St. Peter, His Name and His Office, as Set Forth in Holy Scripture

Exactly, then, as it is asserted with great truth of all these particular Churches that they are one house, one city, and one fold, so must this be repeated of the whole Church, since it is set forth in Scripture by no other images, and has no less right to claim the property of unity. Hence S.³⁶⁹ Chrysostome's golden saying, "If it is the Church of God, it is united and one, not at Corinth only, but in the whole world. For the Church is a name not of division, but of union and harmony;" and S.³⁷⁰ Gregory calls it, "The tunic without seam, woven from the top throughout."

Now the same reason which existed for instituting particular bishops to govern and preserve in unity particular flocks, moved Christ to institute an universal Primate, and to set him over the whole fold. If in the former case the best description of a particular Church is that of S. Cyprian, "A people united to its priest, and a flock adhering to its pastor;"³⁷¹ in the latter the form of unity, which Christ established in the universal Primate, no less imposes on all, both taught and teachers, the necessity of saying with S. Jerome, "I following none as the first save Christ, am joined in communion with your blessedness, that is, with the chair of Peter. Upon that rock the Church is built, I know. Whoever outside of this house eateth the lamb, is profane. If any one was not in the ark of Noah, he shall perish. I know not Vitalis; I reject Meletius; I am ignorant of Paulinus. Whoever gathers not with thee, scatters: that is, he who is not of Christ is of Antichrist."³⁷²

III. A great accession of evidence will accrue to what we have said if we attentively consider the reasons deduced from the texts containing the institution of the Primacy, and those proceeding from the inherent properties of the Church. To speak of the texts first:

1. Either they carry no meaning with them, or they prove at least this, that Christ, in instituting the Primacy, intended,³⁷³ while exhibiting the whole Church under the usual image of a house and building, to give it a foundation, the bond at once of its strength and unity; and, again, while communicating to one the special gift of unwavering faith, to make him the channel for establishing and³⁷⁴ confirming all the faithful; to³⁷⁵ render the fold which he had gathered out of all nations one by the unity of a supreme visible pastor, and to³⁷⁶ constitute in the Lord's family, amid so manifold a distinction of officers, one of such eminence as to be the Ruler and the Greater among all.

But can we, or ought we, to conclude from this as to the purpose of the Primacy, and as to its constituent force and principle? Assuredly these texts prove directly and categorically that the Primacy was set up as the efficient principle, whereby to mould the Church's visible unity, and was endowed with all that authority, without which unity could neither have been produced, nor maintained in existence.

2. And in this judgment we shall be confirmed if we investigate the properties of which the Church cannot be deprived, without taking a form and an appearance different from that which it received from Christ. The first which occurs is that identity by which the Church must always be like itself, and cannot be substantially different at its beginning and in its growth; one thing when it had Christ for its visible head, and another when His words had come to pass, "A little while, and now you shall not see Me – because I go to the Father." Now at its first commencement, in the time of our Lord's mortal life, the Church presented the form of a society governed by the supreme power of one, and deriving its visible unity from one supreme visible head. That it might not subsequently lose this identity, and put on another form, our Lord chose a Primate to be the principle of visible unity, and to have the power of a head over the whole body.

