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THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
THE
CHURCH OF CHRIST
ITS FOUNDATION AND CONSTITUTION^
FATHER PETER FINLAY, S.J.
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
I915
t^g'6'^2?^.
loaH st*^SS
TO
THE ARCHBISHOPS AND BISHOPS
OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN IRELAND
P. F.
204
^ihil ohstai:
GULIELMUS HENRY, S.J.
imprimi potest:
T. V. NOLAN, S.J.,
Preep. Prov, Hib.
imprimattir:
GULIELMUS, Archiep. Dublin.
Hibernice Pritnas.
The following Lectures were delivered in the
Dublin College of the National University of
Ireland. They have been published at the desire
of a very dear friend, who has defrayed the whole
cost of publication, that so they might issue at a
very reduced price, and might reach a wider circle
of readers. It has been thought best to print
them exactly as they were delivered, with what-
ever shortcomings are incidental to the Lecture
form.
MiLLTOWN Park,
October^ iQ^S*
vii
Most of the references which occur in these pages are from
the New Testament writings. Some few are from the Fathers
and Councils. When not otherwise noted, the following
abbreviations are used : —
Harduin : Conciliorum Collectio Regia Maxima ; Parisiis,
1715-
Hefele : Conziliengeschichte ; First Edit.
Dcnz. : Denziger-Bannwart : Enchiridion Symbolorum ;
Friburgi, 1908.
M. G. : Migne, Patrologia, Seria Grseca.
M. L. : Migne, Patrologia, Seria Latina.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
The Sources: New Testament Writings.
Authority. Authority in Religion. Authority of the
Church. Line of Inquiry. Historical value of New
Testament writings. As merely human documents.
Manuscripts. Date of composition. Authorship.
Writers fully informed and truthful. Myth theory.
pages 1-27
LECTURE n.
The Divinity of Christ.
Christ confessedly man : is He God as well ? New Testa-
ment writers believed him to be God. Human character
of Christ. His claims. He preaches Himself. Men
belong to Him. Accepts Divine homage. Forgives
sin. Empowers men to forgive it. Will judge man-
kind. Asserts His pre-existence. Is One with God.
Attitude before the Sanhedrists. God or an impostor.
His resurrection : Vision theory ; Swoon theory.
pages 28-60
X CONTENTS
LECTURE III.
The Foundation of the Church.
Did Christ found a Church? He came to redeem and
sanctify mankind. To do this, He founded a Kingdom
— not a school of philosophy or of religion. Nature of
the Kingdom : on earth, but not earthly ; universal, in-
dependent. How He established it : the training of the
Apostles — their mission to teach, to govern, to minister.
Their success. The very concept of the Kingdom
proves the Divinity of Christ . . pages 61-95
LECTURE IV.
Characteristics of the Kingdom (or Church).
Christ's Church imperishable. A priori likelihood that it
would be so. Distinct promise of Christ. How
understood by the Apostles. It can be only one : so
determined by Christ ; so understood by the Apostles ;
so emphatically described by St. Paul. And member-
ship of it obligatory : Apostolic view of heresy and
schism ; Christ's express command . pages ^(i-12%^
LECTURE V.
Teaching Authority of the Church.
The Church to teach Revealed Truth. Christ Himself an
infallible teacher when on earth : has He provided for
continued infallible teaching ? Infallibility : what it is.
Active and passive infallibility. What infallibility is
not. Not to be demonstrated a priori ; though ante-
cedently to be expected. The Apostles* belief in their
CONTENTS xi
own infallibility. Christ's promise : " I am with you " ;
and His warning : " He that believeth not shall be
condemned ". Did infallibility cease with the Apostles ?
Its continuance guaranteed by Christ. " Subject " of
infallibility. Its " object " : how determined. How
we may recognize its exercise. Its claim on our assent
pages 129-162
LECTURE VI.
Which is the True Church of Christ?
The Church of Christ is not a body which denies or doubts
the Divinity of Christ. Nor the aggregate of all the
Christian societies which confess that Divinity. The
Branch Theory : unknown until recent times ; repudi-
ated by all except Anglicans ; untenable ; St. Paul's
appreciation of it. The Greek Orthodox Church. The
Anglican Church : Pan-Anglican Synods. The Roman
Catholic Church : her unity of Faith, her Sacraments
and Sacrifice, her government ; her continuity with the
past. The Separation of East and West. The
Protestant Reformation. Argument from Church
infallibility ..... pages 163-194
LECTURE VII.
The Authority of the Pope.
The Catholic Church infallible. Bearing of infallibility on
Papal Authority. Antecedently probable that there
will be some one infallible teacher and supreme ruler in
Christ's Church. Theocracy and Hebrew Monarchy.
St. Peter in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles.
xii CONTENTS
Christ's promise at Csesarea Philippi. " Feed My lambs :
feed My sheep." St. Clement of Rome to the Corin-
thians. St. Ignatius Martyr to the Romans. Polycarp,
the Martyrs of Lyons, St. Irenseus, Pope Victor,
Tertullian, St. Cyprian, Firmilian. The great Church
Councils : particularly, Lyons, Florence and the
Vatican. What the Primacy is not. When and how
exercised ..... pages 195-228
LECTURE VIII.
The Authority of Bishops.
Authority not conferred on St. Peter alone. Christ Him-
self appointed the other Apostles also to be teachers
and rulers. And willed them to have successors
throughout all time. A dogma defined by Trent.
Priests and Bishops in the New Testament. Office
and authority of Bishops of Divine institution and of
Apostolic usage. Clement of Rome, Ignatius Martyr,
Irenseus on Episcopal Authority. Episcopacy of the
very essence of the Church. Duties and powers of
Bishops — in General Councils, dispersed, in the indivi-
dual diocese. The diocesan Bishop an authentic
teacher of the whole Deposit of Faith, and of the
limits of that Deposit. He is also legislator and ruler.
Summing up . . . . pages 22^-261
Index pages 262-264
<
LECTURE I.
THE SOURCES:
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS.
When I learned that the Catholic Bishops of
Ireland had decided, with the approval of the
Senate, to establish a Professorship of Theology
in the National University, and had nominated
me to the position, I thought at first that we
should begin these lectures by defining the nature
and scope of theological studies, their place in a
University, and their bearing upon the intellectual
attitude and practical conduct of educated Catho-
lics, lay, not less than clerical. But I reflected
that this work has been already done — done, too,
with a grace and thoroughness which render any
other attempt not merely unnecessary, but in this
place at least, well-nigh presumptuous. It was
done by the first Rector of the Catholic Univer-
sity of Ireland, John Henry Newman, when he
delivered the second, third, and fourth of his " Diej-
\
2 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
courses on the Scope and Nature of University
Education, "addressed to the Catholics of Dublin.
Omitting, therefore, all such preliminary and
general considerations, I purpose dealing with a
question of theology, which is fundamental in our
Catholic system, which marks us off sharply from
all other religious organizations, and which gives
us intellectually and emotionally a sense of re-
ligious peace and security to be obtained nowhere
else. We assent to a large body of Divine
truths, we accept a large body of moral precepts,
on the authority of the Church. We receive her
rites and ministrations, at the value which she
herself sets on them. We may, of course, assure
ourselves, by personal study, of the truth and
reasonableness of individual doctrines, and of the
wisdom or need of particular laws. But the
great majority of men and women are quite un-
fitted for any detailed investigation of religious
teachings. In religion, as in history, in mathe-
matics, in philology, and in all the arts and
sciences, the multitude must be guided in action
and in opinion by authority. Even the few who
have ability, leisure and opportunity for independ-
ent research must pay the price of almost ex-
clusive devotion to severe and specialized studies,
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 3
before they can place any well-founded confidence
in their own conclusions. It is, therefore, su-
premely reasonable that we Catholics generally
should take our religion upon trust, as, in fact,
we do ; while it is of vital importance to us that
the authority in which we trust shall be one on
which we can unhesitatingly rely.
For, logically, we base our certainty in religion
on our certainty that the Church has authority
from God to teach what truths we must believe,
and what laws of conduct we must follow. And
this certainty we do not derive from the Church's
teaching. She does, indeed, teach her own in-
fallibility and her power to make laws and to en-
force them. But we do not admit her claim until
we have satisfied ourselves on other grounds
that it is well founded. We do not acquiesce
in a man's pretensions to teach and legislate
merely because he puts them forward.
And this leads us to inquire for what reasons,
other than her own assertions, do we acknow-
ledge the authority which we attribute to the
Church. That inquiry will form the subject of
this present course of lectures.
In entering on the inquiry, it will, I think,
make for clearness, if I point out briefly the
4 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
various stages of the argument which I hope
to lay before you, and their enchainment each
with the other.
We have to show, then, that the Catholic
Church, of which we are members, has a Divine
right to prescribe for us a rule of religious belief
and of moral conduct. To do so we must show
that the Catholic Church of our day is the one
true Church of Christ, the possessor, in legiti-
mate succession, of all the rights and preroga-
tives which Christ bestowed on the organized
society that He Himself established. We must
show further that He had it in His power to
grant such an authority, which only God can
give ; and we must consequently show that He
was very God Himself. Or, conversely, we
shall endeavour to satisfy ourselves that we have,
in the Gospel and other writings of the New
Testament, authentic historical documents of
first-rate importance, which prove beyond all
reasonable doubt that Christ was God ; that He
established a visible society, one and imperish-
able, in which He appointed an authority that is
infallible in its religious teaching, and supreme
in government ; and that the Catholic Church,
as we know it to-day, is that society. Clearly,
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 5
it is impossible to exaggerate the vital conse-
quences of such a position. For, if we can
make it good, the Catholic Church in its authori-
tative teaching is in a very real sense the living
voice of God, and in its legislation the very will
of God. We can no more hesitate to accept her
teaching than we should hesitate to accept the
testimony of God, and no more set her laws aside
than we may set aside the laws of God Himself.
We begin, then, to-day with the question
which comes logically first in our inquiry : What
is the historical value of the New Testament
writings, in particular of the Gospels, the Acts of
the Apostles, and the greater Letters of St. Paul ?
For these are the chief sources from which we
derive our knowledge of Jesus Christ, of the
claims which He put forward, the promises He
made, and the work which He accomplished. I
do not, of course, suggest that no other sources
are open to us. Indeed, we could still make
good our case, were every copy of the New
Testament writings to perish. The history ot
the Church, the writings of the Fathers, oral
traditions, would suffice. But, as they stand,
and for the purpose we have in view, they offer
us the simplest, easiest and most convincing
6 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
evidence ; and all other evidences can be only
subsidiary to them. And this, not because they
are inspired writings. They are so, no doubt ;
but we are not concerned with their inspiration
here ; we take them as purely human documents,
of purely human origin ; we shall deal with them
as we should with a publication in the " Rolls
Series," or with any other profane history. If
they are fully trustworthy in the account they
give us of the Founder of our religion, we ask at
present no more from them.
And, as purely human documents, they are
fully trustworthy.
I do not, of course, intend asking your atten-
tion for a technical dissertation on what is called
the "Higher Criticism" — the scientific discus-
sion of the authorship, date, composition, and
authority of the books of the New Testament.
It would take too long, and would, I fear, prove
too uninteresting. It will be enough to set out
shortly the origin and course of the controversy,
and the general results, which in the opinion of
the ablest scholars of every school of thought, we
may regard as definitely secured.
The portions, then, of the New Testament
with which we are concerned here were written
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 7
originally in Greek, if we except the Gospel of St.
Matthew, which was written most probably in
Aramaic, the language of Judea, Galilee, and
Perea, the country in which its scenes are laid.^
Of the original manuscripts, as might have been
expected, no one has come down to us. We are
in the same position as regards the Scriptures
that we hold as regards the Greek and Latin
Classics, and almost the whole literature of anti-
quity : we have only copies of the originals or
copies of copies. Of these copies over 4000 manu-
scripts — some containing all, others portions only
of the New Testament — have been already cata-
logued and partly studied. The multiplication
of copies by writing leads almost of necessity
to differences of text ; the accuracy of our days
was impossible before the art of printing ; and in
early Christian times there was no one to corre-
spond with our careful editors and exact proof
readers. We are not surprised, therefore, to
find variant readings — more than 1 50,000 — in the
earlier sources of the New Testament text. But
very few of them are of any real importance ; 7000
out of 8000 verses are to be considered, accord-
1 The Aramaic text has been lost : we have only the Greek
translation, made we cannot say by whom.
8 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
ing to Westcott and Hort, as definitely estab-
lished ; no serious doubt exists about fifty-nine-
sixtieths of the whole number ; and no question
of any consequence is dependent on any dif-
ference of reading. Indeed, no text in classical
literature can compare in certainty and purity
with the text of the New Testament ; except
Virgil only, which stands on approximately the
same level. And no manuscript copy of any
classical author approaches at all so near to the
date of the original as do our New Testament
manuscripts to the date of theirs. Twenty of the
texts are prior to the eighth century, a dozen are
of the sixth, five of the fifth, and two of the
fourth. Some fragments on papyrus discovered
recently in Egypt belong to the fourth century,
one even to the third.
Besides, we have the ancient versions — sev-
eral of them translations from texts which were
older than our oldest Greek manuscripts. Chief
amongst them is the Itala — a Latin version go-
ing back to the second century, revised by St.
Jerome in the fourth century, and in common
use throughout Western Christendom since the
sixth century under the name of the Vulgate.
Then we have Syriac versions : the Diatessaron
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 9
of Tatian in the second century ; the Sinai
Palimpsest, discovered recently by an English
lady, Mrs. Lewis, perhaps of the second, at
latest the third, century ; the Curetonian Codex,
of the third century also; and the Peshitto or
Syriac Vulgate — a, fifth century revision. In
Egyptian we have the Coptic in Lower Egypt,
dating from the fifth century, and the Theban
or Sahidic, in Upper Egypt, of the third or,
possibly, of the second. And we have also —
though they are of less importance — early trans-
lations into Armenian, Ethiopian, Georgian, and
Gothic.
Finally, if all these texts were lost, it would
still be possible to reconstitute the whole New
Testament from the quotations in the Fathers of
the first centuries.
No wonder that scholars should be at one in
holding that we have in our present-day text of
the New Testament, not only substantially, but
in all-important particulars, the original text, as
it proceeded from its authors.
And now what is its value as history ? We
may have the pure text of a historical work, and
yet its value as history may be of the slightest.
Vital as the question must seem to us, it was
10 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
scarcely discussed at all until the eighteenth
century. Even Reformation controversies led to
no immediate scepticism as to the truthfulness of
the New Testament writings, their authorship,
or date of composition. It was the anti-Christian
spirit of the eighteenth century which gave rise
to the Higher Criticism. The Deists in Eng-
land and Germany — men like Toland, Collins,
Woolston, Tindal, Reimarus, Lessing, and Sem-
ler — with Voltaire and his friends in France,
were bent on destroying Christianity ; and you
cannot reject Christianity if you accept the
New Testament as authentic history. Hence a
strange variety of opinions : — The writers of the
New Testament were conscious impostors, as
was their Master, and planned and carried out
a fraud upon the world. They were enthusiasts,
who, on a slender foundation of facts, built up a
superstructure of marvellous teaching and of
preternatural events. They intended to narrate
events truly, but were themselves deceived in
the interpretation which they put upon them.
They wrote so long after the incidents they
describe, and popular myths had so grown up in
the meantime around the actual occurrences,
that, while honestly recording the beliefs of their
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS ii
day, they have given us only unreliable legends.
Or, finally, the New Testament writings are
merely symbolical ; are intended only to express
the religious experiences of Christ and His
followers — experiences which we must strive to
reproduce within our own souls, and which are
quite independent of the letter of the records in
which we read of them. I need not add to this
list of theories, or particularize the authors and
chief exponents of them. Strauss, Baur, Renan,
Jiilicher, Ritschl, Harnack, Matthew Arnold,
F. D. Maurice, Sabatier, Loisy, and Tyrrell are
names with which we are familiar ; and they,
and those who think with them — whatever their
differences may be in detail — are agreed in deny-
ing that the New Testament is serious history.
And whether it is or is not is the main question
for our consideration to-day.
In dealing with it, the chief points to be
inquired into are : — When were the writings of
the New Testament composed ? Who were the
writers ? Were they honest ? Were they well-
informed about the events which they describe ?
For it is clear that these are the essential con-
ditions of all true history : the historian must
have a knowledge of what he sets down, he must
12 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
set it down as he knows it, and he must have
been a witness, or in contact, mediately or im-
mediately, with contemporaneous witnesses, of
the facts and sayings that make up his narrative.
If the Evangelists, the writer of the Acts of the
Apostles, and St. Paul were contemporaries of
Christ and lived with a generation which had
known Him ; if they were well-informed and
sincere ; and if — as we have seen is the case —
their account of Him has come down to us as
they wrote it, then we have all the material for
judging accurately of Christ's person and char-
acter and plans.
First, then : When were the books of the New
Testament written ? Thirty or forty years ago
it was common among the more advanced non-
Catholic students of the Higher Criticism to as-
sert that the whole of the New Testament, except
four Epistles of St. Paul (Rom., Gal., i and 2
Cor.), were composed in the second century. As
in the case of Darwinism, we Catholics were
looked upon as utterly unscientific, because we
refused to accept the new ideas. Not that records
put into writing a century or more after the events
they chronicle, must necessarily be untrustworthy.
They may, as we all know, be more reliable
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 13
than contemporary accounts. A history may be
written, fifty or a hundred years hence, which
shall be more in accordance with the facts of the
past twelve months than what we have read in the
columns of the daily Press. And, even had the
New Testament books, as we have them, been
written in the second century, we could trust them
fully, if we knew the writers to be honest and
thoroughly informed men. But we Catholics
continued to hold the traditional view, which had
come down to us from the very earliest times,
and which attributed all the New Testament
books, excepting only the Gospel of St. John, to
the second half of the first century. And all that is
best and most authoritative in even non-Catholic
Higher Criticism has now accepted our opinion.
