Such were the natural causes which produced episcopacy, the only office connected with the Christian ministry, besides the presbyterate and diaconate, which can lay claim to an apostolical origin. Bishops were added to the two earlier orders, not from any notion of their being channels of Christ's covenanted grace, or as being necessary to the being of the Church, but partly because Chris tianity naturally settles into visible forms of organic unity, and partly because the wants of the age dictated an extension of the existing arrangements. The law of nature, and of order, is abundantly sufficient to account for the phenomenon, without our having recourse to a supposed divine prescription. Upon the subsequent and still more comprehensive forms of unity which followed the episcopate, it falls not within the scope of the present work to enlarge: they are confessed, by all but Romanists, to have been neither of divine nor of apostolical appointment, but simply ecclesiastical arrangements. Even the modern philosophical school of Romanists appears to have abandoned the attempt to trace up to Christ or His Apostles anything beyond the episcopate, and for the traditionary Scriptural proofs of the supremacy of the bishop of Rome to have substituted the modern theory of development, which has recently excited so much attention in the theological world. It is thus, at least, that Moehler conducts the argument, in his work on the Unity of the Church. The idea, he argues, of the unity of the church was progressive, unfolding itself gradually as time went on, like the continually widening circles of a disturbed sheet of water. Hence, before Cyprian's time, when the unity of the whole Church first became a matter of consciousness among Christians, there could be no pope, even in rudiment:-"they who require, before that period, incontrovertible proofs of the existence of the primacy require what is unreasonable, the law of a true development not admitting of it: and, vice versa, the trouble which some have given themselves to discover, before the same epoch, the full idea of a Pope, or the notion that they have discovered it, must be considered as vain, and their conclusions untenable. As throughout the inferior organization of the Church, so, in this point, the want must be felt, before the supply could be found."* "It is evident that during the first three centuries, and even at the close of them, the primacy is not visible, save in its first lineaments: it operates as Rothe, Anfänge, &c. pp. 309-346, to whose researches on the subject of episcopacy the present writer has been much indebted. * Einheit in der Kirche, Abt. 2. s. 68. yet but informally; and when the question arises where, and how, did it practically manifest itself, we must confess that it never appears alone, but always in conjunction with other churches and bishops; though it is true that a peculiar character is already seen to attach to the Roman see."* This view of the growth of the papacy has not only the advantage of being historically true, but of sparing learned and candid Romanists the necessity of distorting the expressions of Scripture, and of the early fathers, into a meaning which they never were intended to bear. Nor does the candid. abandonment of Scriptural proof for the doctrine of the Roman pontiff at all shake the dogmatical structure of Rome. For in this, as in all other instances, it is not upon Scripture that the stress of proof is ultimately laid, but upon the Church. According to Romanism, the visible Church is the impersonation of Christ, the perpetuation of "God manifest in the flesh :" hence it matters little whether a practice, or a doctrine, be found in Scripture or not, because the decision of the Church in its favour is sufficient to stamp upon it the seal of divine authority; any development whatever which she may sanction taking its place among the truths of revelation. No Romanist, therefore, who understands his own system, need feel any scruple in admitting that Scripture is silent upon the supremacy of the bishop of Rome, or the first three centuries upon the doctrine of purgatory: neither Scripture, nor the fathers, but the decisions of the present infallible church, form the real basis of his faith: Scripture itself, the great writers of his communion tell him, is the Word of God, because the Church has pronounced it to be so. We are by no means, therefore, to understand that the Romish advocates of the theory of development deem the doctrines or practices of their church, the non-existence of which in Scripture, or in the early fathers, they account for by the application of that theory, to be at all less binding than those for which direct Scriptural evidence can be adduced. The progress which the Church, when deprived of Apostolic superintendence, made in the work of organization abundantly confirms the theory of episcopacy above propounded, and proves that, even if the Apostles had not given her bishops, she would probably have given them to herself. The same powerful tendency to union which led the Christians of a certain locality to congregate round a visible centre impelled in like manner neigh Einheit in der Kirche, Abt. 2. s. 71. bouring churches to establish an association among themselves, and this not merely in the way of casual intercourse, but by means of recognized organs. The bishop's office now began to assume that double character- ecumenical as well as well as local -which it is found to bear in the pages of Cyprian and Augustin. Churches could not communicate with each other directly, but they might do so by means of representatives; and no one appeared so fit to be the representative of his Church as he who in it was the visible symbol of unity. Those bishops, therefore, who resided within a reasonable distance from each other soon fell into the practice of assembling, as the representatives of their respective churches, first informally, and then formally, and at stated intervals, for the purposes of mutual recognition and consultation upon ecclesiastical matters; on which occasions they were commonly accompanied by delegates from the presbyters and laity. This was the origin of synods. Nor did the centralizing process stop here. As the presbyters of each church formed a council presided over by the bishop, so it was natural that the councils of bishops should develop from themselves a visible centre of unity; accidental circumstances such as a church having been founded by an Apostle, or its importance in a political point of view —fixing where