And indeed this was necessary to maintain the double character and test of³⁷⁷ unity and³⁷⁸ Catholicity, by which the Church is distinguished in Holy Scripture and in the records of Christian antiquity. As to unity, not only are the expressions in the creeds, and the more ample explanation of them in the³⁷⁹ Fathers, most clear and emphatic, but likewise what is said in the Holy Scriptures of the end for which the Church was founded by Christ. For the³⁸⁰ grace of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men, instructing those who had³⁸¹ changed the truth of God into a lie, and liked not to have God in their knowledge, that³⁸² denying all these things they might become an acceptable people, and³⁸³ enlightened by Christ, and sanctified in the truth, might by the profession of one faith be³⁸⁴ one body and one spirit, in the same³⁸⁵ manner in which the Father and the Son are one, and might be³⁸⁶ divided by no sects and dissensions, which are manifestly the works of the flesh, not of God, who is not the³⁸⁷ God of dissension but of peace. For therefore³⁸⁸ Christ, the only-begotten of the Father, gave His blood for it, to present it to Himself, a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, which would break peace, and disturb the agreement of faith; but that it should be holy and without blemish,³⁸⁹ immovable through that rock on which it rests, and against which not even the gates of hell shall prevail; wisely ordered as the³⁹⁰ house of God, in which³⁹¹ all hear his voice, who is set over as the³⁹² ruler, and has received his brethren to be³⁹³ confirmed, and the³⁹⁴ care of the whole flock;³⁹⁵ endued with virtue from on high, and strengthened by the³⁹⁶ Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father; possessing the power of³⁹⁷ authoritative teaching, which if any³⁹⁸ hear not, nor obey, they are to be accounted as heathens and publicans, by a judgment which binds both in heaven and on earth. Are there any who do not see that in this description, which sets forth the Church's pre-ordained end, its proper character and very lineaments, the Primacy itself is included, and exhibited as the principal cause which effects the unity of the whole body? I hardly think that any such can be, so apparent is the bond which ties these several parts together.

Yet perhaps this may be more vividly brought out if we shortly mention the common opinions among Protestants on the Church's unity. For, omitting those who hold an³⁹⁹ invisible Church, and so expunge visible unity from its attributes, all the other opinions may be reduced to three.

A. Anglicans, whose belief has been set forth, besides Pearson on the Creed, with more than usual care by Dodwell, (in his Treatise on the Bishop, as the Principle of Unity, and S. Peter's Primacy among the Apostles as the Exemplar of Unity,) begin by noting that the question of visible unity cannot be determined in the same way as it respects the universal Church, or each particular Church. But why? Because, they say, it was indeed the will of Christ, that each particular Church should have a double unity, inward and outward, but it was not His will that the whole Church, the sum of these particular Churches, should have the same mark and test. Because, it was His will that both unities should characterise the particular Churches, to use a school phrase, separately and distributively, but not the whole body, and the sum of these, taken collectively. Whence they conclude that Bishops were chosen and made, by the command of Christ, to preside over particular Churches, and be in them the source and principle of external unity, but that a Primate was not chosen, to whom the whole Church should be subject, and on whom its external unity should depend.

At this argument one is lost in astonishment, how it could have suggested itself to learned men, and gained their assent. For what had they to prove, or how could they assure themselves, or others, as to either of these two points, that external unity was necessary to particular Churches, but not to the whole Church, or that the institution of Bishops, presiding over particular Churches, came from Christ, but not that of the Primate, whose charge was to rule, administer, and maintain in unity the whole Church. Had they texts wherein to trust? But as often as the Bible speaks of the Church's unity, it means that Church, which is called "the kingdom of God," "the kingdom of Christ," and "the kingdom of heaven," which is termed "the inheritance of the Gentiles," and embraces with a mother's bosom, and a mother's love, the whole race of man, from one end of the earth to the other. Had they creeds to cite? But in these unity is attributed to that Church only, which is so termed absolutely, and very often has the epithet of Catholic.

Moreover, is the word Church, in its unrestricted application, of doubtful meaning? On the contrary, it is specially defined as well in the Holy Scriptures,⁴⁰⁰ where it expresses of itself the whole society of believers, as in the Fathers, such as Irenæus,⁴⁰¹ Tertullian,⁴⁰² Clement⁴⁰³ of Alexandria, Origen,⁴⁰⁴ Hilary,⁴⁰⁵ Jerome,⁴⁰⁶ and all the rest without exception, who, in using it, express the whole Christian people joined in one sole communion. It is defined also by Councils, as in the Canons of Laodicea,⁴⁰⁷ Carthage,⁴⁰⁸ and Constantinople,⁴⁰⁹ where the Church means the whole assembly of orthodox believers, as distinct from heretics and schismatics. It is defined in the most ancient explanation of the creeds, the unanimous meaning of which Tertullian seems to have rendered in saying: "And, therefore, so many and so great Churches are that first one from the Apostles, whence all come. So all are first, and all Apostolical, while all set forth one unity, while they have interchange of peace, the appellation of brotherhood and the common rights of friendship, privileges regulated by no other principle than the tradition of the same sacrament."⁴¹⁰ Lastly, the very heretics⁴¹¹ defined this term, who, in order to make themselves understood, could use the word Church in no other sense than to express the universal assembly of the faithful.