Slowly, step by step, the critics have been forced
back to earlier and earlier dates, until at present
there is little with which we need quarrel in their
conclusions. Thus Professor Harnack, of Berlin,
probably the greatest living authority among non-
Catholics on early Church history, thinks that
Luke may have been written between the years
60 and 70, probably towards the beginning of the
decade^ ; Mark somewhat earlier ; Matthew be-
tween 70 and 86, and John between 80 and 1 10,
14 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
The Acts of the Apostles, he thinks, were written
nearer to 60 than 70 ; the earliest Epistles of St.
Paul between 52 and 58. And Professor Har-
nack cannot be counted among the orthodox or
conservative Protestants ; he would date the New
Testament writings later, as he admits, and as in-
deed he once did, if his historical conscience
would allow him. Catholic critics adopt approxi-
mately the same dates. Comely, indeed, assigns
earlier ones ; he places Matthew between 40 and
50, Mark between 52 and 62, Luke from 59 to
6^, and John from 96 to 98. But Catholics
generally, with many of the more conservative
Protestant scholars, place the three Synoptic
Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) before the
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70,
and the Gospel of St. John at the close of the
first century. The Epistles of St. Paul will lie
between 51, when i and 2 Thessalonians were
written, and 66, the year before St. Paul died.
And the Acts of the Apostles were composed,
most likely, about the years 62-64, ^.t the close
of St. Paul's first Roman imprisonment, to which
allusion is made in the last paragraph of the book.
I do not purpose wearying you with the technical
evidence, internal and external, on which scholars
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 15
base these conclusions. It is within easy reach,
in the later works of Professor Harnack, in the
works of Sanday, Stanton, and Leigh ton- Pullan
among Anglicans ; and in Batiffol, Durand, Jac-
quier, the Catholic Encyclopaedia, Dictionnaire
Apolog^tique de la Foi Catholique, and other
Catholic publications. I shall only emphasize the
fact that what we may call the Apostolic writings
— those amongst them which are universally
recognized as genuine, and which are abundantly
sufficient to inform us fully about Christ's person
and work — were all written between the years 50
and 100 or no, most of them before the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem in the year 70, and, therefore,
well within the lifetime of multitudes who had
themselves looked on Christ and listened to His
teaching, and of larger multitudes who had
known His contemporaries.
Our next question is concerned with the author-
ship of the New Testament books. Who were
the writers ? At first sight it seems a question
which answers itself Are not our Gospels en-
titled '' According to St. Matthew," " According
to St. Mark " ; and the Epistles : " St. Paul the
Apostle to the Romans," " St. Paul the Apostle
to the Corinthians," " The General Epistle of St.
l6 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
James," and so forth? But these titles are far
from deciding the question ; indeed, it has been
argued by some that the very phrase *' according
to St. Matthew " implies a denial of St. Matthew's
authorship, though it also implies that the contents
of the book are according to his teaching. Nor
is the question in itself a very important one.
The historical value of a work is not dependent
on the name of the writer. It matters litde who
wrote the books of the New Testament, if the
authors lived in Christ's time and country, or
were intimate with those who had been witnesses
to His life, and were accurate in their information
and truthful in recording it. But while this is so,
yet we need have no hesitation in accepting the
traditional view that the New Testament books
are really by the writers whose names they bear.
Some would have us except the Epistle to the
Hebrews and the second Epistle of St. Peter ;
but even critically there seems to be no sufficient
grounds for doing so, and there are weighty
arguments in favour of their authenticity. As
regards the other books, the testimony of the early
Church writers appears convincing. Clement of
Rome, in his letter to the Corinthians, about 95
A.D., refers them to **tbe Epistle of the Blessed
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 17
Paul the Apostle. What did he first write to
you in the beginning of the Gospel?" About
130 A.D., Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, mentions
the Gospels written by St. Matthew and St.
Mark; Irenaeus, about 185 a.d., tells us that
" Luke the companion of St. Paul recorded in a
book the Gospel preached by him " ; the Mura-
torian fragment, about 180 a.d., assigns the
** third book of the Gospel " and the ** Acts of all
the Apostles " to St. Luke ; *' the fourth of the
Gospels" and Epistles to St. John ; and almost
all the other books to the same writers to whom
we assign them. Justin Martyr, about 152
A.D., speaks of ** Memoirs . . . which are called
Gospels," and he says ** They were compiled by
Christ's Apostles and those who companied with
them". Marcion of Pontus, a heretic, writing
in Rome, about 144 a.d., while rejecting other
books, retains the Gospel written by St. Luke,
the friend of Paul, and ten of St. Paul's epistles.
Other witnesses, too, might be quoted from the
second century, and later witnesses in abundance.
Now, if we take into account how very scanty is
the Christian literature which has come down to
us from the second century, and the fact that no-
where in any early writer is any other New
1 8 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Testament author mentioned than those we are
familiar with ; and the further fact that our wit-
nesses were born, the earlier ones in Apostolic
times, the later in a generation which had known
the friends of the Apostles, we need not hesitate
to maintain the traditional opinion. And, inci-
dentally, we may note in these evidences from the
first half and middle of the second century, how
widely spread the New Testament writings al-
ready were, how unquestioningly they were ac-
cepted, and therefore how much earlier they must
have been composed and brought to the know-
ledge of the Faithful.
But are they based on accurate information ?
Can we feel sure that the authors were acquainted
with the incidents and teachings which they de-
scribe? If we exclude the supernatural from our
inquiry, critics generally, even the more unortho-
dox, will reply in the affirmative. Accepting the
common theory of authorship, Matthew and John
were themselves witnesses of nearly all that they
relate. Mark was disciple and companion of St.
Peter, and his Gospel is a summary of Peter's
preaching. Luke himself tells us of the inquiries
he had made ; and he makes mention of various
written narratives, which were already in exis-
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 19
tence, when lie undertook his own Gospel, and
on which we may be sure he built. Indeed, all
three Synoptic writers may have utilized pre-
viously existing documents ; and St. John, when
he came to write his Gospel, may have had the
three Synoptists before him, and various other
documents as well. The author of the Acts may
have been himself present at most of the incidents
which he narrates in the first half of the book ;
and he was certainly the companion of St. Paul
during the missions and journeyings which he
narrates in the second. Besides, all the New
Testament writers lived and conversed habitually
with men who had known the Christ, and who
had taken part in the agitation and controversies
to which His life and teaching had given rise.
Further, the statements which they make,
so far as we can control them by other sources
of information, are found to be singularly exact.
They give us a chronology of the principal
events in Christ's life; they set out a mass
of details concerning the conditions, political,
social, administrative, and religious, of Palestine
at that time ; they have much to say about in-
dividuals : Herod, Pilate, Caiaphas, Felix, Porcius
Festus, Agrippa, and others : and wherever we
20 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
are able to test their accuracy by profane his-
torians, such as Tacitus and Josephus, by the
Talmud, by medals and inscriptions, or in any
other way, they stand the test.
Again, the Epistles of St. Paul (except
Hebrews, and those to Titus and to Timothy)
are held by the great majority of every class of
critics to be authentic writings of the Apostle,
composed between the years 48 and 66 — twenty
or thirty years after Christ's death, and conse-
quently within the lifetime of a generation which
had seen and listened to Christ. They confirm
fully and in considerable detail the Gospel state-
ments. There seems, then, to be no reason
whatever for questioning the fullness and ac-
curacy of knowledge which the New Testament
writers possessed.
And were they truthful and honest, in setting
down what they knew? No scholar nowadays
would venture to accuse them of conscious fraud.
The very books themselves impress a reader
with the conviction that the authors were plain,
straightforward men, describing simply what they
had seen or heard, or had learned from others,
on whose evidence they could rely. There is a
naturalness in their narratives which it would be
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 21
difficult to reconcile with an intention to deceive.
Besides, they were writing, if we except St. John,
for contemporaries of the Christ. Many of
their readers had listened to His discourses, and
seen His works, been present at His Passion,
and shared in the occurrences that followed on
His death. Many more had learned the details
from eye-witnesses. The Evangelists and St.
Paul would not have dared, even had they been
willing, to falsify or invent. Further, what had
they to gain by fraud ? Like the soldiers set to
guard the tomb, they might have hoped for pay-
ment, if they gave testimony against Christ. But
what advantage could they look for, after He had
been taken from them, in renewing His claims,
and publishing His doctrines, and announcing to
the world, both Jew and Gentile, the terrible in-
justice which their own people had done to Him?
What could they expect unless what actually be-
fell them : to be "scourged, and charged that they
should not speak at all in the name of Jesus," ^
and, should they persevere, to be treated as St.
Paul describes in his second letter to the Corin-
thians : " Of the Jews five times did I receive
forty stripes save one ; thrice was I beaten with
^ Acts V. 40.
22 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
rods ; once I was stoned ; thrice I suffered ship-
wreck ; a night and a day I was in the depth of
the sea. In journeying often, in perils of water,
in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation,
in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city,
in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in
perils from false brethren. In labour and painful-
ness, in much watchings, in hunger and thirst, in
fastings often, in cold and nakedness " ? ^ If they
were not constrained by a love of truth, it would
have been wiser and of more immediate profit to
be silent, or to falsify their story, as their rulers
would have wished.
But, furthermore, the context of the writings
bears testimony to their truth. In any other
hypothesis, the Evangelists and St. Paul must
have conspired to foist a lie upon the world —
a lie which has succeeded in capturing the
loftiest intelligences and the noblest hearts
which the world has seen since then. The
most wonderful of the Gospel miracles pales
before a wonder such as this. And, had they
conspired, they would have arranged their
methods differently. They would, for instance,
have guarded against discrepancies in their
1 2 Corinthians xi. 24.
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 23
stories. Discrepancies in different accounts of
the same events, if they are concerned with
unimportant details only, are no proof of error
or of falsehood in the main facts stated. But,
when witnesses are planning a fraud, they
endeavour to agree even in the minor circum-
stances. And there are discrepancies between
the narratives in the New Testament — trivial
ones, it is true, but such as witnesses conspiring
to propagate a falsehood would have been care-
ful to avoid. Again, only a love of truth could
have led the Evangelists to paint the Apostles as
they have painted them — poor men, ill-educated,
" foolish, and slow of heart," jealous, cowardly ;
not at all the men, humanly speaking, to found a
great movement, and win enthusiastic adherents
to it. Untruthful men would have pictured a
Jewish Messiah — an earthly prince, and an
earthly kingdom, in which they themselves might
hope for high place. They would even have
given us a different Christ ; He would scarcely
have been poor, an artisan, tempted by the devil,
or compassionate to the Magdalen, or the friend
of sinners, or agonizing in the garden, or power-
less before His tormentors, or desolate upon the
Cross. The Jews had never dreamed of such a
24 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Saviour. Neither had they ever risen to the
moral elevation of much of our Lord's teaching.
The Sermon on the Mount, the Discourse at
the Last Supper, many of the parables, the
moral precepts introduced by the words : ** It
was said to you of old, but I say to you " — what
mere Jew, brought up in the tradition of his
people, could have conceived or formulated them ?
And what, unless the truth of facts, could lead
Jewish writers to picture such a Messiah and
ascribe such teachings to Him ?
But, sincere and truthful as they may have
been, can they not have been themselves de-
ceived? May not myths have grown up,
popular distortions of incidents and discourses,
between the period of Christ's life and the com-
position of the New Testament writings ? This,
indeed, is the theory of the older rationalists, and
was the reason why they endeavoured to throw
back the date of composition into the second
century. That would have given time for the
growth of myths. But the dates which are now
scientifically established exclude the . theory :
Christ died in the year 29 or 30 of our present
era ; the three Synoptic Gospels were written
before the destruction of Jerusalem in the year
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 25
70 ; the Epistles of St. Paul were written be-
tween the year 5 1 and 64 or 6^^ when he died ;
the Acts of the Apostles were written in 62 or
64, at the close of St. Paul's first imprisonment
in Rome. The earlier writings date from some
fifteen or twenty years after Christ's death ; the
later — of the same character as the earlier — are
only some ten or fifteen years more distant.
What widespread persistent myths can grow up
in fifteen years, or even in thirty or thirty-five,
especially in connexion with well-known person-
ages and public occurrences, and easily ascer-
tained facts, on which the attention of many
thousands has been riveted ? The myth theory
must stand or fall with the late, second century,
composition of the New Testament writings.
We may, then, on all these grounds, which
cumulatively appear convincing, accept the New
Testament writers as entirely sincere and truth-
ful.
To resume : We have, in the Gospels, the
Acts, and the Epistles of St. Paul, what purports
to be a life of Christ and a record of His works
and teachings. These books were written by
men who lived in Christ's own day, who were
His countrymen, who wrote for a generation
26 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
that was born before Christ died, many of whom
had themselves been witnesses of the events
described. The writers had abundant means of
verifying all the statements which they made ;
they had had personal experience of some ; they
had contemporary oral evidence and written tes-
timony for others. They had every motive to
be truthful ; and all the evidence, external and
internal, proves convincingly that they were.
We may trust, then, with absolute certainty in
what they tell us about Christ and about the
Society or Church which He planned and
founded. If they do not give us authentic his-
tory on these points we can scarcely hope for any
authentic history whatsoever.
And the fate of the New Testament apocry-
phal writings confirms our certainty. For there
were other Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, and
Epistles, in the early Church. But you have
only to compare them cursorily with the books
of which we have been speaking to see what a
difference separates the two literatures, and how
reliable the judgment of the early Christians was,
when they rejected the apocryphal and approved
of our canonical writings.
We shall assume then, in our further inquiries,
THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS 27
the substantial historical accuracy of the Gospels,
the Acts of the Apostles, and the greater Epistles
of St. Paul. We may, indeed, appeal on oc-
casion to other historical documents of un-
questioned authority ; but our chief and most
trustworthy sources of information will be those
books of the New Testament to which we have
referred.
And, basing our investigation on those books,
we shall next inquire into the personality and
authority of Christ our Lord.
LECTURE II.
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.
In the previous Lecture we inquired into the
historical value of those books of the New Testa-
ment — the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and
the greater Epistles of St. Paul — from which our
knowledge of Christ, His life, His character, His
teaching, and His work, is chiefly derived. We
purpose studying the foundation and constitu-
tion of the society which He established. It is of
vital importance, therefore, that we should know
the authority which He had to found it, the
power He had to communicate to it the preroga-
tives which it claims ; and we can determine
this most easily from the records which the New
Testament contains. If the New Testament
writers may be fully relied upon, we have abun-
dant data for forming a clear, decisive judgment
on the person and projects of Christ ; and we can
then pass on to the chief object of our inveistiga-
2&
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 29
tion — the constitution which He bestowed upon
His Church.
And we have seen that the New Testament
records are authentic history. They were
written by men who lived in the days of Christ,
some of them His intimate friends, all of them
associated closely with His relatives and com-
panions, men, therefore, who could not be ignor-
ant or ill-informed of the events and discourses
which they describe. The simple style of their
narratives, the utter absence of any apparent wish
to exaggerate or make capital out of the incidents
narrated, the lack of any motive for deceiving
their readers, give us confidence in their truth-
fulness. And this confidence is confirmed by all
the evidence we can bring to bear from other
sources — by the fact that they wrote so soon
after the events described (all of them, except one,
within from fifteen to forty years after the oc-
currences), and consequently before the popular
recollection had become distorted or obscured ;
and by the further fact that they would not dare,
even though they had been willing, to misrepre-
sent what was within the personal knowledge of
so many of those for whom they wrote. In a
word, they were men who could not but know
30 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
the facts they were writing about ; and there is
no reason whatever to doubt their good faith and
honesty. We may, therefore, accept their writ-
ings — the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and
the greater Epistles of St. Paul — as historical
documents of first-class importance and author-
ity, and proceed to study in them the personality
of Christ.
" Whom do men say that I am ? " Christ
asked of the Apostles ; and it is the same ques-
tion we are to discuss to-day : Whom do the
New Testament writings prove Christ to have
been?
That He was a man, in all essentials like other
men, is beyond controversy. There were, in-
deed, heretics, in the early Church, who held
that He was man in appearance only ; as there
were others who maintained that His human
nature was only partially complete — that Divinity
assumed the functions of mind or soul or will ;
and as there are extreme rationalists in our own
time, who deny the historic existence of the Christ
altogether. But such heretics were always re-
latively few ; and such extreme rationalists are
rare. If anything is clear from New Testament
history, it is that there was a man, Christ, born
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 31
of a human mothef' into the world of Palestine
some nineteen hundred years ago ; that He lived
among His fellows, a man like themselves, with
human feelings, thoughts and wishes ; that He
suffered, and shrank from suffering ; that He
loved, and was gladdened by others' love ; that
He was put to death, and died upon across. No
fact in all history, profane or sacred, is more cer-
tain than the existence and the reality of the
human nature of Jesus Christ.
But, was He more than man ? I do not mean
in the sense that He had a Divine mission, a
God-given message to communicate, a God-given
authority to make laws and to enforce them.
He might be a mere man, and yet have both ;
as Moses and others of the Prophets had. But
was He Himself Divine ? Had He the very
nature of God ? Were His words the words of
God? Are His promises the promises of God?
Is His power the omnipotence of God ?