the centre should be. Thus it was that the metropolitan sees came into existence. The beneficial effects which this arrangement was calculated to produce are obvious. As in differences arising between a presbyter and his flock, the former was either supported or disowned by his colleagues, with the bishop at their head, so, by the union of bishops under the metropolitan, individual eccentricities were kept in check, while, on the other hand, the authority of each bishop in his own church, which, had he been isolated, might not always have sufficed to restrain corruptions in doctrine or practice, was strengthened by the countenance and sympathy of the whole episcopate. Thus the strong supported the weak, and the weak, by union with the strong, were no longer weak. The diseased member of the body received from the sound ones the restorative treatment which his case demanded. In the important work of appointing a bishop to a vacant see, the advantages of metropolitanism were especially apparent. The election of the new bishop proceeding, according to the custom of those times, from the Church itself, composed of people and presbyters, it was by no means beyond the range of possibility that their choice might fall upon an improper person, faction, or the popular will, prevailing against the voice of the better part of the community. The danger hence arising was guarded against by the rule which prevailed, that two or three at least of the neighbouring bishops, and always the metropolitan, should assist at the consecration of every bishop; and that no appointment should be deemed valid unless it had been ratified by the other churches of the province, their approval of the election being testified by the reception from the new bishop, and transmission to him, of formal letters of communion, termed epistolæ communicatoriæ. The metropolitan circles of unity soon expanded into still more extensive combinations. Christianity knowing no local limits, no legitimate reason could be assigned why the work of consolidation, which had been carried so far as to unite the bishops of a province together, should not advance until stopped by political impediments. As long as the Roman empire held together, no such impediments existed. Hence we find provinces coalescing into patriarchates; political considerations determining the patriarchal sees to the three leading churches of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. Later on, Rome, the capital of the world, and the scene of the labours and death of the great Apostles Peter and Paul, is seen assuming the lead in ecclesiastical, as once in political, affairs; the Roman patriarch becomes invested, not by any formal delegation of power, but by tacit consent and the custom of the Church, with an undefined precedency in the ecclesiastical councils of western Christendom. In the age of Cyprian, as the writings of that father abundantly prove, the idea of a visible centre of unity for the Christians of the Roman empire had already assumed in men's minds a distinct form and consistence.* It was thus that, by means of metropolitans and patriarchates, the whole Church visible was brought into formal communion, though the unity was not yet organic, inasmuch as the visible head was wanting. Through its bishop, each local church was brought into connexion with the Church universal. Hence arose the idea, so intimately pervading Cyprian's writings, of the unity of the collected episcopate; the bishops of the Church forming a corporation, each member of which possessed an ecumenical authority and was responsible, so to speak, for the well-being of the whole Christian body, as well as for that of his own particular charge. "The Church," he writes, "one and Catholic, is knit and compacted together by the mutual adhesion of a cemented priesthood" (or episcopate); † "as the one Church has been divided See the quotations from Cyprian in the concluding chapter of this work. † Epist. 69. Ad Flor. Pup. by Christ into many members throughout the world, so the one episcopate is every where diffused by the harmonious multiplicity of many bishops." * Nor was this mere theory: the idea was realized. When distance prevented the personal intercourse of bishops, the defect was supplied by a constant epistolary correspondence; and no event of importance occurred in any part of the Christian world but it was immediately communicated to the whole Church. The churches of Lyons and Vienna, in describing the sufferings of their martyrs, address themselves to "the brethren in Asia and Phrygia, having the same faith and the same hope of redemption with themselves." The opposition which Cornelius, the legitimate bishop of Rome, experienced from Novatian and his followers, excited the liveliest interest at Carthage. "He" (Cornelius) "was made bishop," writes Cyprian to Antoninus, a bishop of Numidia, "by very many of our colleagues then present in Rome, who sent us letters, highly honourable to him, and full of his praise, to signify to us his appointment. The chair of St. Peter having been thus filled according to the will of God, and the appointment having been confirmed by the consent of us all" (i. e. the whole episcopate), "whosoever shall now attempt to intrude himself into it must of necessity be outside the pale of the Church; for he has not the Church's ordination who does not hold the Church's unity." Cornelius, on the other hand, when some of the confessors who had taken part with Novatian, returned to the communion of the Church, immediately communicates the intelligence to Cyprian, with a request that he would take care to transmit it to the rest of the churches, that "all may know that this crafty and perverse heretic (Novatian) is daily losing influence." § Excommunication by any church, however insignificant, shut the offender out from the communion of the Church universal: no bishop would receive him to fellowship, until the sentence had been reversed by the same authority which had pronounced it. Paul of Samosata having propounded some doctrines subversive of the proper divinity of Christ, immediately, to use the words of Eusebius, "the pastors of the neighbouring churches came together from every quarter as against a destroyer of Christ's flock, and convoked an assembly at Antioch;" the result of which was that "this arch-heretic was convicted, and excommunicated from the whole Catholic Church under heaven." The decision of the council was communicated, in a letter ad Epist. 52. Ad Anton. + Euseb. lib. v. c. l. Ad Cyp. (Epist. 46.) |