After this it is not at all necessary to ask Anglicans afresh if they have ancient Fathers whose authority they can quote. What these thought and believed about the Church's unity is fully shown by those whom we have quoted, and by the words of Irenæus, "The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, yet as if it were contained in the same house, carefully preserves the rule of faith, and holds it as if she had one soul and one heart, nay, and teaches it with one consent, as if she spoke with one voice. For although different tongues occupy the world, yet the force of tradition is one and the same, nor do the Churches of Germany, Spain, Gaul, the East, Egypt, Libya, and the middle of the world, embrace any other faith. But as there is one and the same sun shining over the whole world, so the preaching of the truth shines everywhere, and enlightens all men who desire its knowledge."⁴¹²

What, then, was the motive of Anglicans, in maintaining the unity of particular churches, and the institution of bishops cohering with it, to be necessary, while they denied the necessity of unity in the Church universal, or of a Primate's institution, to effect universal unity? What induced them to assert incompatibilities, and defend them as a matter of life and death? The evidence of the Scriptures, and the unquestionable belief of all Christian antiquity, extorted from them the acknowledgment that unity was a mark of the Church, and the ascription to Christ of the institution of bishops as necessary for the forming and maintaining unity. But the fixed purpose of defending their schism, and their determination to reject the Primacy, urged them to deny that unity in the whole Church was ordered and provided for by Christ. The result of these affirmatives and negatives was a doctrinal⁴¹³ monster of incomparable ugliness, an outrage on the light both of nature and of revelation, as incapable of defence, as abhorrent from reason and from grace.

B. The second Protestant opinion has been set forth at length by⁴¹⁴ Vitringa, and supported with all his ingenuity. It is that of those who distinguish a two-fold unity of the Church, one interior, spiritual, proceeding from union with one and the same invisible Head, Jesus Christ, and completed and perfected by the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit, and the bestowal of heavenly gifts; the other exterior, visible, depending on profession of the same faith, participation of the same sacraments, obedience to the same superiors. Having made this distinction, they proceed to argue for the purpose of proving that while the former unity is universal, and absolutely necessary, the latter is neither universal nor necessary, save hypothetically, (of which hypothesis Vitringa nowhere explains the nature,) and so is capable both of extension and restriction. In a word, they attach simple and absolute necessity and universality to the spiritual and invisible unity, but by no means to the external and visible.