I shall not detain you with any attempt to de-
fine exactly the concept of Godhead, as we attri-
bute it to Christ. You may meet with men who
deny God's existence, with some again who pro-
fess their inability to form a definite opinion on the
point, and with others who hesitate to rest their
32 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
belief in it on the generally accepted proofs. But
they are all at one with orthodox believers as
to what the idea of God involves. Their denials,
their uncertainties, their controversies themselves
are all concerned with the same infinitely perfect
Being, whom Christians love and worship. And
we have no need to determine further for the
present what is signified by the concept and name
of God.
Assuming, then, the general idea which is
present to the minds of all educated persons,
when they speak of God, we proceed to inquire
— and it is the question I ask you to consider
with me to-day — do the writings of the New
Testament afford us convincing proof that Christ
was God ? The answer must be affirmative.
And, first, the writers of the New Testament
themselves and their contemporaries were firm
believers in the Divinity of Christ. St. John's
Gospel opens with a clear statement of his own
belief: ** In the beginning was the Word . . .
and the Word was God . . . and the Word was
made Flesh ".^ In the last chapter but one he
gives the confession of St. Thomas : '' My Lord
and my God ".^ St. Paul addresses the elders of
iSt. John I. I. 2 jjjI^^^ XX. 28.
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 33
the Church of Ephesus, and commends to them
" the Church of God, which He hath purchased
with His own blood ".^ He tell the Colossians
that in Christ " dwelleth all the fulness of the God-
head bodily ".^ He reminds the Romans of the
glory of Israel, '* of whom is Christ according to
the flesh, who is over all things, God* blessed for
ever. Amen." ^ But I shall not multiply instances.
Christ's Divinity, it may be said, is a matter of
inference, and the New Testament writers, how-
ever admirable as witnesses to facts, may have
been honestly mistaken in the inferences which
they drew from them.
So I shall ask you to consider two arguments,
based upon the New Testament writings, both
conclusive, I think, of the Divinity of Christ : the
second of them forming the very foundation of
the Apostolic preaching. They are, first, the
character of Christ and the claims which He
Himself put forward ; and, secondly, the fact of
His Resurrection.
I do not, of course, call in question the value
of other arguments as well. I know, for instance,
that His Divine mission and His Divinity itself
can be proved by the prophecies of the Old Tes-
1 Acts XX. ?8, 2 ji,ifi^ I, g 3 j^i^ ^ jx. j^
3
34 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
tament and their fulfilment in His person : He
frequently appeals to them Himself. I know
they can be proved by the many miracles He
wrought : *' The works that I do in My Father's
name, these bear witness to Me. . . . Though
you will not believe Me, believe the works " ; -^
** Go and relate to John what you have heard
and seen : the blind see, the lame walk, the
lepers are cleansed, the dead rise again ".^ I am
sure they can be proved by the hold which His
teaching has taken upon the world, and the mar-
vellous change which Christianity has wrought
in human ideals, and in moral theory and prac-
tice. What but the truth of His Divinity could
induce the world to accept doctrines so startling
and so improbable ; which make such grave de-
mands on mind and heart and external action ;
which rouse such constant, often fierce, opposition
from prejudice and passion and pride? Then,
too, I remember that the Apostolic Church con-
fessed Him to be God. They did not merely
reverence Him as a saint ; they did not only
admire Him as a model. They prayed to Him
as being God Himself "And they stoned
Stephen," the Acts of the Apostles tell us of the
1 John X. 25. 2 yisLtt. xi. 5.
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 35
first martyr, " invoking and saying : Lord Jesus,
receive my spirit. . . . Lord, lay not this sin to
their charge."^ And the same Acts, describing
the miracle upon the lame man at the gate of the
temple, which is called Beautiful, quote St. Peter's
words : " Silver and gold have I none ; but what
I have I give thee. In the name of Jesus Christ
of Nazareth, arise and walk."^ And St. Paul's
Epistles abound with invocations of Christ which
are meaningless, unless he believed Christ was
God : ** Peace be to the brethren and charity
with faith from God the Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ";^ ** Grace be to you and peace
from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus
Christ " ; * ** The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you all ".^ And these instances might
be multiplied indefinitely. But there is no need ;
for nothing is plainer, through the pages of the
New Testament, than that the Apostles them-
selves and their first converts thought of Christ
as God, so soon as He was taken from them.
They turned to Him in prayerful adoration ;
belief in Him, hope in Him, love of Him, be-
came the conditions of their salvation. I would
1 Acts VII. 58. '^ Ibid., III. 6. ^Ephes. vi. 23.
*Gal. I. 3 et passim. ^ 2 Cor. xiii. 13.
3*
36 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
not, of course, deny, I would not minimize in the
least, the efficacy of such arguments. But I
would submit for your consideration the two to
which I have already referred, as simpler in them-
selves, and, if the New Testament writings be
truthful records, as entirely unanswerable.
First, then, Christ Himself claims persistently
and in the clearest manner to be God. There-
fore I conclude He was God. I do not usually
admit a man's claim merely because he puts it
forward ; but I do in the case of Christ.
To appreciate the argument rightly we must
consider the human character of Christ. The
world, whatever its religious opinions, is agreed
that, if the Gospel story be a true one, Christ
was an absolutely perfect man. There is no
other human character in all authentic history,
there is no creation of poet or philosopher, which
we should think for a moment of comparing with
Him. We feel, indeed, that He must have lived
and taught and acted as the Evangelists describe
Him ; that their story must.be true ; they could
never have invented it. He stands apart from
all who went before, and have followed after,
not more in arresting the attention of mankind,
and challenging their judgment of Him, than in
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 37
the singular unanimity with which He has been
proclaimed the highest type and expression of
our humanity. ** Whom do men say that I, the
Son of Man, am ? " ^ He asks at Cesarea Philippi ;
and the answer of mankind, of orthodox, of
heretic, and of infidel alike, has only grown in
distinctness and in emphasis through the cen-
turies since then. As they realize more fully
how much the world owes Him, they reply more
clearly : " If the Christ of the Gospel be as He
is depicted there, then He is the noblest product
of our race ". Nor, indeed, can we examine even
cursorily the portrait of Him in the Gospels
without seeing how entirely free from exaggera-
tion the answer is. I do not now refer to the
sublimity of His religious doctrine, of His teach-
ing about God, about God's dealings with our-
selves, about our present state and future destiny ;
nor the lofty purity of His moral law — the most
perfect measure of ethical excellence ever pre-
sented to mankind. I am concerned only with
the fact that He was Himself the most faultless
embodiment of that highest of standards which
the world has ever seen. It must come as a
shock to our feelings of reverence and love for
^ Mark vni. 27.
38 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Christ to hear Him spoken of as though He
were only man. You will bear with me if I do
so for the moment : it is only to demonstrate the
more convincingly that He was God as well.
As man, then, He gives proof of rare intellectual
powers : in H is knowledge of all that was best
in Jewish learning ; in the sublimity and har-
mony of His own religious and moral views ; in
the power and aptness of His presentation of
them ; and in the ease and thoroughness with
which He treated the cavillings and questionings
of enemies and of friends. To these rare intel-
lectual gifts He joined a singular self-restraint
and moderation. Neither in His manner of liv-
ing, nor in His public speech, nor in His deliber-
ately avowed aims, nor in His more hurried
decisions at critical moments of His life, is there
any trace of a fanatical spirit, of any interference
by enthusiasm and passion with calm judgment
and prudent action. And the higher virtues are
still more prominent : His entire submission
to and love of God the Father, His humility,
His unselfishness. His transparent sincerity and
truthfulness — to particularize those only which
are most relevant to our present purpose. I need
not stay to illustrate these characteristics from
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 39
the Gospels : they are witnessed to by almost
every page. I need not quote for you the testi-
mony of many of the keenest and most impartial
judges of human excellence since Christ's time :
'* It was reserved for Christianity," says Mr.
Lecky, in his " History of European Morals,"
and he may be taken to speak for all educated
and thoughtful men, *' it was reserved for Chris-
tianity to present to the world an ideal character,
which through all the changes of eighteen cen-
turies has inspired the hearts of men with an
impassioned love ; has shown itself capable of
acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and
conditions ; has been not only the highest pat-
tern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its
practice, and has exercised so deep an influence
that it may be truly said that the simple record
of three short years of active life has done more
to regenerate and to soften mankind, than all
the disquisitions of philosophers, and all the ex-
hortations of moralists ".
In Christ, therefore, we have, admittedly, a
man of rare intelligence, of quite unusual mod-
eration and strength of character, singularly reli-
gious-minded, wise, prudent, unassuming, truthful,
40 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
endowed with a pre-eminence of moral beauty,
which is not merely beyond comparison, but is
absolutely without fault. And this Man, some-
times directly, sometimes indirectly, but always
emphatically and persistently, proclaims Him-
self more than man ; claims, indeed, to be very
God Himself; even lays down His life, rather
than withdraw the claim. What are we to think
of Him, if the claim be not true ?
And that Christ did put forward the claim, not
covertly, not occasionally, but openly, plainly,
and continuously, admits of no doubt whatsoever.
Let me direct your attention to the following
considerations, based entirely upon the Gospel
narratives : —
As men grow in holiness or moral worth, as
they conceive higher and more perfect rules of
conduct, as they impress these loftier standards
with an increasing urgency upon the minds of
others, so do they acquire a more profound con-
sciousness of their own weakness, their own un-
worthiness, their own sin ; so do they experience
a growing need to confess in some way their
failure to realize the perfect ideals which they
have conceived and which they preach. Now,
there can be no question about the perfection
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 41
of the moral standard which Christ professed
and taught. Read His Sermon on the Mount
and the exhortation : ** Be you, therefore, perfect,
as your Heavenly Father is perfect ".^ And yet
there is no trace of consciousness that He Himself
fell short of the perfection which He preached.
There is no admission of any sin, however venial,
nor even of liability to sin. He discourses much
on sin and sinfulness, on the need of repentance
for sins committed, on the danger of sinning to
which our nature is exposed. But there is no
slightest reference to any bearing of such doc-
trines upon Himself. Nay, He positively asserts
His sinlessness : '* I do always the things that
please Him that sent Me ".'^ He goes further,
even, and challenges His enemies to bring any
proof of sin against Him. " Which of you shall
convince Me of sin ? " ^ Surely there is in this
a claim to superhuman holiness ?
And hence He does what no other teacher has
ever ventured to do in the world's history : He
openly and persistently preaches Himself. He is
not content to preach abstract truths, however
beautiful and sublime ; He repeatedly and earn-
estly declares Himself to be their visible embodi-
^ Matt. V. 48. 2 JqJijj VIII. 29. 3 jijI^^ ^5^
42 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
ment. Sometimes in metaphor, sometimes in
plain and simple language, He bids men seek
salvation in and through Himself. '' I am the
light of the world," ^ He tells them ; *' he that
followeth Me walketh not in darkness, but shall
have the light of life." ** I am the way, the
truth, and the life," He says to them again,
** no man cometh to the Father but by Me." ^
And on another occasion : " I am the living
bread, which came down from Heaven ; if any
man eat of this bread, he shall have life for
ever ".^ And again : ** I am the door ; by Me
if any enter in, he shall be saved ".^ And : '' I
am the vine, you the branches ... if any one
abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth and shall
wither, and they shall gather him up and cast
him into the fire ".^ And once again : '* I am
the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth
in Me, although he be dead shall live ".^ What
merely human teacher has ever dared to preach
in such a fashion ?
Furthermore, and in the same spirit, He treats
men as belonging to Him, as bound unhesitat-
ingly to obey His will. ** Come ye after Me,"
^ John VIII. 12. "^ Ibid.^ xiv. 6. ^ Ibid., vi. 41.
* Ibid.^ X. 9. 5 Ibid., xv. 5. « /^^-^^ xi. 25.
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 43
he says to Peter and Andrew, " and they im-
mediately, leaving their nets, followed Him."^
To another : " Follow Me . . . and let the dead
bury their dead ".^ To Levi, sitting at the receipt
of customs : " Follow Me ; and, leaving all things,
he rose up and followed Him"/ To the rich
young man : " Go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and
give to the poor . . . and come, follow Me ".^
His call to discipleship was a command rather
than an invitation, and a command which was to
be fulfilled at whatever cost of comfort and peace
and natural affection : *' Think ye that I have
come to give peace on earth ? I tell ye no, but
separation " ; ^ ** He that taketh not up his cross,
and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me " ;* " If
any man comes to Me, and hates not father and
mother and wife and children and brethren and
sisters, he cannot be My disciple "J Are such
claims of imperative personal allegiance tolerable,
are they intelligible even, if He believed Himself
to be only man ?
Hence He accepts, without protest, simply as
His due, the form of worship offered to God
1 Mark I. 17. 2 L^ke ix. 59. ^ Ibid.,w. 27.
^ Ibid., XVIII. 22. ^ Ibid., xii. 51. ^ Matt. x. 38.
^ Luke XIV. 26.
44 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
alone. The woman of Canaan whose daughter
was " grievously troubled by a devil . . . came
and adored Him, saying : Lord, help me ".^
The mad youth's father ** came, falling down on
his knees before Him, saying : Lord have pity
on my son ".^ When He had calmed the storm,
** they that were in the boat came and wor-
shipped Him, saying : Of a truth Thou art the
Son of God".^ Peter, after the miraculous
draught of fishes, *' fell down at Jesus' knees, say-
ing : Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
Lord ",* The man ** blind from his birth," to
whom He says : *' Dost thou believe in the Son
of God ? " answers : *' I believe. Lord. And,
falling down, he adored Him." ^ I quote only a
few out of many similar passages. Now, had
He believed Himself mere man, a messenger,
indeed, from God, but still a merely human one,
would He have accepted Divine homage ? Even
Barnabas and Paul, at Lystra, in like circum-
stances, ** rending their clothes, leaped out among
the people crying, and saying : Ye men, why do
you these things ? We also are mortals, men
like unto you." ^
1 Matt. XV. 25. 2 iifid,^ XVII. 14. 2 Ibid.^ xiv. 33.
* Luke V. 8. ^ John ix. 35. ^ Acts xiv. 14.
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 45
Again, He proclaims His independent power to
forgive sin : " Be of good heart, son," He says
to the man sick of the palsy, " thy sins are for-
given thee " ; and, when the Scribes repudiate
the implied claim : ** He blasphemeth ; who can
forgive sins but God alone ? " He does not dis-
approve the inference, but goes on to reassert and
emphasize the claim : " That you may know that
the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive
sin, I say to thee. Arise, take up thy bed and go
into thy house ; and immediately he arose and
went his way, in the sight of all "} In almost
similar language Headdresses a sinful woman in
the house of Simon the Pharisee : ** Thy sins
are forgiven ; go in peace " ; so that, as the
Evangelist adds : ** They that sat at meat with
Him began to say within themselves : Who is
this that forgives sins also ? " ^ And, more as-
tounding still. He asserts His right to communi-
cate to others the power of forgiving which He
exercised Himself : " Amen, I say to you, what-
ever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in
heaven " ; ' " Receive ye the Holy Ghost : whose
sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them
» i
^Matt. IX. 2. ^ Luke VII. 49. 'Matt, xviii. 18,
*John XX. 23.
46 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
More startling even in One Who should hold
Himself to be only man, He claims to sit in judg-
ment on all mankind : '' The Father , . . hath
given all judgment to the Son, that all men may-
honour the Son as they honour the Father," ^
and *' The Son of Man shall come in His majesty
and all the Angels with Him ; and all the na-
tions shall be gathered together before Him ; and
He shall separate them one from another ".^ Con-
sider the nature of the office which He here as-
sumes : that He will look out over the countless
millions who have ever lived on earth, will search
into the innermost recesses of every individual
soul, and appraise every thought and word and
act of each ; that He will determine at once, and
with unerring justice, their eternal fate, and pro-
ceed to pass sentence irrevocably. Can we con-
ceive of any finite intelligence that shall be equal
to the task ?
But these claims, after all, it may be said, are
indirect. Are they sufficient to convince us that
Christ claimed to be Divine ? In answer I would
only ask you to consider the case of a religious
teacher in our own day who should put forward
such pretensions. Picture to yourself one who
1 John V. 22. 2 Matt. xxv. 31.
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 47
should discourse much on the weakness of our
human nature, its tendency to sin, its inevitable
sinfulness ; yet seem utterly unconscious that his
teaching has the slightest bearing on himself.
Let him condemn sin and sinners openly and
sternly, so that he arouses the enmity of many
adversaries, keen-sighted and influential ; and let
him challenge them before the world to prove sin
against him. Let him add to this the declaration
that he does always and in all things God's will.
Imagine, further, that he proposes himself to the
people as an object of religious faith and love ;
as the one means by which spiritual life here and
eternal happiness hereafter are attainable. He
accepts, as of course, the reverence and adoration
which are offered to him as to one who is very
God himself. He proclaims his right — and
acts on it — to call men, in despite of family ties
and all earthly interests, when and how he thinks
fitting, and to bind them to his service, what-
ever cost it may entail. And suppose him to
declare that by his own power he can forgive
all sin, and can commission others to forgive it ;
that one day he will even come to judge the
universe, and apportion to every man his place
throughout Eternity ; what opinion should we
48 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
form of his claims ? I do not ask : Should we
hold him to be a fool, or should we hold him to be
a knave ? But should we imagine for a moment
that he was claiming only human powers ?
Should we not understand at once that, knave or
madman, he claimed to be Divine ?
