishops to vacant Sees, but the successor was chosen by the neighbouring bishops according to the desires of the clergy and people, and the decree of the election was transmitted him, leaving to his choice its confirmation, or provision for the vacant See in some other manner, as might seem to him most expedient.

The election of all ministers below the bishop belonged to the bishop alone.

It is evident that the great number of bishops who in the course of two centuries were sent out by the Roman Pontiffs¹³⁰ to convert the nations to the faith were not elected by the faithful people which they themselves founded; nor could the testimony or the consent of the people be asked. But if the election of ministers had belonged by divine institution to the faithful laity and the Christian people, neither the Apostles, nor their disciples, nor the successors of St. Peter could have altered a divine disposition, nor elected pastors without the consent of the people.

But the principle on which the Church acted from the beginning is as clear as her practice; for the priesthood and the whole order of pastors in the Church having been established by the Son of God, and the perpetuity of this same priesthood in this same Church being also necessary by this divine disposition, it follows that the election of sacred ministers to maintain the succession and the disposition given by Christ to the Church, must belong by divine order to some one. As it cannot belong to laymen, it must belong to the clergy alone. In fact, St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, declares that God Himself prescribed the form of this election in the priesthood of Aaron, and that this form was observed by our Lord. “No one,” he says, “takes this honour to himself but he that is called by God, as was Aaron. So, too, Christ glorified not Himself to be called High Priest, but He that said to Him, ‘Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee;’ as also in another place He says, ‘Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.’”

Exactly, then, as Aaron was elected solely by Moses at God’s command, without waiting for any consent or any council of the people, so in the Church bishops did not need the consent or counsel of the people to be elected to their ministry, but they required the suffrage and the institution of their own order. And our Lord, on the day of His Resurrection, when He met His assembled Apostles, gave the whole rule, order, and descent of election and institution in His Church in the words, “As My Father sent Me, so I also send you.” As He elected His apostles and disciples, excluding all consent of the multitude, so He made them electors and institutors of the ministers who should succeed them, independent of popular election. In His Church power is from above, not from below; from within, not from without; nor is any truth attested with a more complete and unbroken witness in the history of three hundred years than this.

5. The fifth point to be considered is the administration of the Church’s temporal goods.

Our Lord died upon the cross in utter want and nakedness; in similar want and nakedness of temporal goods the Church, His Body, began her course. She had to draw by the power of His resurrection from the hearts of men what should be sufficient for her clothing and sustenance. The charge of our Lord in sending out His twelve Apostles is, in brief, the history of His Church during these three centuries. They went out without gold or silver in their girdles; they stayed in the houses which received them, eating and drinking of what was set before them. They preached the kingdom of heaven; freely they had received, and freely they gave; and for their heavenly gifts, since the labourer is worthy of his hire, they received temporal support. The 34th Apostolic Canon expresses the obligation to support the clergy and the divine service, which created all the property of the Church. “The law of God has appointed that those who abide at the altar should live by the altar.”

The support of their religion was from the beginning both a natural and a divine obligation lying upon all Christians; the natural obligation, expressed in the words “The labourer is worthy of his hire,” received from our Lord a supernatural application, when, using these words, He commanded that they who preached the gospel should live of the gospel.¹³¹

We may note three states of the Church in these early ages as to this matter.¹³² In the beginning, during the first fervour of the disciples in Jerusalem, the clergy and laity were united in one heart and spirit, and had all things in common, and those who possessed property sold it, and laid the price at the feet of the Apostles, that they might provide for the common needs. Those who lived in this manner had no obligation of paying tithes or first-fruits. A second state was that when the faith was spread beyond the bounds of Palestine, and that common life could hardly be maintained. Then the faithful retained their property as individuals, but collections were made on certain days for the support of the clergy and the poor, as St. Paul records.¹³³ When, subsequently, the Christian faith spread through the whole Roman Empire, and assumed a more complete and established form, these stated collections were retained, while Irenæus, and Origen, and Cyprian bear witness to the institution of tithes and first-fruits. Whether the specific amount of contribution was or was not imposed, at least the sustenance of the clergy and of religion was ever considered a debt of justice.

As to the acquisition and usage of temporal goods, the course of things in these first ages may be thus summed up.¹³⁴ It is not easy to know precisely at what time churches began to possess immovable goods; it is, however, very probable that this took place soon after the death of the Apostles, and as soon as the faithful gave up the practice of selling their property. Not that every Church made such acquisitions, but that by degrees, now in one city and now in another, some real property was secured; for it is certain that collections continued to be made for a long time, and the faithful continued to give tithes and first-fruits. These collections were not only made for the local Church, but for churches of distant provinces which were in need, for such a communication of goods was always enjoined by charity and recommended by unity. And it must be further remarked that these oblations of a particular Church were not only sent to another Church when they were more than were needed at home, but often made on purpose to be sent to a distance, as we learn from innumerable examples of ecclesiastical history. The reason of this is plain; for the whole Church being one, as all particular parts are bound to maintain religious union, so are they bound to have communication of those temporal goods which are the endowments necessary to preserve it, and one must help the other when just reason requires it, that all may help reciprocally in maintaining each other.