But for this what are their authorities? Can they allege the most ancient Fathers in unbroken succession from the Apostles? Nay, they candidly confess that the Fathers thought external and visible unity simply and absolutely necessary, and not those only of the fourth and fifth century, but those of the second and third. Witness Vitringa,⁴¹⁵ who says, "If we consult on this point the doctors of the ancient Christian Church, they seem on all hands to have embraced the view that the communion of believers in holy rites, in the supper of the Lord, and in reciprocal offices of brotherly love, was maintained absolutely, not hypothetically. They supposed, and seem to have persuaded themselves, that all who were joined to the Christian Church by the due rite of baptism after previous preparation, were really regenerated by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and so that the Christian Church was an assembly of men, who in far greater part, saving hypocrites, of whom a few might exist in secret, participated in the renewing and sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, to be joined to the Church was much the same as being joined to the heavenly city. To have one's name on the Church's books, much the same as to have it in God's book of life. On the other hand, to be severed from Church communion, or to use Tertullian's words, "to be deprived of the sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord, and to be debarred from all brotherly communion," was to risk salvation, and incur the danger of eternal death. That is, they supposed that no one was saved out of the external communion of the Church, which they confounded with the mystical and spiritual communion of the Saints. And again, kindred points to these, and resting on the same principle, that bishops represent the office and person of Jesus Christ Himself in the Christian Church; that those who separated themselves from them when rightly and duly elected, separated themselves at the same time from the communion of Christ Himself. That those who were absolved by the bishops after penance publicly performed according to the canons of ecclesiastical discipline, restored to their rank, and honoured with the kiss of peace, were absolved in the heavenly court by God Himself, and Christ the Judge. Lastly, which was the most⁴¹⁶ audacious of all such hypotheses, that it was all over with the salvation of all who separated themselves in schism from the external communion of the Church and its rites, although hitherto they had neither been tainted with heresy, nor involved in crimes destructive of the Christian⁴¹⁷ profession. It would be easy for me to support at length each one of these particulars by the sentiments and the discipline of the doctors of the primitive Church, were they unknown to the more instructed, or did my purpose allow it. I now only appeal to Cyprian's letter to Magnus, in the whole of which He supposes and urges the very hypotheses which I have been enumerating; and amongst the rest, speaking of Novatian's schism, he writes thus distinctly: "But if there is one Church, which is beloved by Christ, and alone is cleansed in His laver, how can he who is not in the Church," (that is, in communion with that particular external assembly which makes a part of the external Catholic Church,) "be loved by Christ, or washed and cleansed in His laver? Wherefore as the Church alone possesses the water of life, and the power of baptizing and washing a man, let him who asserts that any one can be baptized and sanctified with Novatian, first show and teach that Novatian is in the Church, or ⁴¹⁸presides over the Church. For the Church is one, which, being one, cannot be at once within and without. For if it is with Novatian, it was not with Cornelius. But if it was with Cornelius, who succeeded the Bishop Fabian in regular order, and whom the Lord hath glorified with martyrdom over and above the rank of his high priesthood, Novatian is not in the Church."⁴¹⁹ It is the precise thing which we have been stating."

But where did Vitringa and the supporters of his doctrine get courage to contradict the whole line of Fathers and their unbroken tradition? You would surely expect from them decisive arguments, and expressions from Holy Writ distinctly laying down no other than a hypothetical necessity of visible and external unity. But you may search in vain all over the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Acts, for any such. Not only is there no mention in them of such a distinction as that invisible unity is absolutely necessary, while external and visible unity is but hypothetically so, but this latter is plainly enjoined and set forth as the note which the mystical body of Christ, the true Church, cannot be without; and its violation is reckoned among those works of the flesh which exclude from the kingdom of God.

How, besides, can that be deemed necessary only under hypothesis, without holding and faithfully maintaining which you cut yourself off from the very fountain of blessing, and transgress and subvert the order appointed by God for attaining salvation? Such an assertion would be senseless. Yet in most of the Protestant confessions, – the Helvetic, art. xiv., the Galliean, art. xvi., the Scotch, art. xxvii., the Belgian, art. xxviii., the Saxon, art. xii., the Bohemian, art. viii., and that of the Remonstrants, art. xxii., – it is laid down as an indisputable principle, "That the heirs of eternal life are only to be found in the assembly of those called." What then do those who violate outward and visible unity, and withdraw from the outward and visible body of the Church? They stop up the very way which Providence has opened for their obtaining "the inheritance of sons."

For indeed Christ is the Saviour, but of His mystical body, which⁴²⁰ is the Church, which therefore He purchased with His own blood, joined to Himself by that closest bond of being His spouse, enriched with promises,⁴²¹ provided with all manner of graces, and most nobly dowered with⁴²² truth, charity, and the Holy Spirit, to give her at last salvation, and⁴²³"the weight of eternal glory." But have these things reference to a visible or an invisible Church? To a Church one and coherent, or rent and torn by factions? It is the Church which Christ founded, which He made to be⁴²⁴ "the light of the world," bound together by⁴²⁵ manifold external links, ordered to be one with the unity of a house, a family, a city, a kingdom; with that unity wherewith the Father and the Son are one; in which He placed⁴²⁶ pastors and doctors to bind and to loose, and to watch over the agreement of all the parts; which He founded upon Peter, committed in chief to Peter to rule and to feed it. Such, then, as fall off from one single visible Church are of the condition of those whom the Apostles of the Lord foretold, that "in the last time there should come mockers, walking according to their own desires in ungodlinesses: these are they who separate themselves, sensual men, having not the⁴²⁷ Spirit: " these tear themselves from their Saviour, lose the fruit purchased by His blood, and fall from the inheritance which the Head obtained for His body and His members.