And Christ, in His statements about Himself,
goes far beyond such indirect, though all-suffi-
cient, declarations. He tells the Jews that He
existed prior to His human life on earth : ** I
came down from heaven, not to do My own
will, but the will of Him that sent Me ".^ And,
again : ** I am the living bread that came down
from heaven".^ And, a little later, when the
disciples murmur at His Eucharistic teaching,
and find it ** hard to bear," He confirms the
doctrine, and strengthens the incredulous, by the
prophetic question : " What, then, if you shall
see the Son of Man ascend up where He was
before? "^ ** I came forth from the Father," He
says to them, in His last discourse, "and am
come into the world : again I leave the world
and I go unto the Father."* And, most clearly
perhaps of all, when He tells them in the
1 John VI. 38. 2 jf^i^^ ^ J 3 j^i^^ 5^^
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 49
Temple : " Your father, Abraham, rejoiced that
he might see My day ; he saw it, and was glad " ; ^
and then, in answer to their objection that Abra-
ham was long since dead, while He Himself was
still a young man. He declares emphatically :
"Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham
was made, I am ". He claims pre-existence, and
not even pre-existence only, but unending, un-
beginning, changeless being. For He is One
with the Father — One in Divine power : ** My
sheep hear My voice," He says to the Jews in
the porch of Solomon, "... and no man shall
pluck them out of My hand. My Father, Who
hath given them unto Me, is greater than all ;
and no man can snatch them out of My Father's
hand. I and the Father are one." ^ And " the
Jews," the Evangelist adds, " took up stones to
stone Him . . . because that Thou, being man,
maketh Thyself God ". He is One in operation
with the Father : " My Father worketh until
now, and I work. . . . Amen, amen, I say unto
you . . . what things soever the Father doth,
these the Son also doth in like manner."^
"Therefore," the Evangelist continues, "the
Jews sought the more to kill Him, because . . .
^ John VIII. 56. ^ Ibid., x. 27. * Ibid., v. 17.
4
50 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
He said that God was His own Father, making
Himself equal with God." He is One also
in identity of uncreated nature : " Lord, show
us the Father," Philip says to Him, and He
answers : ** So long a time have I been with
you, and have you not known Me? Philip,
he that seeth Me seeth the Father also." ^ And
then, addressing all the Apostles : ** If anyone
love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father
will love him ; and We will come to him, and
make Our abode with him ".
More clearly still, in the supreme moments of
His earthly life, when He stands before the
Sanhedrim, and His enemies are seeking for a
pretext to condemn Him, does He profess Him-
self the Son of God, identical in nature with Him ;
and He is condemned and dies, because He will
not forgo the claim. ** And the High Priest said
to Him," St. Matthew writes, '* I adjure Thee by
the living God, that Thou tell us if Thou be
Christ, the Son of God." Jesus saith to him :
" Thou hast said it ".^ Or, as St. Mark describes
the scene : ** The High Priest asked Him, and
said to Him : Art Thou the Christ, the Son of
the Blessed God ? And Jesus said to him : I
1 John XIV. 9. 2 Matt. xxvi. 63.
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 51
am." ^ Now, you will observe that there is no
question here of ethical or moral sonship, such as
Jew and Christian alike attribute to God s faith-
ful servants and saints. It was no crime in a Jew
to call himself '* Son of the Blessed God," by ser-
vice, grace, adoption. Every true Israelite would
glory in such a sonship. And Caiaphas sought
to entangle Jesus in the confession of a crime.
It was natural sonship, involving identity of
Divine nature, about which Caiaphas questioned
Him ; for that claim was a legal crime, and
worthy of death, in Jewish law. And so, when
Christ's answer had been given, "the High
Priest rent his garments, saying : He hath blas-
phemed ; what further need have we of witnesses ?
Behold, now you have heard the blasphemy ;
what think you ? But they answering said : He
is guilty of death." They did not think it blas-
phemy that He should call Himself Son of God,
because of some mere ethical relationship. They
judged it blasphemy, and condemned Him to a
blasphemer's death, because they knew He
claimed a literal Divinity. "We have a law,"
they said, when they carried Him before Pilate,
"and, according to the law, He ought to die, be-
^Mark xiv. 61.
A ♦
52 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
cause He made Himself the Son of God." ^ Is it
not clear, then, that, in these last and most solemn
moments of His mortal life, Christ claimed, and
was understood to claim, and was condemned to
death because He claimed, to be literally and
truly God ?
Here, then, again, we have most convincing
proof of what we may reverently call the Divine
self-assertiveness of Christ. He declares in ex-
press and unambiguous terms that He existed
prior to this earthly life ; that He has come down
from Heaven, and will return whither He has
come ; that He and the Father are one in power,
operation, nature ; that they come into, and dwell
together in, the souls of those who love Him ;
that He Himself is very God, and will die rather
than abate His claim. Impossible to deny or to
explain away the significance of this language of
Christ. Directly and indirectly, literally and by
metaphor, by implication and expressly, persist-
ently, almost continuously. He claims to be God
Himself.
And if the claim be false, what is He ? We
must face the issue, though the Christian soul will
shudder at the thought. We may face it, since
1 John XIX. 7.
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 53
the whole object of these considerations is to
prove that the claim is true. If Christ be not
God, then He is an impostor ; and, if an im-
postor, then either knave or fool. There is no
escape from the dilemma : God or an impostor ;
and an impostor the maddest or the most criminal
whom the world has ever seen. And, since our
own whole being, and the conscience of civilized
mankind revolt from this latter judgment, a judg-
ment on the human character of Christ ; since
the Gospel story is utterly irreconcilable with a
theory of madness or of fraud ; since the world,
through all these centuries, has ever looked on
Christ as the most perfect pattern of our race ;
and, since wisdom and moderation and unselfish-
ness and truth shine out from every page of the
records of His life, we have no alternative but to
admit the claim, and to confess that Christ is
very God.
And the second of our arguments, with which
we may deal much more briefly, confirms this
conclusion to which we have been led ; while,
even by itself, it will probably appear convincing.
On several occasions during Christ's public life
His countrymen appealed to Him for miraculous
proof of the claim He put forward for Himself
54 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
and for His teaching : " Then some of the
Scribes and Pharisees answered Him, saying :
Master, we would see a sign from Thee ".
And again, *' There came to Him the Scribes
and Sadducees tempting ; and they asked Him
to show them a sign from heaven".^ And,
further, " They said to Him : What sign, there-
fore, dost Thou show, that we may see, and may
believe Thee ? What dost Thou work ? " ^
And when He had driven forth the money-
changers from the Temple : ** The Jews, there-
fore, answered and said to Him : What sign
dost Thou show unto us, seeing Thou dost these
things "/ Now, it would seem to have been a
fixed principle, in the exercise of Christ's powers,
that He would work no wonder for purposes of
self-defence or self-exaltation. We are not sur-
prised, therefore, that He refused compliance
with the request, all the more because He knew
and had declared how vain such proofs would be.
**Woe to thee, Corozain, woe to thee, Beth-
saida," He says of two of the cities in which His
miracles of mercy had taken place, ** for if in Tyre
and Sidon had been wrought the mighty works
^ Matt. XII. 38. ' Ibid.^ xvi. i. ^ John xi. 30.
^Ibid,, II. 18.
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 55
that have been wrought in you, they would have
done penance long ago, sitting in sackcloth and
in ashes. "^ But He bade them look forward to
a wonder which was to come, and which, when
it came, would justify all His claims and teaching.
At first He speaks obscurely : "Jesus answered,
and said to them — Destroy this temple, and in
three days I will raise it up ". ^ Later He speaks
more clearly, as for instance : ** An evil and
adulterous generation seeketh after a sign ; and
a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas
the Prophet".^ To Peter, James, and John, as
they came down from the Mountain of the Trans-
figuration, He says : " Tell the vision to no man,
till the Son of Man be risen from the dead ".*
And, most clearly of all, to His disciples, before
His triumphal entry into Jerusalem : " Behold,
we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man
shall be betrayed to the Chief Priests and the
Scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death,
and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to be
mocked, and scourged, and crucified ; and the
third day He shall rise again ".^ He Himself,
therefore, appoints His Resurrection, on the third
1 Matt. XI. 21. 2 John 11. 19. ^ Matt. xn. 39.
* Ibid.^ XVII. 9. ^Ibid., xx. 18.
56 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
day after death, as the test by which His claims
are to stand or fall. And they stand unshaken ;
for, on the third day, He did rise from the dead.
I am not concerned here to prove the evi-
dential value of miracles, or to show that in
Christ's Resurrection from the dead, if He did
rise, we have a genuine and astounding miracle.
I shall assume both propositions. No serious
thinker, indeed, of any school of thought disputes
either in our day ; and not even one will be found
among the disciples of the Higher Criticism to
admit the reality of the Resurrection of Christ and
to deny that admission of His Divinity follows
necessarily upon it. Nor is there any need to
argue that miracles are possible ; if Christ be
truly risen from the dead there is an end of argu-
ment upon the abstract question. The only con-
troversy which is of present interest to us is
concerned with the single fact : Was Christ's
promise and prophecy fulfilled in truth ? Did
He rise again after death ? Rationalistic critics
deny the fact ; Christians universally affirm it.
That the New Testament writings assert it in
the most unmistakable language is beyond all
doubt. Each one of the Gospels gives a detailed
account of its occurrence. It becomes the very
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 57
foundation of St. Peter's and St. Paul's preaching,
as described in the Acts of the Apostles. The
latter, indeed, in his first Epistle to the Corin-
thians makes the whole structure of Christianity-
depend on the literal fulfilment of Christ's prom-
ise. ** If Christ be not risen again," he tells
them, '* then is our preaching vain and your faith
is also vain. Yea, and we are found false wit-
nesses of God, because we have given testimony
against God, that He hath raised up Christ." ^
It is clear that the Apostles believed Christ was
risen, that they themselves had seen Him fre-
quently, conversed with Him, touched Him,
eaten and drunk with Him, Mary and other wo-
men, who sought H is body in the garden, believed
that they had met Him, spoken with Him, wor-
shipped Him. The disciples, on the way to
Emmaus, walked with Him, listened to His dis-
course, recognized Him in the breaking of bread.
" Then He was seen by more than 500 brethren
at once, of whom many remain until this present
and some are fallen asleep,"^ as St. Paul writes
to the Corinthians. ''And, last of all. He was
seen also by me," St. Paul says, ** as by one born
out of due time." ^
ii Cor. XV. 14. 2 Ibid,, 6. 3 7^/^,^ g.
58 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Now assuming, what we have already proved,
the truthfulness of the New Testament writers
and the early date of their writings, what escape
is there from the conclusion that Christ rose
physically, in the body which had died and been
buried, from the dead ? Among rationalistic
theories there are only two which I need mention,
the only ones to which, even at first sight, any
semblance of probability could attach : the vision
theory, in which desire and expectation lead up
to imaginary appearances ; and the swoon theory,
in which Christ is supposed to have fainted upon
the Cross, not really to have died at all. But
neither theory will bear serious examination.
Not the former ; for the disciples, assuredly, had
no hope of a resurrection ; they even refused at
first to believe it had occurred. So little did they
expect to see the Christ that repeatedly they
failed to recognize Him. Sane men do not talk
with visions, walk with them, eat with them,
handle them. Two, a dozen, five hundred do
not see the same imaginary vision at the same
time. Nor does a vision roll away a great stone
from the entrance to a tomb, or remove a dead
body, and leave the tomb empty. Not the latter
or swoon theory ; for every one of those con-
THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST 59
cerned in Christ's Passion was persuaded of His
death — the Centurion, the soldiers, Pilate, His
enemies and His friends. So too were Joseph
and Nicodemus, who embalmed the body, and
the Jews, who set a guard over it. And, if we
suppose Christ to have swooned upon the Cross,
to have been laid unconscious in the tomb, are
we to believe that, on coming to, unaided. He
rolled away the great stone, and escaped the
soldier guard, and wandered about the garden of
the sepulchre ? Then, in the early afternoon of
the same day, this Man, extenuated by the
agony, the scourging, the way of the Cross, with
pierced hands and feet and side, after long hours
of torture on the uplifted wood, journeys on foot
to Emmaus and back to Jerusalem again ? And
He enters into the supper-room through closed
doors ; and He appears and disappears at will ;
and after forty days He ascends into Heaven !
And He is an impostor all the while, Who de-
ceives His disciples, and sends them forth, or
permits them go forth, to preach a lie, as the
foundation of a religion of holiness.
We may, therefore, indeed we are compelled
to, accept Christ's Resurrection as a fact of
history. And if Christ be risen from the dead,
6o THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
then Christ is God, and the argument we based
upon His character and claims finds its comple-
ment and corroboration in the ** sign " which He
Himself appointed.
Christ, then, is God : and His history proves
to us that God exists — whatever may be the value
of philosophic demonstrations. Christ is God ;
and, so, all His teachings and promises and insti-
tutions are Divine. One of these Divine institu-
tions we shall next proceed to study : the
organized Society or Church which He estab-
lished.
LECTURE III.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH.
In our last Lecture, we sought to prove the Di-
vinity of Christ, from the claims which He Him-
self put forward and from His Resurrection —
the Divine vindication of Himself and of His
work. We collected from the New Testament
writings, not from isolated passages which might
be made the subject of controversy, but from the
whole trend and context of the Gospels, con-
vincing evidence that He claimed deliberately
and persistently, throughout the course of His
three years' public ministry, to be more than man.
And then we argued that a man of His intel-
lectual powers and moral qualities, not fool, not
knave, not enthusiast, could never seriously
advance a claim, and one of such transcendent
greatness, unless it were a true one. Other men
put forward claims, and we may feel free, even
bound, to reject them. But, when we do reject
6i
62 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
them, it Is on the ground that those who make
them are endeavouring consciously to impose on
us, or are themselves imposed upon. We attri-
bute to them some moral or mental failing, a
failing greater or less, in proportion to the magni-
tude of the claim, which they press upon us.
But the whole recorded history of Christ's life,
its general tenour and its individual details,
negatives the idea that consciously or uncon-
sciously he was party to a fraud. There is no
indication in the New Testament of any mental
weakness or restless enthusiasm in Christ ; there
is no trace of insincerity or self-seeking. On the
contrary, there is abounding proof of lofty intel-
ligence and calm strength of will ; there is con-
vincing testimony to His humility, unselfishness,
and truth. Besides, the concordant voice of
civilized mankind proclaims Christ to be the
most perfect type and pattern of our race, a man
the wisest, the most virtuous, most straightfor-
ward, that the world has ever seen, the most
unlikely to be the victim or the author of the
most stupendous and most wicked deception in
all human history. And so we drew the neces-
sary inference that His claim was warranted, that
He was more than man, was very God Himself.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 63
Then, we reflected further that the claim was
tested and was vindicated by His resurrection
from the dead. When challenged, during life,
to justify His extraordinary pretensions. He
had repeatedly, and with a growing clearness,
referred His questioners to the incidents of His
coming death, and above all to His resurrection
on the third day. The whole city of Jerusalem
was aware of the prophecy ; the chief priests and
the Pharisees discussed it with Pilate ; and
to prevent its apparent fulfilment by fraud, *' they
made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and
setting guards".* But, on the third day, the
tomb was empty, and Christ again appeared
amongst His disciples and friends, eating, drink-
ing, walking, discoursing with them, as He had
done before ; inviting them even to examine
closely, to see and touch. His risen body, so that
there should be no doubt of its reality. And,
assuming the good faith of Christ Himself and of
the New Testament writers, we were satisfied
that Christ did really rise from the dead, and ap-
pear to the Disciples. For we cannot doubt that
Christ died : the swoon theory involves too
many and too grave absurdities. We cannot
^ Matt. XXVII. 66.
64 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
doubt that it was Christ Himself, in His human
body, whom the Disciples saw, spoke with, and
touched ; the theory of visions is an impossible
alternative. But, if Christ rose physically from
the dead, as He had foretold, then we are com-
pelled, on this ground also, to admit His claim,
and to confess that He was more than man, was
true God as well.
Now, so much being admitted, it follows that
all Christ's teachings, His precepts. His institu-
tions are Divine. They rest on the authority of
God. What Christ teaches we must believe,
because it is God Who teaches it ; where Christ
commands we must obey, for it is God com-
mands ; what Christ has instituted for us we
must accept, because it is God who urges its ac-
ceptance on us. If He established a society,
that society was Divine ; if He entrusted to it a
body of doctrines to be taught, those doctrines
were Divine ; if He appointed in it definite
means of sanctification and salvation, those also
were Divine ; if He bestowed upon it a constitu-
tion and authority, constitution and authority
were equally Divine. But did He establish a
society to preserve and propagate His teachings,
to minister special means of sanctification, to live
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 65
and work within a constitution and with an
authority which He Himself defined ?
Christ, as we have seen, is God incarnate.
*' When the fulness of time was come," St. Paul
writes to the Galatians,^ "God sent His Son,
made of a woman, made under the law." And
he adds the reason : ** That He might redeem
them who were under the law ; that we might
receive the adoption of sons ". We are not, of
course, so presumptuous as to think that we know
the whole purpose of God in the Incarnation.
We know only what He Himself has con-
descended to make known to us : enough to fill
our hearts with wonder and gratitude for His ex-
ceeding mercy, and to make us see how little
able we are to fathom the mysteries of His pro-
vidence. But some part of His purpose He has
declared to us : ** She shall bring forth a Son,"
the angel says of God's Blessed Mother, '* and
thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save
His people from their sins".^ "The Son of
Man is come," Christ Himself says to Zacheus,
" to seek and to save that which was lost " ; ^ and
in another place to His Apostles : " The Son of
Man is not come to be ministered unto, but to
^Gal. IV. 4. 2 Luke i. 31. ^ Ibid., xix. 10.
5
66 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
minister and to give His life a redemption for
many ".^ And, again, in St. John: ''God so
loved the world as to give His only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him may not
perish, but may have life everlasting ".^ And,
in that wonderful sixth chapter of the same
Gospel : ** The bread of God is that which
Cometh down from Heaven, and giveth life to
the world. ... I am the bread of life " ; ^ and, once
again, in a later chapter : ** I am come that they
may have life and may have it more abun-
dantly ".^ Or read the two first chapters of St.