There was also in these centuries already made a fourfold distribution of the temporal goods acquired; one portion was given to the bishop, a second to the other clergy, a third for the support and relief of the poor and of strangers, a fourth for the building, reparation, and furnishing of churches, for it would seem that there were from the beginning places destined for divine worship. St. Paul¹³⁵ speaks of such for the reception of our Lord’s Body and Blood. The Martyrology records the festival of the first Christian Church at Rome, which was consecrated by St. Peter. Justin, Tertullian, Cyprian make mention of churches, sometimes the heathen emperors even allowed these, as is specially mentioned of Alexander Severus.

If, then, we compare the want and nakedness in which the Church began with the state in which she emerged from the period of persecution terminated by Constantine, we find that in spite of spoliations undergone in so many assaults of the heathen empire, she had created funds to support the whole body of her Episcopate, and the clergy subject to them in each diocese, to make ample relief for the poor, for the reception of strangers, for the support of hospitals; to build, maintain, and adorn churches for the celebration of her sacraments and the preaching of her word. In all this she exerted a parallel force with that which shows itself in the construction of her hierarchy, the system of her provincial councils, the constitution of her tribunals, the free election of her bishops and subordinate ministers. In no one of these things did the temporal government give her any aid. That is, indeed, to say much less than the truth. In no one of them did the temporal government do otherwise than thwart her, from the lowest degree of persecution, consisting in a social contempt and disregard, to the highest, of violent confiscation and bloody torture. The extent of favour which she enjoyed was that here and there a politic emperor shut his eyes to her proceedings, or even remarked in the plenitude of his forbearance that a church was better than a cookshop.¹³⁶ As the hierarchy proceeded forth by an inward strength derived from our Lord’s command, uniting local autonomy with central authority, exercising a rule at once paternal and majestical, the rule of Him who joined the commission to feed His whole flock with the condition to love Him more than all others loved Him, so this same hierarchy, passing from house to house and city to city with the word, “the Kingdom of God is at hand,” clothed itself as it passed with such a measure of material goods as was necessary for its maintenance by the offerings of the faithful, which they considered at once a natural and a divine obligation, for throughout they saw in the body they were covering the Body of the Lord, who for their sakes, being rich, had become poor.

The five subjects we have just reviewed belong to the Church’s external government, in which she manifested from the beginning a complete liberty and independence of all power outside of herself. It is next in order to show the same liberty and independence in the evolution of her teaching.

In this respect the task which fell upon the Apostles, from the time of her Lord’s departure, has been very concisely but, at the same time, very exactly defined in the last words of St. Matthew’s Gospel, wherein our Lord Himself charged them to “Go forth and make disciples all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” Herein the construction of the Church is marked in the authority which makes disciples everywhere, for the disciple stands to the teacher in a relation of obedience; in the rite of baptism, which binds them together in one whole, and which, standing at the head, represents the whole system of sacraments; while the teachers are enjoined to require observance of all those things which Christ had commanded them to teach in His name. These injunctions were recorded by St. Matthew in his Gospel many years after they had been exactly fulfilled by those to whom they were addressed. As soon as the Apostles were invested “with power from on high” at the Day of Pentecost, they began the simple work of making disciples, binding them together with sacraments, teaching them obedience to those things in which they had been enjoined by their Lord to instruct them. Again, we possess in the Gospel of St. Luke, dated, as is supposed, at least thirty years after the Day of Pentecost, a continuous record of what they began to do. But the work done, in all its length and breadth, was independent of these records. It is important to realise as well as we can the fact that the whole settlement of the Church as an institution, which embraces the worship of God, the administration of sacraments, the regulation of discipline, her essential polity, including the vocation, ordination, and jurisdiction of her ministers, and no less the instruction of men in that whole doctrine of salvation which consisted in the confession that our Lord was the Christ; all this, which was effected in the forty years which passed between the Day of Pentecost and the destruction of Jerusalem, was effected by oral teaching and living authority. The chief Sees were planted, and the divine polity in each of them, which formed the life of the Christian people, was laid down before the writings of the New Testament began to be published, long before they were collected, still longer before the Canon of the writings forming them was closed. The first generation of Christians received their religion from the lips of Messengers, Ambassadors, Heralds, who spoke in Christ’s name the words which Christ had put in them. Christians so made entered upon the practice of a life the whole course of which was drawn out for them by their teachers. This is the force of the commission, “Make disciples of all nations.” Mysteries were dispensed to them of which these teachers were stewards, and which they accepted from the hands of the teachers. And only when this work had been done, during a course of years and in many great cities, did the first written collection of some of the words and acts of Christ begin to be made public; while the last of this fourfold collection was not communicated to the general body of disciples until more than sixty years after the termination of our Lord’s earthly life. Before that time the structure of the Church in those points of her external government which we have touched above had been entirely completed; the sound of the Apostles had gone out into all the world; a multitude of teachers had been commissioned by the Apostles; a multitude of people had been taught by them; martyrs had borne witness to the faith thus planted everywhere.