Therefore the necessity of union with the one single visible Church is as great as the necessity of union with Christ the Head, as the necessity of the remission of sins, "for⁴²⁸ outside of it they are not remitted: for this Church has specially received the Holy Spirit in earnest, without whom no sins are remitted: " as the necessity of charity, "⁴²⁹for it is this very charity which those who are cut off from the communion of the Catholic Church do not possess," whence "⁴³⁰whatsoever thing heretics and schismatics receive, the charity which covers a multitude of sins is the gift of Catholic unity and peace: " as great, in fine, as the necessity not to involve oneself "in⁴³¹ a horrible crime and sacrilege," "in⁴³² the greatest of evils," one "by⁴³³ which Christ's passion is rendered of no effect, and His body is rent," by which⁴³⁴ the sin is committed of which Christ said, "It shall not be forgiven, neither in this world nor in the world to come: " by which one is estranged "from the sole Catholic Church, which retains the true worship, in which is the fountain of truth, the home of faith, the temple of God, into which if any one enter not, or from which if any one go out, he loses the hope of life and eternal salvation. Let no one flatter himself in the spirit of obstinate contention, for life is at issue, and salvation, which without care and caution will be forfeited."⁴³⁵ Can any necessity be greater, or less conditional than this? Or what can be more plain than this statement of the simple and absolute necessity of visible unity and outward communion?

Where then are we to find the cause which induced so many learned and able Protestants first to imagine this distinction between the necessity of internal and external communion and unity, and then to deceive themselves and others with such a mockery? The real cause was, as I believe, that having denied the institution of the Primacy, and the authority lodged in it for the purpose of forming and maintaining unity, they were without a criterion or proof, in virtue of which, among so many Christian societies divided from and condemning each other, they could safely choose the one with which they were to be joined in communion, and the outward unity of duty and obedience. For they would readily conclude that the unity so often commended in Scripture, and so earnestly enjoined, could not be external, since God, who does not command impossibilities, had instituted no visible sign to mark that company of Christians, which alone among all the rest was the continuation and development of the Church founded by Christ, and built up by the Apostles.

C. From the same source must the third Protestant doctrine on unity be derived. ⁴³⁶Jurien filled up the sketch of this, which ⁴³⁷Casaubon, ⁴³⁸Claude, and ⁴³⁹Mestrezat had drawn, and it became so popular as not only to infect a large number of Protestants, but to exert a withering influence on certain unstable members of the Catholic body. It teaches that we must believe not only in an internal and spiritual, but in a visible and external unity, for the Scriptures plainly urge its necessity, and Christian tradition fully describes it, so that there is not a truth more patent or established on greater authority; but this unity is restricted within narrow bounds, and confined to the articles called fundamental, though as to how many these are no one defender of the system is agreed with another. For it is sufficient for Christians not to differ in the profession of such articles for them to be deemed members of one and the same Church. Whence they infer that one and the same true Church is made up out of almost all Christian societies, the Roman, the Greek, the Nestorian, the Eutychian, the Waldensian, the Lutheran, the Anglican, and the Calvinist, for their differences, important as they are, offer no hindrance to the unity which Christ enjoined, the Apostles preached, the creeds express, and universal tradition demands.

As Bossuet,⁴⁴⁰ the brothers Walemburg,⁴⁴¹ Nicole,⁴⁴² and even some Protestants have most fully dealt with this portentous opinion, there is no need to urge much against it here. I prefer repeating the question, what occasion the Protestants had to get up so unheard-of a paradox, and a system so absurd? It was twofold: one theoretical, and the other practical.