Paul to the Ephesians, where he sums up all the
spiritual blessings that have come to us through
Christ, and tells us that none has come to us from
any other source whatever. Briefly, the purpose
of the Incarnation, as made known to us in the
New Testament, is that men "may have life"
through the passion and death of Christ, and
*'may have it more abundantly," through His
example. His teaching and the sacred channels
of grace which He established. He came to
save and to sanctify mankind.
And, to do this the more effectually, He
^Matt. XX. 28. 2 John ni. 15.
^/did.f VI. 33. */did.f X. 10.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 67
founded a kingdom. He might, indeed, have
worked out partly His purpose in men's souls
without drawing them together by any closer
bond than their acceptance of Him as a teacher,
and their profession of the more important doc-
trines which He taught. But He was far more
than a teacher. There have been others also,
who taught a lofty morality, who discoursed
wisely and eloquently on the existence and attri-
butes of God, and on man's relation towards
Him. Four centuries before Our Lord's coming,
Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle had done as
much. And they gathered disciples around
them, and impressed their opinions upon them ;
and these disciples were united together by
common doctrines, and by their admiration and
love for the teacher from whom they had received
them ; and they endeavoured, in their turn, to
gain adherents for their views and feelings. But
it has been well remarked that movements of the
kind resulted at best in philosophic schools, in
merely accidental groupings of disciples, not
organized into a society, not fitted for persistent
life, not even planned or built up by the teacher
himself Such a teacher drew men about him,
for there was no other way in which they could
5*
68 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
learn, or learn so readily, what he taught ; and
intimacies sprang up, and enthusiasms were
aroused, and perhaps a distinctive name was
adopted, such as the Academy or the Porch.
But there was no close bond of fellowship be-
tween the members ; there was no common
principle of authority, no interchange of service
between part and part, no definite direction to-
wards common objects. They were only schools
of thought. Their immediate aim was the ac-
quisition of truth ; and if at all, it was only by an
appeal to reason they could hope to influence
conduct.
Christ, on the other hand, is not the founder
of a school. He did, indeed, teach, and teach
in such wise that His very enemies were com-
pelled to say : ** Never did man speak like this
Man ".^ But He did a great deal more. No-
thing is more remarkable in His history than
His persistently avowed intention to found a
kingdom. God had had His kingdom upon
earth in the days of the Jewish theocracy. It
was only national, or nearly so ; it lay chiefly in
externals ; and, long before Christ came, it had
passed away. Christ was to restore it, fairer
^ John VII. 46.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 6g
and more perfect. "Thou shalt bring forth a
Son," the angel had announced to Mary, His
Mother, "and the Lord God shall give unto
Him the throne of David, His father, and He
shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever. And
of His kingdom there shall be no end."^ The
teaching of His predecessor, the Baptist, may be
summed up in the warning: "Do penance for
the Kingdom of heaven is at hand".^ And,
"after that John was delivered up," St. Mark
tells us, "Jesus Himself came into Galilee,
preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God,
and saying the time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom
of God is at hand ".^ And St. Matthew adds :
"He went about all Galilee, teaching in their
synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the
Kingdom ".* Later, when sending forth the
twelve on their first apostolic mission. His
command was : " Go and preach, saying the
Kingdom of heaven is at hand" ;^ and He fore-
told : " These good tidings of the Kingdom shall
be preached throughout the whole world, for a
testimony unto all the nations".* When the
people of Capharnaum "stayed Him that He
^Luke I. 32. 2 Matt. in. 2. ^Mark i. 15.
*Matt. IV. 23. '^ Ih'd., X. 7. ^ Ibid.^ xxiv. 14.
70 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
should not depart from them," He said: '* To
other cities also I must preach the Kingdom of
God ; for therefore am I sent "/ To one of
His disciples, Peter, after the Confession of
Cesarea Philippi, He promised supreme authority
in the Kingdom : " And I will give to thee the
keys of the Kingdom of heaven".^ But I need
not accumulate quotations : so persistently and
so publicly did He declare His design that,
when the chief priests and scribes carried Him
before Pilate, they opened their accusations
against Him with the words : *' We found this
man perverting our nation . . . and saying that
He Himself is Christ, a King".^ ''Art Thou a
King then ? " Pilate asks Him ; and Christ
admits and emphasizes the charge : ** Thou
sayest that I am a King" — the equivalent in
Hebrew idiom of an earnest *' I am ". So ** the
soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put it on
His head, and arrayed Him in a purple garment :
and they came unto Him, and they said : Hail,
King of the Jews ".* " And Pilate wrote a title,
also, to put it on the Cross, and there was written,
Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews."^
^Luke IV. 43. 2 Matt. xvi. 19. ^Luke xxiii. 2.
^Johnxix. 2. ^ Ibid.y ig.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 71
Now, what was the nature of this Kingdom
over which Christ claimed to be the King?
The Jews generally, both the people and their
rulers, understood it to be an earthly common-
wealth, which should restore the glories of David
and of Solomon, and give them freedom from
the Roman yoke. Therefore, they cried out,
when Pilate would dismiss Christ : "If thou
release this man thou art not Caesar's friend ; for
whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh
against Caesar ".^ Even the disciples themselves
at first shared the same belief. They contended
one with the other who should hold first place in
it. The mother of the sons of Zebedee be-
seeches Christ : " Say that these my two sons
may sit, the one on Thy right hand and the
other on Thy left in Thy kingdom".^ And,
after His very death and resurrection, their
thoughts are still fixed upon a temporal state.
"Lord," they ask of Him, "wilt Thou, at this
time, restore again the Kingdom to Israel ? " '
But such a kingdom, it is clear. Our Lord had
never thought of founding ; or, if He had thought
of it at all, it was only to reject it. The very
titles which He constantly employs, " Kingdom
^John XIX. 12. ^Matt. xx. 21. ^ Acts i. 6.
72 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
of heaven," ** Kingdom of God," show con-
clusively how unearthly His kingdom was to be.
During the course of His public life He put
aside repeatedly the suggestion that He should
assume or exercise temporal authority. When
He *' knew that they were about to come and
take Him by force, to make Him King, He fled
again," St. John tells us, ** into the mountain
Himself alone ".^ He refused, even when ap-
pealed to, to act the part of civil arbitrator or
judge : '' Man," He replies to one of the brothers
who were at variance, *' who hath appointed Me
judge or divider over you ? " ^ He would not
be entrapped into a condemnation of the tribute
which the Romans had imposed ; He even paid
it for Himself. He would allow no recourse to
arms, even in His own defence. And so He
assured Pilate : ** My Kingdom is not of this
world. If My Kingdom were of this world,
then would My servants fight that I should not
be delivered to the Jews ; but now My Kingdom
is not from hence." ^ Indeed, nothing is more
certain from the story of the Gospels than that
His countrymen delivered Him to the Romans
and clamoured for His death, because, while
ijohn VI. 15. 2 Luke xii. 14. ^ John xviii. 36.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 73
claiming to be a King, and announcing His
determination to found a Kingdom, He utterly
repudiated the material, temporal ideals to which
His countrymen still clung.
He was resolved, then, to establish a Kingdom,
though not after the pattern of earthly King-
doms, not one which should own territory, and
issue coinage, and wage war, and defend the
sovereign by the weapons of force. His King-
dom was to be spiritual.
But it was also to be upon earth. Though
"of God," "of Heaven," it is not to be in
Heaven ; or if it be, it is only to be perfected
and consummated there. Though not "of the
world," it is to be in this world ; men and women
are to be already citizens of it, while here ; it is
to exist alongside the kingdoms of the earth,
commingled with them, composed of the same
members who constitute them. "The time is
accomplished, and the Kingdom of God is at
hand,"^ Our Lord declares, at the very opening
of His public life, where the reference cannot,
surely, be understood to a Kingdom beyond the
grave. And when He sent the seventy-two
Disciples " into every city and place whither He
iMark i. 15.
U THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Himself was to come, He said to them . . . say
. . . the Kingdom of God is come nigh unto
you ".-^ And, on another occasion : " I tell you of
a truth : There are some standing here who
shall not taste death, till they see the Kingdom
of God ".^ And to the Pharisees, who had asked
Him : ** When the Kingdom of God should
come," He answered them and said: "The
Kingdom cometh not with observation. Neither
shall they say : Behold here or behold there.
For lo, the Kingdom of God is within you." ^ So
that St. Paul could write to the Colossians :
" Giving thanks to God the Father Who hath
. . . delivered us from the power of darkness,
and hath translated us into the Kingdom of the
Son of His love".* No wonder the Apostles
looked for a kingdom to be established in their
own day, and visible to their earthly eyes : " Lord,
wilt Thou at this time restore the Kingdom ? "
they ask of Him, as we have seen, even after the
forty days during which He had ** appeared to
them, speaking of the Kingdom of God ".^
But it may be objected that, in all these pas-
sages, and in the many others in which Our Lord
^ Luke X. 9. 2 Mark viii. 39. ^ Luke 3?:vn. 21.
*Coloss. I. 13. ^ Acts I. 3.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 75
discourses on the Kingdom, He is referring to
His Empire over men's minds and hearts, to the
new tone and temper of soul which His teaching
and example are to create among His followers.
It is to be, as He Himself says, and as we have
already quoted Him, " within " men ; it is to come
noiselessly and *'not with observation" ; it is to
be maintained by spiritual, not carnal weapons.
Why, are we to think of it, or are we to think
of it, as an external, visible organization ? The
answer is at once obvious and undoubted : unlike
the kingdoms of earth, Christ's kingdom here is
at the same time visible and invisible. He de-
sires to rule not merely, not mainly, over men's
bodies and external acts. He wishes to govern
through conscience, and to reach men's souls —
their minds, and hearts, and wills. He declares
the spirit of the Kingdom in that marvellous ex-
position of the highest moral and religious life —
the Sermon on the Mount, which contrasts so
sharply the external observances of the Mosaic
law with the new dispensation of holiness in mo-
tive, thought, desire, conformity of will. But, while
this is so, and while in this sense the Kingdom
is in the souls of men, it is equally certain that it
is also external. The very name of ** Kingdom,"
;6 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
when used of and among men, implies a visible
organization. So also do the names " city,"
"shepherd," ''family," and others, under which
Our Lord describes His kingdom In the parables.
And, further, confession of Him ''before men"
is the condition of His confessing His followers
before His Father who is in heaven. This public
confession will cause them to be " brought before
kings and rulers " and to be " reviled and perse-
cuted," for His name's sake. They are to be ini-
tiated into the kingdom by an outward, visible
Baptismal rite. They are to make oral profession
of the same religious creed. They are to meet
together to share in a common Eucharistic meal.
They are placed under the guidance and govern-
ment of a body of visible teachers and rulers,
especially selected and prepared by Christ, to whom
He says, when giving them their commission :
" He that recelveth you receiveth Me,"^ and "As
the Father hath sent Me so I also send you ".^
These men, so invested with authority, form the
first believers everywhere into visible communi-
ties to which they appoint laws of faith, conduct,
and religious worship. These communities are
knit together in belief and charity ; and are sub-
^Matt. X. 40. 2joijn xx. 21.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 77
ject to the same disciplinary precepts, drawn up
and imposed on all by the first Council in Jerusa-
lem. Does not all this signify plainly that the
Kingdom, while spiritual in object, means, and
motives, was to be also visible as an outward
visible organization ?
And it was to be universal. Unlike the Jewish
theocracy, and unlike every other kingdom es-
tablished before or since, it was not to be nar-
rowed down to any place or people. Men every-
where were invited to become citizens. "To
what shall we liken the Kingdom of heaven ? "
Our Lord asks the mukitude, as He taught them
from the ship by the shore of Genesareth, "or to
what parable shall we compare it ? It is a grain
of mustard seed ; which when it is sown in the
earth, is less than all the seeds that are in the
earth. And when it is sown, it groweth up, and
becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth
out great branches, so that the birds of the air
may dwell under the shadow thereof."^ And so
He foretells that "repentance and remission of
sins shall be preached in His name unto all
nations, beginning at Jerusalem," ' and He says
to the Apostles : ** You shall receive the power
1 Mark iv. 30. 2 Luke xxiv. 47.
7S THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you
shall be witnesses unto Me in Jerusalem, and
all Judea and Samaria, and even to the uttermost
parts of the earth ".^ And He gives them an
express command: *'Go ye, therefore, into the
whole world, and preach the Gospel unto every
creature ". " But they going forth," St. Mark
adds, "preached everywhere";^ and St. Paul
writes of them to the Romans : '* Yes, verily,
their sound hath gone forth into all the earth,
and their words unto the ends of the whole
world" ;^ and again to the Colossians : "of the
truth of the Gospel, which is come unto you, as
also it is in the whole world, and bringeth forth
fruit and groweth ".* But, indeed, the universal-
ity of the Kingdom is a necessary consequence of
its foundation for the redemptive and sanctifying
work of Christ. Christ had come, we have seen,
to redeem and sanctify mankind ; and no human
being was excluded from His mercy. "He was
the true light," as St. John says, " which enlighten-
eth every man that cometh into this world. " ^ God
" spared not even His own Son," St. Paul tells
the Romans, " but delivered Him up for us all ".^
1 Acts I. 8. 2 Mark xvi. 20. » Rom. x. 18.
* Col. I. 5. * John I. 9. ^ Rom. viti. 32.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 79
And, again, he writes to the Corinthians : "If
one died for all, then, all were dead ; and Christ
died for all".^ But it is through citizenship of
the Kingdom that men are to be saved, that the
fruits of the Redemption are to be bestowed upon
them ; and so the Kingdom, in the Divine plan,
was to be co-extensive with the needs of men,
and with the distribution of Christ's benefits
among them.
It was also to be independent. It was not to
be an earthly Kingdom ; still less a department
or function of any civil State. Its founder was
God Himself; its objects were defined by Him ;
the bonds uniting all its members were fixed by
Him ; the officers who should rule over it were
of His own appointment ; the limits of their
authority, the principles of their government. He
Himself laid down. It was the Apostles, not
temporal princes, whom He sent to preach, and
to baptize ; it was only to the Apostles He gave
power to forgive sin and to reproduce the
Eucharist ; it was only the Apostles who received
authority to say : "It hath seemed good to the
Holy Ghost and to us to lay no further burden
upon you than these necessary things".^ Nor
1 2 Cor. V. 14. 2^cts XV. 38.
8o THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
did He call kings or princes into consultation ;
or even hint to His Apostles that, in the fulfil-
ment of their mission, they were to wait on any-
secular approval or consent. And so much we
might have looked for. If the Kingdom is a
spiritual one, if it comes into being for the saving
and the sanctifying of men's souls, if the faith it
teaches, the means of salvation it employs, are
superhuman and supernatural, then we should
not expect it to be left dependent, for its action
and its very existence, on any earthly power.
And its universality precludes such dependence.
If the Kingdom is to be a world-wide society,
with a common faith, and common religious rites,
and common government, it can neither be
identified with nor subject to any local state.
And that, all the less, if, as Christ warned His
Apostles, when preparing them to carry out His
plan, they were sure to meet with opposition
from the great ones of the world. "If they have
persecuted Me, so will they persecute you,"^
He tells them ; and ** They will deliver you up
in Councils, and they will scourge you in their
synagogues ; and you shall be brought before
governors and before kings for My sake, for a
^ John XV. 20,
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 8i
testimony to them and to the Gentiles. . . .
The disciple is not above the master, nor the
servant above his lord."^ There was no civil
authority on the earth, when Our Lord was
laying the foundation of His kingdom, from which
He might look for favour or support, or even
toleration. Is it, therefore, likely He would give
civil authorities the right to frustrate His Divine
plan ? His Apostles had scarcely entered on the
work for which He had prepared them when
*' the priests and the officers of the temple and
the Sadducees came upon them, being grieved
that they taught the people . . . and they laid
hands upon them and put them in hold till the
next day. . . . And it came to pass, on the
morrow, that their princes and ancients and
scribes were gathered together . . . and setting
them in the midst they asked : By what power,
or by what name, have you done this? . . .
And they conferred among themselves, saying :
What shall we do to these men ? . . . And,
calling them, they charged them not to speak at
all nor teach in the name of Jesus " '^ ; and when
" Peter and the Apostles answering, said : We
must obey God rather than men . . . they were
^Matt. X. 17. 2 Acts IV. I.
6
82 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
cut to the heart, and they thought to put them to
death ".^ This was the temper of the kingdoms
of the world towards the new Kingdom of Christ,
the temper which showed itself in the martyr-
doms of Peter and Paul and of others of the
Apostles, and in the ' persecutions of the early
Church. No wonder that the exercise of apostolic
powers should not be made dependent on the
temporal state.
Christ, then, designed to establish a kingdom
upon earth, a kingdom which should be spiritual
in its objects and in the means of attaining them,
yet visible in the living men and women who are
members of it, and in the bonds by which they
are united ; universal, too, in its extension to
every country and to every race ; and self-con-
tained, by the possession of all the authority which
is needed to work out its purpose, without hind-
rance or interference from any earthly power.
But did He execute His design? Let the
New Testament writings answer. We read there
how He Himself, by His doctrines and His pre-
cepts, framed, as it were, its constitution and
promulgated its laws ; how, preaching through
Galilee and Judea, He collected adherents for
1 Acts V. 29.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 83
it ; how He prepared and provided for its de-
velopment and organization. For He selected,
we are told, a chosen few from among the larger
number of His disciples ; and during a period
estimated generally at about three years, He kept
them habitually near His own person, and taught
and trained them with an especial care. " He
appointed twelve," St. Mark says, "that they
might be with Him and that He might send them
forth to preach. " ^ The fullness and clearness of
their instruction He Himself declared, when He
says to them : ** To you it is given to know the
mystery of the Kingdom of God ; but to them
that are without all things are done in parables ".^
They could question Him as they willed. They
had His example always before their eyes. And,
at the close of His public life. He could say to
them, as St. John relates : " All things whatsoever
I have heard from My Father I have made
known to you"." Then He sent them forth, at
first into the Jewish villages and towns ; later,
into the whole world : " Go ye into the whole
world, and preach the Gospel to every creature,
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them
^Mark in. 14. '^ Ibid., iv. u. 'John xv. 15.
6*
84 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
to observe all things whatsoever I have com-
manded you"/ To authorize their mission,
"He gave them power to heal sickness and to
cast out devils ".^ He even promised that " signs
shall follow them that believe ; in My name they
shall cast out devils ; they shall speak with new
tongues ; they shall take up serpents ; and if
they shall drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt
them ; they shall lay their hands upon the sick,
and the sick shall recover ' .^ And He declared
in the most emphatic terms the grave obligation,
imposed upon all to whom opportunity was given,
of listening to and accepting "the Gospel of the
Kingdom ". " Into what city soever you enter,
and they receive you," He tells them, "... heal
the sick that are therein, and say to them the
Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. But
into whatsoever city you enter, and they receive
you not, going forth into the streets thereof say :
Even the very dust of your city that cleaveth to
us we wipe off against you. Yet know this that
the Kingdom of God is at hand. I say to you it
shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom
than for that city. . . . He that heareth you
heareth Me, and he that despiseth you despiseth
1 John XXVIII. 19. * Mark in. 15. ^ Ibid., xvi. 17.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 85
Me."^ Later, when about to ascend from them,
and when He was entrusting to them their world-
wide mission : " Preach the Gospel to every
creature," He added to it the solemn sanction :
"He that belie veth and is baptized shall be
saved ; but he that believeth not shall be con-
demned ".^ But they were not to preach only ;
they were to govern as well. ** As the Father
hath sent Me, so I also send you," ^ He says
to them ; and we would seem justified in under-
standing the commission not merely of objects
which are identical, but also of similar authority
and powers. More clearly still, in that passage
from St. Matthew, which we have already
quoted : ** Whatsoever you shall bind on earth
shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever
you shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in
heaven" ;* where He appears to except nothing
from the authority which He confers on them.
Again, after describing how, by personal persua-
sion and admonition, they should strive to gain
an erring brother's soul, He goes on to say that,
if all else fail, they must invoke the Church :
" If he will not hear . . . tell the Church ; and if
1 Luke X. 8. ^^ Matt. xvi. 16.
2 John XX. 21. *Matt. xviii. 18.
86 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
he will not hear the Church " — will not obey its
God-given authority — ** then let him be to thee
as the heathen and the publican ".^ Last of all,
after His resurrection, when "He showed Him-
self again to the disciples at the Sea of Ti-
berias,"^ and claimed from St. Peter the triple
confession of love. He commanded. He seemed
to adjure, him, after each confession, to "feed"
— to teach, that is, and govern — His lambs and
sheep. Hence it was that St. Paul could say to
the elders or presbyters of Ephesus and Miletus :
" Take heed to yourselves, and to the whole flock,
wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you
Bishops, to rule the Church of God ".' Hence,
he writes to the Corinthians, and lays down for
them a series of ritual and moral laws, concluding
with the words : " The rest I will set in order,
when I come ".* And, again, in a second letter
to them, after various warnings and exhortations :
** Therefore," he says to them, " I write these
things being absent, that being present I may not
deal more sternly, according to the authority
which the Lord hath given me for . building
up".^ And the writer of the Epistle to the
^Matt. xvin. 17. ^j^jm xxj j^ ^^^ts xx. 28.
* I Cor. XI. 24. 5 jj Qor^ 3^111, jp;
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 87
Hebrews : "Obey your prelates and be subject
to them ; for they watch, as being to render an
account of your souls ".^ Indeed, the Acts of the
Apostles and the Apostolic Letters present us with
repeated instances of a like nature, instances in
which the Apostles, collectively, as in the
Council of Jerusalem, or individually, as must
have been generally the case, drew up and pro-
mulgated for the acceptance of the faithful, not
merely doctrinal and moral teachings, but disci-
plinary enactments, which the faithful were bound
and were expected to obey.
And, lastly, he sent the Apostles, not to preach
and to govern only ; they were also authorized
and commissioned to administer religious rites.
They were to preach the Gospel, and then admit
believers into the Church by the Sacramental
ceremony of Baptism. They were to exhort to
penance, and then absolve or loose the penitent
from the bonds of sin. They were to imitate
Christ, Who at the Last Supper, " taking bread,
gave thanks and brake, and gave to them, say-
ing : This is My Body, which is broken for you.
Do this for a commemoration of Me."^ I
would not, of course, be taken to mean that
^Heb. XIII. 17. ^Luke xxii. 19.
88 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
they received no other Sacramental powers :
the laying on of hands, for instance, so often
referred to in the Acts of the Apostles, is evi-
dence to the contrary. But I have preferred
examples which lie as it were on the surface of
the Gospels, and are not open to serious contro-
versy among those who believe in the Divinity
of Christ.
The Apostles, therefore, in continuation of
Christ's own mission upon earth were to teach
all men what Christ had taught themselves.
They were to govern with His Divine authority
all those who listened to their message, and ac-
cepted the doctrines which they preached. They
were to initiate believers into the Christian com-
munity by the sacred rite of Baptism, purify
them, on repentance, from whatever sins they
might commit, and strengthen and sanctify them
by the Eucharist. This was the work which
Christ gave them to do ; it was for this He pre-
pared and trained them. This was to build on
the foundations which He had laid ; to give
visible substance and shape to His Divine plan.
And with what success did they labour ? On the
day of Pentecost, after Peter's first discourse in
Jerusalem, ** they that received his word were
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 89
baptized, and there were added . . . about
three thousand souls ".^ Some days later, after
the miracle on the lame man at the Temple gate,
** many of them, who had heard the Word, be-
lieved ; and the number of the men was made
five thousand".'* A little later still, ** the multi-
tude of men and women who believed in the
Lord was more increased".^ ** Behold you have
filled Jerusalem with your doctrine," the High
Priest says to *' Peter and the Apostles,"* when
they were dragged before the Council . And about
the same time, ** The word of the Lord increased,
and the number of the disciples was multiplied
in Jerusalem exceedingly : a great multitude also
of the priests obeyed the faith"/ Philip goes
down to the City of Samaria, and '' the people
with one accord were attentive to those things
which were said by Philip, hearing and seeing
the miracles which he did. . . . But when they
had believed Philip preaching of the Kingdom
of God, in the name of Jesus Christ, they were
baptized, both men and women." ^ Some
of those who were "dispersed by the persecution
that arose on occasion of Stephen . . . when
^ Acts II. 41. ^ Ibid,^ IV. 4. ^ Ibid., v. 14.
^ Ibid., V. 28. ^ Ibid., vi. 7. ^ Ibid., viii. 6.
90 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
they were entered into Antioch, spoke also to
the Greeks, preaching the Lord Jesus. And
the hand of the Lord was with them ; and a great
number believing was converted to the Lord.
And the tidings came to the ears of the Church
that was at Jerusalem . . . and they sent Barna-
bas as far as Antioch . . . and a great multitude
was added to the Lord".^ Paul and Barnabas
came to Iconium in Lycaonia, and** they entered
together into the synagogue of the Jews, and
they so spoke that a very great multitude both of
the Jews and of the Greeks did believe".' In
Thessalonica, ** where there was a synagogue of
the Jews, Paul, according to his custom, went in
unto them, and for three Sabbath days he
reasoned with them out of the Scriptures . . .
and some of them believed, and were associated
to Paul and Silas ; and of these that served God
and of the Gentiles a great multitude ; and of
noble women not a few ".^ But why multiply
quotations ? Those already made are concerned
with Peter and John, Paul and Barnabas, alone ;
they describe only a few incidents in their activity.
Meanwhile the other Apostles are at work else-
where, and, with such results, that St. Paul in
^Acts XI. 19. "^ Ibid,, XIV. I. ^ Ibid,, xvii. 4.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 91
writing to the Romans, within about twenty-five
years of Our Lord's death, is able to say to them :
" I give thanks to my God through Jesus Christ
for you all, because your faith is spoken of in the
whole world ".^ And so it grew, the grain of
mustard seed which the Lord had taken and
"sowed in His field ; and it grew and became a
great tree, so that the birds of the air came and
dwelt in the branches thereof".'^ Surely, we
have in all this the foundation of a kingdom.
Christ Himself proclaims His design to found one.
By His doctrines and precepts He promulgates
its constitution. In His missionary journeys He
gains adherents for it. By His Apostles He
carries on and extends His teaching, He pro-
vides for the administration of His laws. He se-
cures the dispensation of His Sacraments. He
gathers together a multitude of subjects under
His own and the Apostles' authority. Have we
not here all the elements of an organized society,
such as we see in the kingdoms of the world
around us — a multitude of persons, drawn to-
gether for a common purpose, bound together by
common interests and methods, guided and
moved by a common authority and government ?
iRom. I. 8. 2^att. xiii. 31.
92 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Are we not justified in saying that Christ Him-
self, by His own labours, and by the labours of
His Apostles, the workers whom He had trained,
did found and build up for Himself a kingdom
upon earth? And this kingdom we call the
Christian Church — a title He bestowed on it
Himself, when He said to one of His Apostles :
** Blessed art thou Simon Bar-Jona . . . Thou
art Peter ; and upon this rock I will build My
Church "/
The Christian Church, therefore, is a Divine
institution. It is not a voluntary association,
which the first believers, or those who im-
mediately succeeded them, were left at liberty to
form, and did form, for purposes of mutual sym-
pathy and assistance. So far as we can gather
Christ's mind and plan, from His recorded
words and acts, He was no less resolved to
establish an organized society than He was to
save and sanctify individual souls ; souls, indeed,
were to be saved and sanctified through their
membership of the society. The society, no
doubt, was instituted for the members ; but
membership, as we shall see, was made binding
by Him on all the followers of Christ.
iMatt. XVI. 1 8.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 93
We have seen, then, that the Church was
conceived and established by God Himself; for
Christ was very God. It may be of interest
now to consider, for a moment, how far the
conception and foundation of the Church will
serve as an argument for the Divinity of Christ.
It is, I think, conclusive. For let us suppose
Christ to be merely man ; and what are the facts
we are called onto explain? He is a Galilean
villager, from an obscure little town, of which it
is proverbially said : ** Can there any good thing
come out of Nazareth ? "^ He is poor, illiterate,
un travelled. He has not frequented any schools
of learning, has not had correspondence with
great thinkers or opportunity to read their works,
has not associated with persons of refined man-
ners and gentle blood. He has no acquaint-
ance with the philosophies of Greece or Rome.
He has, probably, never even heard the names
of the leaders of thought or literature in con-
temporary centres of civilization. He has hith-
erto spent His life in commonplace manual
labour, in the midst of a village community, poor,
for the most part, and illiterate as Himself. And
suddenly, without preparation, He leaves the
^ John I. 46.
94 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
workman's shop, with its uncultured surround-
ings, and appears before the world as a great
religious and moral teacher — admittedly the
greatest whom the world has ever seen. He
puts forward a scheme of religious belief and a
theory of moral conduct more sublime, more
harmonious, more fitted to upraise and ennoble
mankind than anything which the wisest phil-
osophy has ever dreamed of He announces
His intention of establishing a world-wide
spiritual kingdom — an idea utterly foreign to
the mind both of Gentile and of Jew ; and He
promulgates at once its constitution, its laws, its
government. His intention. His plan itself,
undergo no revision, are subjected to no ex-
periment. They are already complete when He
first makes them known. And His design is so
perfect, the means He adopts to realize it so
fitted for the purpose, that, contrary to all human
likelihood and expectation. He achieves the
success which He had predicted. And I am
not now arguing from the success which He
achieved, but from the scheme which He so
confidently set before the world for its acceptance.
Accepted by the wc^-ld or rejected, it could never
have been even conceived by the peasant artisan
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH 95
of Nazareth, had He been man only. Its very
conception, the design which He announced, is
conclusive proof of His Divinity.
We shall pass on to consider next some
characteristics of the kingdom or Church which
Christ established.
LECTURE IV.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CHRISTIAN
CHURCH: IMPERISHABLE, ONE, OBLIGA-
TORY.
We have seen that the New Testament writings,
especially the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and
greater Epistles of St. Paul, are historical docu-
ments of the highest value, for whose authenticity
and accuracy we have the fullest critical guaran-
tees. When we study in these writings the life
and character of Jesus Christ, we are led inevit-
ably to the conclusion that Christ is God ; and
that consequently His teaching, His promises,
and His institutions are Divine. The Christian
Church, therefore, is Divine ; for it was designed
and established by Christ Our Lord. It had
been foretold, at His Conception, that, *' The
Lord God shall give Him the throne of David,
His father . . . and of His Kingdom there shall
be no end".^ The Precursor had come, preach-
^Luke I. 32.
96
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 97
ing **The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand".^
He began His own public ministry by announc-
ing the advent of the Kingdom. He selected
Apostles, and trained them, and sent them forth
to preach the Kingdom. His declared intention
of founding a Kingdom was the main charge al-
leged against Him by the Jews, when they
coerced Pilate to condemn Him. And, far from
denying the accusation. He admitted and em-
phasized it, was put to death because of it, and
had it fastened to the Cross above His head, as
though to explain and justify the sentence passed
upon Him. But His Kingdom was not to be
of this world. It was, indeed, to be in the world ;
and its citizens were to be at the same time
citizens of temporal states. And it was to be
visible, not only as composed of men and women,
but as held together by the external profession
of the same faith, by external communion in the
same religious rites and ceremonies, and by
obedience to the same visible authority. He
Himself, even after He had ascended from the
eyes of men, was to remain always the one
supreme Governor of the Kingdom. Its objects,
its methods, the means which it employed, the
^ Matt. III. 2.
7
98 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
motives it appealed to, were to be all primarily
spiritual. And, because spiritual, it was to be
universal. It was to be co-extensive with
Christ's work of Redemption and sanctification.
All men, everywhere, were to be called into the
Kingdom. And therefore it could be subject,
as of right, to no earthly State. Christ's mission,
Christ's work for souls, was not to be dependent
on this world's rulers.
We have seen, too, that Christ's design was
carried into execution. The Apostles whom
He trained, to whom He made known His plan,
whom He sent forth to realize it, did achieve His
purpose. In spite of the utter improbability of
the scheme itself, in spite of their own natural
unsuitability for the work, in spite of the earnest
opposition of Gentile and of Jew, they built up,
within twenty-five years of Christ's death, just
such a spiritual organization as Christ had marked
out for them ; a widely extended society, number-
ing many thousands of devoted adherents, scat-
tered throughout the Empire and beyond its
limits, all united in one common faith, common
religious privileges and worship, common law of
discipline, promulgated or prescribed for them
by the College of Apostles, And this Divine
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 99
society we call, after its Divine founder, the
Christian Church.
We now go on to consider its more important
characteristics.
And, first, Christ willed it to be imperishable :
He willed it to endure on earth so long as there
are souls of men on earth to be saved and sanc-
tified. We might infer so much from its very
foundation, even had not Christ expressly de-
clared it. It must seem in the highest degree
improbable that an institution designed by Him
for the salvation of mankind should ever perish
wholly from the earth, while there are souls upon
it to be saved. God became incarnate in Christ
for love of souls ; He trained and sent forth the
Apostles, and laid the foundations of the Church,
to carry on His work for souls. That work has
to be done until the end of time. Is it likely He
should desire or even suffer the total destruction
of a scheme which He had Himself drawn out
so admirably, and set up so laboriously, for the
objects He had in view ? He might, indeed,
have established an institution which should serve
a merely temporary purpose, and then pass
away, as the Jewish Dispensation passed, making
room for something different and more perfect.
7»
100 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
But the burden of proof lies with those who
suggest the theory ; and there is no indication of
any such intention in the records of H is life. Nor
is there any reason for supposing that a revealed
religion must be subject to continuous change and
evolution. We understand readily enough that
the Incarnation should mark the beginning of
a new era in religious beliefs and religious
organization. If God comes down to earth and
lives, a man amongst men, to regenerate mankind,
we should expect Him to teach religion and
moral truth more fully than it had been ever
taught before, to provide new and more effica-
cious means of sanctification, to arrange for per-
petuating His doctrines, and for the continued
distribution of His graces. And, unless warned
to the contrary, we should probably look upon
His work as final ; we should not expect any
change of essential plan, still less a complete
failure. We should be prepared for develop-
ments in harmony with the original design, for a
better understanding of old truths, for fresh
inferences from revealed doctrines, for the con-
demnation of new errors, and for the modi-
fication of mere disciplinary laws in accordance
with changing social conditions. But we should
SOME CHARACTERISTICS loi
scarcely expect any new revelation to the Church
at large, or any vital change in the means of
sanctification, or a new form of government. We
cannot, however, argue conclusively from what
Our Lord's intention might have been, or even
from what we should naturally conjecture it to be.
What God has in fact appointed we can only know
with certainty from what He Himself has chosen
to tell us ; and so we turn to the New Testament
records for a clear manifestation of His will. And
we find it there, beyond all reasonable doubt.
You remember Christ's parable of the cockle — of
the weed pushing up among the good wheat, and
of the owner's order to his servants : " Suffer
both to grow until the harvest"?^ "Having
sent away the multitude He came into the house,"
St. Matthew continues, "and His disciples came
to Him saying : Expound to us the parable of
the cockle of the field. Who made answer and
said to them : He that soweth the good seed is
the Son of Man. And the field is the world.