The theoretical was this. The crime of heresy, depicted in Scripture, and Christian antiquity, with colours so dark, had gradually lost its foulness and its magnitude in the minds of Protestants, who had, at length, come to the pass of reckoning religious, as well as civil, liberty, among the unquestionable rights of man. As if, all other human acts being subject to a law, those alone which proceed from the intellect are exempt: as if the difference between right and wrong, which embraces the whole range of man's life, did not relate to its noblest part, in the acts of the intellect and the reason: as if God had laid down a law of justice, charity, fortitude, and prudence, but entirely omitted a law⁴⁴³ of faith: as if the will submitted to a law of good, but the mind owned no law of truth: or as if God cared for the boughs and leaves, but took no thought of the root.⁴⁴⁴ But what could Protestants do? Having allowed to all full license of thought, and overthrown the authority which ruled the mind, they were forced, while they kept the name of heresy, to give up the thing meant by it, and the effects springing from that thing: they were forced to attenuate to the utmost the crime of heresy, and to reduce to the smallest possible number the articles necessary to be believed by all; they were forced to extend beyond all measure the Church's limits, while they contracted beyond all measure the range of necessary unity.

Besides the theoretical, there was a practical occasion in those schisms which, not merely in later or in mediæval times, but in the first ages also, rent the Christian society. Jurien and Pfaff appeal to these, pretentiously enumerating those which arose under Popes Victor, Cornelius, Stephen, Urban VI., and Clement VII., and those named from Donatus, Meletius, and Acacius. Then they ask if the true Church of Christ can be thought to consist in one single society perfectly at union with itself. They allege many conjectures against this, but dwell on the argument, that in defect of a visible external test, such an assertion could not be maintained without imposing upon all a most intolerable burden of searching out where is the true doctrine and the legitimate ministerial succession: for it is not until those are found, that, at length, that one single society will be recognised, with which, as the only true Church, unity of Communion is to be kept.

Now, I profess that I do not see how this argument can be met, if the institution of the Primacy, and its proper function to form and maintain unity, be rejected. For, without this, by what visible token among so many Christian societies, divided by intestine dissension, and condemning each other, can you distinguish the one which has the character of the true Church, and the right to exact communion with itself? There is none to be found; and so, either all hope of finding the true Church must be relinquished, or an enquiry must be undertaken into purity of doctrine, and legitimate ministerial succession, on the termination of which the only true Church will at last be found. But as this latter course is to by far the greater number of men impossible, dangerous⁴⁴⁵ to all without exception, and most foreign to the Christian temper, the only conclusion remaining, is, that the selection of a Primacy with the power of effecting unity impressed upon it, is most intimately involved and bound up in the visibility and unity of the true Church.

And quite as closely is it bound up with that other test of the Church, its Catholicism. We are not to believe Voss and King,⁴⁴⁶ in their assertion that this test began to be applied first in the fourth century, for the purpose of distinguishing the genuine company of the orthodox, and the true body of Christ, from heretics and schismatics. For we find the Church distinguished by the epithet of Catholic, not merely in the records of the fourth⁴⁴⁷ and fifth⁴⁴⁸ century, but in those of the third,⁴⁴⁹ and the second,⁴⁵⁰ at the beginning of which S. Ignatius wrote, "Follow all of you the bishop, as Jesus Christ the Father; and the body of presbyters, as Apostles. But reverence deacons, as the command of Christ. Without the bishop let nothing of what concerns the Church be done by any one. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist which is under the bishop, or with his sanction. Where the bishop is, there also let the multitude be; as, where Christ Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church."⁴⁵¹ As, therefore, that cannot be the Church of Christ, which is not Catholic, we ought to investigate the meaning which is given to this word by the consent of all orthodox believers.

Now, two points are signified in it, one of which is its material, the other its formal, or essential, part. Its material part is, that the geographical extension of the true Church be such that its mass be morally⁴⁵² universal, absolutely great, and eminently visible, but comparatively with all heretical and schismatical sects, larger and more numerous. Of this material meaning attached to the epithet, Catholic, we find abundant witnesses in all⁴⁵³ the orthodox writers who defended the cause of the Church against the Donatists, and again, against the Luciferians,⁴⁵⁴ and Novatians; and likewise, in those who have explained the creeds,⁴⁵⁵ and, as occasion offered, have touched on the force of the term Catholic.⁴⁵⁶ But the same first cited witnesses tell us that universal diffusion is not sufficient, and that we require another element to infuse a soul into this universally extended body, and to bring it to unity.