And the good seed are the children of the King-
dom. And the cockle are the children of the
wicked one. . . . But the harvest is the end of the
world. ... At the end of the world the Son of
^ Matt. xni. 30.
102 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Man shall send His angels, and they shall gather
out of His Kingdom all scandals and them that
work iniquity." ^ The Kingdom, therefore, which
Christ preached, the Church which He established,
is to remain until the end of the world. And
again, Christ tells them : " The Kingdom of
Heaven is like unto a net cast into the sea, and
gathering together of all kind of fishes ... so
shall it be at the end of the world : the angels
shall go out, and shall separate the wicked from
among the just ". ^ The Kingdom is, therefore,
to endure until the end of the world comes.
There is question in both parables, on Our
Lord's own showing, of a Kingdom in this
present world ; of a visible Kingdom not con-
stituted by the men and women only who in-
visibly are God's ; and of a Kingdom which is to
last, one and the same, until Christ comes to
judge us. And consider His promise to St.
Peter, in return for the confession of His
Divinity : " Thou art Peter, and upon this rock
I will build My Church ".^ You will recollect a
striking picture, which Christ drew, earlier in His
public life, of a **wise man that built his house
upon a rock, and the rain fell, and the floods
1 Matt. xni. 36. '^ Ibid.^ 47. ^ Ibid,^ xvi. 18.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 103
came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon
that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on
a rock ".^ He would almost seem to have the
picture in mind when addressing Peter, and to
promise stability and perpetuity to His Church
by the very form of words in which He describes
its approaching foundation. But He goes on to
add, in even plainer language : *' Upon this rock
I will build My Church, and the gates of hell " —
death, that is, or all the power of her enemies —
** shall not prevail against her ". And they could
not, it is clear, prevail more triumphantly against
her than by compassing her destruction utterly,
or — what is practically the same thing — by intro-
ducing any substantial change into the consti-
tution of the Church, as Christ established it.
Again, when He sent out the Apostles to build
up the Kingdom by preaching to every creature.
He encouraged them with the promise : '* Be-
hold, I am with you all days, even to the con-
summation of the world ".^ In what sense He
would be with them we need not seek to
determine here. It is enough for our present
purpose to note His solemn assurance that He
would be with His Apostles until "the con-
1 Matt. VII. 24. 2 Ibid.^ xxviii. 20.
104 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
summation of the world " : with those individual
men, therefore, whom He was then sending
forth, and not less with their successors, who
should carry on and develop the work to which
He sent them. And hence the Apostles went
out upon their mission, and laboured in it, with-
out any thought that their success could be at
best of only a temporary character, that the
Church would perish or become transformed, be-
fore the end of all things came. On the contrary,
they formed believers into organized communi-
ties, which were linked together by a common
Faith, the same sacred rites, and one supreme
government ; and they made provision for the
indefinite continuance of their work. There are,
no doubt, passages in their writings which may
seem to imply that they expected the **parousia,"
or second coming, of the Saviour, at no very
distant date. But their care to organize the
infant Church on an enduring basis would
suggest a different interpretation of the texts ;
and in any case they were clearly of opinion that
until Christ did come again the Church should
not cease to exist. St. Paul, in his first letter to
the Corinthians, when he had impressed on them
the truth of Christ's resurrection, and the hope
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 105
we build on it, goes on to add : ** By a man
came death, and by a man the resurrection of the
dead. . . . Thencometh the end, when He shall
deliver up the Kingdom to God and the Father,
when He shall have brought to naught all princi-
pality, and power, and virtue. For He must
reign. "^ And, again, in his letter to the
Ephesians, where he sets before them the Church
under his favourite figure of Christ's body, he
tells them how "He gave some Apostles and
some Prophets and some Evangelists, and other
some pastors and doctors for the perfecting of
the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the
building up of the body of Christ, until we all
meet into the unity of faith and of the knowledge
of the Son of God . . . unto the measure of the
stature of the fullness of Christ".^ The Church,
therefore, with her apostles, prophets, pastors,
and teachers, will continue to exist and to carry
on the work of the ministry, while there are
saints to be perfected, and men to be guided into
the knowledge and the stature of the fullness
of Christ. But there is no need to dwell further
on the point. All men of whatever school of
religious thought, if they admit that Christ estab-
^ I Cor. XV. 24. ^Eph. IV. 11.
io6 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
lished a visible society, admit also that He gave
to it a promise of permanence until the end of
time.
His Church, then, is imperishable, is to last,
that is, without any substantial change, until Christ
Himself comes again.
It must be also one. Christ did not plan,
neither did He and His Apostles establish, a plu-
rality of religious societies, each independent of,
perhaps conflicting with, the others. He called
all men, and He sent His Apostles to call them,
into one single organization, the members of which
were to be closely joined together in one faith,
one worship, the same Sacraments, one form and
system of government. ** Going, therefore, teach
ye 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." ^ "He that believeth and
is baptized shall be saved. "^ The Apostles are
to teach everywhere one and the same body of
Divine truths, revealed to them by Christ, and by
His Holy Spirit. They are to make known
everywhere one and the same body of Divine
laws ; they are to receive into the Kingdom,
^Matt. xvm. 19. ^Markxvi. 16.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 107
by the same Divinely appointed rite of Baptism,
all who profess their willingness to believe and to
obey ; they are to break unto all the same
Eucharistic bread ; they are to exercise towards
all the Divine power of loosing and of binding ;
they are to feed and rule over all the lambs
and sheep. There would seem to be all the
elements of a single social body here, of a social
body one in number and organically one. Again,
the Church is almost always spoken of by Our
Lord as " the Kingdom " ; and scarcely any other
metaphor could have been chosen by Him more
suited to express the twofold oneness we attribute
to it. It is not a federation of independent States ;
it is not composed of loosely compacted parts.
A similar idea is presented to us by the other
titles which He gives it : "a city," " a household,"
"a sheepfold," "a flock," "a people"; by the
parables of the "field," the "net," the ** grain of
mustard seed " ; and most clearly by Our Lord's
own declaration to the Jews : " Other sheep I
have that are not of this fold ; them also I must
bring ; and they shall hear My voice, and there
shall be one fold and one shepherd".^ Where
you will note that there is not question of a
^John X. 16.
io8 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
mere wish or hope, put forward however earnestly
by Christ, nor of a mere precept enjoined by Him
on His followers, but of a prediction and a pro-
mise, which of necessity carry fulfilment with
them. Indeed, as Our Lord Himself argued on
another occasion, and in reference to " the King-
dom " : ** Every Kingdom divided against itself
shall be made desolate, and every city or house
divided against itself shall not stand ".^ And
hence His phrase to St. Peter : *' Upon this rock
I will build My Church . . . and I will give to
thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven ".^ ** My
Church," ** My Kingdom," is to be one and to be
placed under one visible authority or ruler. This,
too, is the conception of the Church which the
Apostles received from Christ Our Lord. We find
them everywhere establishing local Churches — in
Rome, in Corinth, at Ephesus, Colossa, Thessa-
lonica, and many other places. But they had no
thought of founding independent congregations.
The members of each local Church communicated
not only with each other, but also with the mem-
bers of all other local Churches, as opportunity
arose. Antioch sent alms by Paul and Barnabas
to the Church of Jerusalem ; so did the Churches
iMatt. xn. 25. '^Ibid., xvi. 18.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 109
of Macedonia, of Corinth, and Galatia. From
Antioch, too, it was " determined that Paul and
Barnabas and certain others . . . should go up to
the apostles and priests of Jerusalem about the
question " of subjecting the Gentiles to the Mosaic
law.^ St. Paul is accompanied to Troas by
"Sopater, the son of Pyrrhus of Berea, and of
the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus ;
and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy ; and of Asia,
Tychicus and Trophimus ; " ^ and, on the first day
of the week, they all assembled together "to
break bread ". Paul, again, in his letter to the
Romans commends to them ** Phebe our sister,
who is a servant of the Church that is in Cenchrese ;
that you receive her in the Lord, as becometh
saints, and that you assist her in whatever business
she shall have need of you".^ And, after various
personal salutations, he adds : *' All the Churches
of Christ salute you ". " To the Church of God
that is at Corinth," he writes : " The Churches of
Asia salute you ; Aquila and Priscilla salute you
much in the Lord, with the Church that is in their
house. . . . All the brethren salute you."* And
he informs us, in his second letter to the same
1 Acts XV. 2. '^ Ihid,, XX. 4.
*Rom. XVI. I. * I Cor. xvi. 19.
no THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Corinthians, that it was quite usual for the Chris-
tians of that day, when journeying from place to
place, to carry with them commendatory letters
from their own to other Churches. These first
Christian communities, then, looked on themselves
as parts of one great whole, bound together
by belief, religious practice, common authority.
They already formed one widespread carefully
organized society. Nor, indeed, could it well be
otherwise, if they had any regard for apostolic
teaching. The duty of charity, of mutual love, we
should, of course, expect the Apostles to preach :
it was to be the distinctive mark of true disciples.
And, when fulfilled, it would lead necessarily to
that union among believers, which Our Lord
desired for them so ardently, and prayed for so
earnestly : " I pray for them (the Apostles). . . .
And not for them only do I pray, but for them
also who through their word shall believe in Me,
that they may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me,
and I in Thee ; that' they also may be one in Us. " ^
But the Apostles taught union also of another
kind, the union which draws together the citizens
of a social state. " I beseech you, brethren, by
the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that you will
^ John XVII. 20.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS in
speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms
among you," St. Paul writes to the Corinthians.^
And to the Romans : ** Now, I beseech you,
brethren, to mark them who cause divisions and
offences, contrary to the doctrine which you have
learned, and to avoid them ; for they that are such
serve not Christ Our Lord ".^ So all-important
is the duty of union and peace within the
Churches, and still more, therefore, within the
Church universal, and so grievous the sin of any
who would disturb it, that such disturbers are to
be shunned, cut off, that is, from the communion
of the faithful. Hence, in nearly all his letters,
notably in those to the Corinthians, to the
Ephesians, and to the Philippians, St. Paul urges
this union so earnestly on his converts : " I,
therefore, a prisoner in the Lord, beseech you,
that you walk worthy of the vocation in which
you are called. . . . Careful to keep the unity of
the spirit in the bond of peace. One body and
one spirit : as you are called in one hope of your
calling. One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one
God and Father of all. " ^ And more clearly again,
in his Epistle to the Romans, where he introduces
^ I Cor. I. lo. 'Rom. xvi. 17.
3 Eph. IV. I.
112 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
the metaphor, which he employs so often to ex-
press the oneness and the organic unity of Christ's
Church: **As in one body," he says, **we have
many members, but all the members have not the
same office, so we being many are one body in
Christ and every one members one of another "/
He is speaking here undoubtedly, not of any
local Church, but of the whole multitude of
Christian believers ; and he tells us of them that,
however many they may be, they can form only
one body, and must be knit together, each with
the other, in one living whole. He had already
declared it more in detail in his first Epistle to the
Corinthians, where he says to them : ** As the
body is one and hath many members, and all the
members of the body, whereas they are many,
yet are one body : so is Christ. For in one spirit
were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews
or Gentiles, whether bond or free ; and in one
spirit have we all been made to drink. . . . Now
you are the body of Christ, and severally members
thereof."^ And, in his Epistle to the Ephesians,
where he exhorts husbands to love their wives, he
bases his argument on the relation of Christ to-
wards the Church : ** For the husband is the head
iRom. XII. 4. 2 1 Cor. xii. 12.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 113
of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the Church,
being Himself saviour of His body ".^ Or, as he
puts it in another passage of the same Epistle :
" The God of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . raising
Him up from the dead . . . hath subjected all
things under His feet, and hath made Him head
over all the Church, which is His body, and the
fullness of Him, which is filled all in all ".^ The
constant teaching of St. Paul, then, is that Christ
at the Father's '' right hand in the heavenly
places"^ is still head of the visible Church on
earth, that the Church is the one mystical body
of Christ, that all the members of it are to be
united, each with the other, and all with the
whole body, as the hand and eye and ear and
foot are with each other and with the living body
of a man. Could St. Paul express more strik-
ingly the essential oneness and organic unity of
the Christian Church ?
We have it, therefore, on the Divine authority,
made known to us in the words and acts of
Christ, and in the testimony of His apostles and
disciples, that a Society was established by Him
upon earth, and called by Him His Church ;
^ Eph. V. 23. ^ Ibid,^ I. 17.
^ Ibid.f 20.
8
114 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
that He willed and promised it should neither
perish wholly nor undergo essential change, until
He Himself comes again to earth in judgment ;
and that the Divine Society can be only one
throughout the world, all the parts being built to-
gether into one body, in faith, in ritual, and in
government. There exists, consequently, in the
world to-day a visible society which is the one
true Church of Christ ; and all men are bound,
opportunity offering, to become members of it.
That membership of Christ's Church must be
a blessing, no one, I think, who admits the
existence of the Church, will be disposed to
deny. To know the doctrines which Christ
taught, to share in the graces of a sacramental
system which He instituted, to live under the
authoritative guidance of religious rulers whom
He Himself appointed : these, in themselves,
are very excellent privileges, and the source of
many other spiritual benefits as well. But are
men morally obliged to avail themselves of
them ? This is a question, as is evident, of vital
importance, which must raise very grave issues
in human life. To answer it is the purpose of
our further consideration to-day.
The characteristic doctrine which distinguishes
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 115
the religion of the Gospel from heathenism and
Judaism, which at once arrested the attention of
both Gentile and Jew, to whom Christ and His
Apostles preached, which sobered the thought-
less and changed the hearts of the sinful, which
has created in great part the peculiar atmosphere
and temper of Christian life and of Christian
history, is the immortality of the human soul.
" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,"
had been the wisdom of the heathen. ** That
thy days may be long in the land which the Lord
thy God will give thee," was the main incentive
to virtue for the Jews. " To-morrow we die,"
Christ also and H is Apostles taught ; but they
added : *'and after that, the Judgment". Death
is only change, a passing over from the occupa-
tions and pleasures and sufferings of this visible
world to the realities of eternity. And it is to
prepare for those realities, to predetermine our
part in them, that we are living here. So much
God incarnate, by Himself and by His Apostles,
has made clearly known to us. Now it cannot
seriously be doubted that we are bound to make
that preparation, to take all wise and reasonable
precautions to secure happiness in eternity. If
self-preservation be not merely an instinct of
8*
ii6 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
nature, but a moral law, if man may not misuse
grossly or recklessly cast away, the material and
spiritual gifts which God has bestowed upon him,
and which fit him for personal and social happi-
ness, if he is even bound, within reasonable
limits, to preserve and develop them, surely we
are obliged to guard against the loss of the
higher life which should follow upon death, and
against the perversion or destruction of the gifts
and faculties, through which alone that higher
life is possible ? And, surely we are obliged to
adopt the means at once easiest and most secure
to attain that object ? Membership of the Church
of Christ is just that means. Unswerving faith
in the Christian revelation, obedience to a Di-
vinely given moral law, approach to Divinely
instituted religious rites through which grace is
offered ; submission to a Divinely appointed
guiding authority : it is plain that these consti-
tute an easy and effective means by which to
attain salvation ; and these are the links which
bind men to the Christian Church, and bind
them, within it, to one another. On this ground,
then, of personal need and personal advantage,
there would seem to be a natural obligation to
seek membership of the Church of Christ.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 117
But, consider, further, the object of Christ's
coming, and of His life on earth. He came, as
He told the Pharisees, that men "may have life,
and may have it more abundantly ".^ He might
have redeemed the world by any deliberate act
of His human will, above all by His sufferings
and by His death. But it was not enough for
His mercy and love that man's sin should be
blotted out ; He desired to provide plentiful
means of salvation and sanctification, " until the
consummation of the world ". And so He spent
some thirty years of hidden labour, and then
three years of painful public ministry, teaching,
gathering adherents, training Apostles, founding
and establishing a Church, which should perpetu-
ate His Divine Mission, and be His chosen in-
strument for its accomplishment until the end of
time. And consider, too, the marvellous zeal
and continuous efforts of the Apostles, in build-
ing up and extending, as their Master had
instructed them, the Church of Christ. Think of
the journeyings, the toil, the privations, the
danger and the sufferings they underwent. " For
I think," St. Paul writes to the Corinthians,
" that God hath sent forth us, the Apostles, last
^ John X. 10.
ii8 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
of all, as it were men appointed to death ; for we
are made a spectacle to angels and to men. We
are fools for Christ's sake. . . . Even unto this
hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and
are buffeted, and have no fixed abode. . . . We
are reviled ... we are persecuted ... we are
blasphemed ... we are made as the refuse of
this world, the offscouring of all things, even
until now."^ And, ''they rejoiced exceedingly
that they were accounted worthy to suffer re-
proach for the Name " ^ and work of Christ. " I
rejoice in my sufferings for you," St. Paul writes
to the Colossians, "and fill up those things that
are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my
flesh, for His body, which is the Church." ^ Now,
is it not clear, from considerations such as these,
that Christ's Church is the Divinely appointed
means for men's salvation ? I do not wish to
argue, at this moment, that men may not find
salvation beyond her pale. I would only invite
you to reflect how very admirably the Church has
been adapted by her Founder for the realization
of His sublime purpose ; at what a cost He
founded her and built her up ; how persever-
ingly and self-sacrificingly, " in much patience, in
^ I Cor. IV. 9. 2^(,ts V, ^i. 8(;;;oi^ , 2^,
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 119
tribulation, in necessities ... as sorrowful, yet
always rejoicing," ^ the Apostles carried forward
Christ's Divinely planned, work ; and then to say
if we are not fully justified in our inference that
Christ Himself and His Apostles, who knew His
mind so intimately, regarded membership of His
Church as a supreme and vitally important factor
in the Christian life, as the Divinely appointed
way by which men are to attain salvation. For
Christ and His Apostles did not merely require
an unconditional acceptance of His teaching :
men were to believe ; but they were also to be
baptized. And baptism was not a mere isolated
rite, however significant and efficacious ; it was
a solemn initiation into an organized Society.
Men were called to follow Christ, not as single,
separate individualities, but as subjects of a world-
wide spiritual kingdom ; and the history of the
New Testament is a history of the design and
foundation and growth of that kingdom, through
which, and in which, men are to be saved. Can
we conceive that Christ and His Apostles should
be so greatly concerned to establish and per-
petuate an institution, and should labour so un-
weariedly to draw men into it, if they believed it
^ 2 Cor. VI. 10.
120 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
to be a help, indeed, but still a quite unneces-
sary help towards salvation ? Their words, their
works, their whole lives are convincing proof
of the supreme value which they attached to
membership of it.
And consider also the attitude adopted by
Christ's Apostles towards those who had been
members of the Church, but had gone out from
her, through heresy or schism. There were some
such in Galatia when St. Paul wrote to the
Churches there. ** There are some that trouble
you," he says, "and would pervert the Gospel of
Christ. But though we, or an angel from
heaven, preach unto you any gospel other than
we have preached to you, let him be anath-
ema."^ And the author of the letter to Titus,
which admittedly represents the mind and temper
of St. Paul : '' A man that is a heretic, after the
first and second admonition, avoid : knowing
that such a one is subverted and sinneth, be-
ing self-condemned ".^ And to Timothy : " This
charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, that
thou war the good warfare, holding faith and a
good conscience, which some, rejecting, have
^Gal. 1. Q. 2 Tit. III. lo.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 121
made shipwreck concerning the faith . . . whom
I have delivered up to Satan, that they may learn
not to blaspheme ".^ And even St John, the
Apostle of gentleness and love, is no whit behind
St. Paul in his vehement denunciation of such
wickedness. ** Whosoever revolteth," he writes
to the lady elect and her children, "and con-
tinueth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not
God. . . . If any man come unto you, and bring
not this doctrine, receive him not into your house,
nor say to him God speed you. For he that
saith to him, God speed you, communicateth with
his wicked works." * The world has grown very
tolerant of religious error ; but such tolerance,
you see, had no part in the training and temper
of the Apostles. For what must we conclude
from such stern words as we have quoted, if not
that the Apostles and the Apostolic Church
esteemed apostacy to be a spiritual death, and
the apostate to be cut off, by his own act, not
only from the Communion of the Church on earth,
but also from the hope of happiness in heaven ?
And if men may not resign their membership of
Christ's Church without imperilling salvation,
1 1 Tim. I. 19. 2 2 John i. 19.
122 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
can they, do you think, without danger of a like
result, reject that membership when it is offered
to them ?
But we are not left to draw inferences, how-
ever certain. Our Lord was pleased, when
establishing His Church, to declare in the most
explicit terms that all men are bound, under the
very gravest penalty, to enter into it. I shall
ask you to consider only two declarations which
He made to His Apostles : one, when sending
them to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom be-
fore His Passion ; the other, when laying His
last commands upon them, at His ascension into
heaven. " Go ye not," He said to them, on the
former occasion, " into the way of the Gentiles,
nor into the cities of the Samaritans, but go ye
rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ;
and, going, preach, saying the Kingdom of
Heaven is at hand." Then, after explaining to
them the object and the methods of their Apostle-
ship, He continued : '* And whosoever shall not
receive you, nor hear your words, as ye go forth
out of that house or that city, shake off the dust
of your feet. Amen, I say unto you. It shall be
more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Go-
morrha in the day of judgment than for that
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 123
city."^ Here, then, our Lord states plainly that
whosoever will not receive His Apostles and
" hear " their message of the Kingdom, is deserv-
ing of a worse punishment than the people of
Sodom and Gomorrha. But to " hear," in the
language of the New Testament, is not merely
to listen to a message : it means, further, to ac-
cept it, to obey : " If he will not hear the
Church " ; " They have Moses and the Prophets,
let them hear them " ; " This is My Beloved
Son : hear ye Him ". To ** hear the words " of
the Apostles, then, is to accept and to obey their
teaching ; to accept and to obey their teaching
is to believe and to be baptized, to seek entrance
into the spiritual Kingdom, which they were com-
missioned to announce ; and whosoever cul-
pably fails to do so challenges a more intolerable
judgment, our Lord solemnly declares, than the
sinful Cities of the Plain. Could He express
more clearly and more emphatically the obligation
which He imposes of entering into His Church ?
Later, on the occasion which St. Mark describes
in the last chapter of His Gospel, where he tells
us of Christ's final interview with His Apostles,
before He was taken up into Heaven from them,
^ Luke X. 10,
124 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
** Go ye into the whole world," He says to them,
**and preach the Gospel to every creature. He
that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved." ^
Christ here lays down distinctly the conditions
of salvation. Men accept the Gospel message in
its integrity ; they assent to all the truths which
the Apostles are commissioned to proclaim ; they
are initiated by baptism into the Communion of
Christ's adherents, and so into membership of
His Church : if so, they ** shall be saved ". And
we might, I think, legitimately infer that it is
only on these conditions salvation can be se-
cured. We are not left, however, to draw the
inference. Our Lord goes on Himself to state
it briefly and emphatically : ** He that believeth
not shall be condemned ". It may be that the
text read originally, as the parallelism seems to
require, *' He that believeth not, or is not
baptized " ; but, in any case, Christ had before
made known the need of baptism in the words,
addressed to Nicodemus : *' Unless a man be
born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he
cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven".^
Thus we have it once more, on Christ's own
authority, that, unless a man believes Christ's
^ Mark xvi. 15. ^ jQ^n iii. 5.
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 125
Gospel, and enter, by Baptism, into Christ's
Church, he shall certainly be condemned. Or,
to set out the same truth in other words, we
know, from the unvarying and explicit teaching
of Christ and of His Apostles, that men may not,
without peril of salvation, refuse to believe
Christ's Gospel when it is duly preached to them ;
may not refuse the means of sanctification He
has instituted, when they are offered to them ;
may not refuse obedience to the spiritual author-
ity He has appointed, when its claims are brought
before them. And, since His Church on earth
consists of those who believe His Gospel, and
are partakers of His Sacraments, and are subject
to the pastors He has set over them, it must be
clear that membership of His Church is binding
upon all who would attain salvation. There is
no salvation outside the true Church of Christ.
Under the Gospel scheme, then, there is no
place for indifferentism in religion. In the eyes
of Christ and of His Apostles, one religion, one
Church is not as good as another. It is not
sufficient, even were it possible, to lead an
honourable and upright life, to be just, truthful
and benevolent, and to set aside all Churches and
religions whatsoever. If Christ is God, if He
126 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
has revealed a religion to mankind, if He has
established a spiritual society or Church on earth ;
if He has commanded all men to become mem-
bers of it ; and if that society still exists on earth
to-day : then all men are bound to hearken to
the Divine voice, to embrace the religion He has
revealed, and enter into the Church which He
has founded. To do otherwise, when the truth
has been made known to them, is rebellion
against God ; it is to reject His authority when
He teaches, or His authority when He com-
mands.
Now, I do not mean to say that this doctrine
is an easy one. Difficulties, and grave ones, are
likely to have presented themselves already to the
minds of many of us ; and opportunity will, I hope,
offer at another time to deal with some of them.
For the moment, it will be enough, I think, to
direct your attention to two considerations. First,
that God is and remains always the master of His
own gifts ; it is for Him to prescribe, as He may
choose, the conditions under which He will be-
stow them. Secondly, that to incur responsibility
for rejecting the privileges of the Kingdom, they
must have been offered to us. "He who be-
lieveth not," follows in our Lord's statement, on
SOME CHARACTERISTICS 127
"Go, preach the Gospel to every creature";
and "whosoever shall not receive you or hear
your words," supposes the Apostles to have de-
livered His Divine message. As St. Paul writes
to the Romans : " How shall they believe Him
of Whom they have not heard, and how shall
they hear without a preacher ? " ^ No man, we
may be sure, shall be punished by God for having
left a duty unfulfilled, the very existence of which
had never been brought home to him. This, in-
deed, is far from implying that those who live or
die, even inculpably, without the visible Church
of Christ, are on a level of advantage with those
within. They are .exposed to dangers, from
which members of the Church are shielded ; they
are shut out from graces which members of the
Church receive abundantly. St. Paul had this in
mind when he wrote to the Romans, of the unbe-
lieving Jews : " I speak the truth in Christ ; I lie
not, my conscience bearing me witness in the
Holy Ghost : that I have a great sadness and
continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish
that I myself were anathema from Christ for my
brethren's sake, who are my kinsmen according
1 Rom. X. 14.
128 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
to the flesh." ^ But we are not now concerned
directly with the case of those who are ignorant
of the law that binds them to become members
of Christ's Church : we have spoken of those
only to whom the law has been made known, and
who have chosen wilfully to disobey it.
We have seen, then, that the Church of Christ
on earth is an imperishable society or kingdom ;
that it is one, and can be only one, in number and
in organic structure ; that all men to whom its
existence and claims become known are bound
to enter into it. We shall next consider its teach-
ing authority.
1 Rom. IX. I .
LECTURE V.
TEACHING AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.
We have seen that Christ, by Himself and by His
Apostles, established a society or Church on
earth, which is to endure until the end of time,
and is to carry on the work for which ** the Word
was made flesh and dwelt amongst us " . One
among the purposes of the Incarnation was to
teach mankind, not to teach them mere human
wisdom, which men may gather for themselves,
but Divine truth, concerning God and the things
of God, which men can learn only from God
Himself, and concerning moral conduct, which
must look for a standard and a sanction to Divine
law. And Christ gave men this teaching, partly
adopting and correcting the older dispensation,
partly promulgating. Himself and through His
Holy Spirit, new doctrines and precepts. And
this whole deposit of Divine truth He committed
to His Church, to be taught by the Apostles and
129 9
130 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
by all who should aid or succeed them in their
teaching office, and to be accepted and believed
by the entire body of His followers, both teachers
and taught. Every religion, of whatever kind it
is, must rest primarily on a system of beliefs.
Christianity is no exception to the rule, and
Christianity in the concrete is the living Church
of Christ. The Church's first duty must, conse-
quently, be to teach revealed truth : '* Going,
therefore, teach all nations " ; tell men what they
must believe concerning God and His attitude
towards them, concerning life's present purpose
and future destiny, the moral law, Christ's work
and personality, the means of grace He instituted,
the precepts He imposed, the kingdom He es-
tablished. Lay before them the Divine message
in its entirety, adding nothing, changing nothing,
and then guide them into the fulfilment of all
things I have commanded.
But will the Church be faithful to her mission ?
Will she carry out the purpose of her Founder ?
Will she, above all, continue to hold and to teach
unerringly the dogmatic and moral truths which
He revealed, and on which Christianity, its faith,
its moral life, its embodiment in a visible society,
depend ? The Churchj indeed^ will endure for
TEACHING AUTHORITY 131
ever ; Christ's solemn promise, God's promise, is
our guarantee and pledge. But, will her teachers
continue always to deliver their message, as it
was entrusted to them ? Will the body of be-
lievers continue always to believe and to profess
what Christ and the Apostles taught ? In a word,
is Christ's Church infallible in what she teaches
concerning the revelation that was made to us
through Christ ; and is she equally infallible in
what she believes to be contained in that revela-
tion ? This is the question for which I ask your
consideration now ; and it is a question, as you
will see at once, of no ordinary importance. For,
if Christ's Church on earth be infallible in what
she holds and teaches as Divinely revealed, and
if we can recognize with certainty, among existing
religious bodies, the true Church of Christ, then
difficulties of belief are very largely at an end, or, at
any rate, will find an easy and prompt solution. I
may not always be able to determine with cer-
tainty even then, what the Church believes and
teaches ; but, when I do, I am in possession of
Divine truth, to which I assent on the authority
of God ; and no objection, however insoluble it
may seem, or however much it may perplex me,
can shake my adherence to it,
9*
132 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Now, there was a time, we have already
shown, when men had an infallible religious
Teacher visible on earth ; during the years when
God lived among them as Man in Judsea and in
Galilee. His contemporaries who were privi-
leged to listen to His teaching and to recognize
His Divine authority had the absolute certainty
that everything He taught was true. They
might fail to discern the full significance of His
words ; they might be unable to understand the
reasons on which He based His teaching ; they
might note in it an absence of all proof and
reasoning whatsoever ; and they might be per-
plexed by objections to which He made no re-
ference, and which they were utterly unable to
resolve. But there could be no doubt, no hesi-
tation about assenting to the doctrines which He
taught : God the infallible Truth was speaking
to them. It may be said no doubt that this
was a qualified advantage. To give men an in-
fallible teacher, such as Christ, but no evident
infallible means of recognizing Him : to give them
teaching which is infallible, but at times obscure ;
to give them an unerring oracle, but one which
leaves many questions unanswered and many
difficulties unsolved, is surely to bestow upon
TEACHING AUTHORITY 133
them a privilege with many and grave limi-
tations ? I have no wish to deny that the privi-
lege might have been greater : we are of too
circumscribed intelligence to judge such high
matters with any certainty. I am only concerned
at present to point out that it was a privilege,
limited, no doubt, as God judged fitting, but none
the less real within its limits, and that these limits
themselves afford no argument, not even a seri-
ous objection, against the bestowal of the privi-
lege in the person of Christ. And when I go on
to inquire, as we inquire now, whether or no a
like privilege has been bestowed upon Christ's
Church, I shall not be prejudiced in my inquiry
by the alleged need of an infallible means for dis-
covering her identity, or by her silence and
her lack of definiteness in her teaching at times.
I shall not expect the infallibility of the Church,
if she be infallible, to be very different in its
manifestations from the infallibility of Christ
H imself.
But has He been pleased to perpetuate the
privilege in His Church ? If He have, then the
members of that Church, who receive her au-
thoritative teaching, can have no more doubt or
hesitation about its truth than if Christ spoke to
134 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
them Himself. They may be disposed to com-
plain that she is too slow to pronounce, or that
she has pronounced too hurriedly ; that her
language is obscure or not sufficiently decisive ;
that there are objections which she has passed
over, or has not met fully. But, in her clear
teaching, in her decisive pronouncements, and
within the province assigned to her by her
Founder, her children have the truth as
guaranteed by God ; they are as fully safe-
guarded against error as were those who lis-
tened to the very words of Christ. And Christ's
Church, we now proceed to show, is infallible.
By infallibility, we understand, when predi-
cated of the Church, immunity from error in
teaching revealed doctrines. We conceive of
God as having revealed to mankind a great
number of religious and moral truths, some
before Christ came, others through Christ Him-
self, others, again, through the Holy Spirit, as
promised by Christ : ** But when He, the spirit
of truth, is come. He will teach you all truth ".^
This body of truths is often spoken of as the
** Deposit of Divine Faith," the collection, that
is, of doctrines which are to be believed on the
^ John XVI. 13.
TEACHING AUTHORITY 135
authority of God, and which have been deposited
with the Church to be preserved and promul-
gated. The Church is infallible, if she neither
errs nor can err in teaching and believing
that Deposit. I would not be understood to
deny, or even doubt, that the Church is infal-
lible even beyond these limits ; but that raises a
further question, with which we need not concern
ourselves to-day. We shall be satisfied for the
present if we can prove that she is infallible in
teaching and believing those things which are of
Divine Faith. And we say *' teaching" and
"believing" ; for infallibility is a twofold gift, as
bestowed by Christ upon His Church. We
have had occasion to note already that in Christ's
Church all the members are bound to hold one
and the same faith ; and in so far as they cannot
err in what they hold, the Church Universal will
be, as is said, " passively infallible ". But among
the multitude of believers there are some set
apart to teach, to whom the commission has
been handed down which was first given to the
Apostles : " Go, therefore, preach the Gospel to
every creature " ; and, in so far as these teachers
cannot err in their delivery of the Divine
Message, the Church is said to be "actively
136 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
infallible ". I do not know that the words have
been very aptly chosen ; in believing one is as
little passive as in teaching ; but they have been
received into general use ; and they may serve,
if we are clear as to their meaning. Again,
active and passive infallibility are closely co-
related. No doubt, in themselves they are
wholly distinct and separable. Christ might,
had He chosen, have appointed an infallible
body of teachers in His Church, and yet have
allowed the mass of believers to fall into the
grossest religious errors ; and He might preserve
believers, while exercising no such providence
towards their teachers. In fact, however. He
has promised His Church that He will bestow
infallibility on both : on the teachers, for the
sake of those who are to be taught, and because
He has ordained that the Gospel authoritatively
preached is to be unhesitatingly accepted ; and
on the taught themselves, because He has
constituted His Church a society of believers,
which is to endure unchanged until the end of
time. And hence there is no need to discuss
active and passive infallibility separately ; they
are linked so closely in Christ's plan that, while
the concepts are wholly different, to prove one is
TEACHING AUTHORITY 137
to prove the other. And hence, too, we may
fix our attention more particularly on active
infallibility, or immunity from error in teaching
revealed doctrines, as of more practical moment
to ourselves and more subject to inquiry and
controversy.
And first, for it is misunderstood very fre-
quently, it will be well to determine its meaning
more accurately. It does not presuppose or
bring about the personal holiness of those through
whom it may be exercised ; a great sinner may
teach infallibly. It does not involve any new
revelation to be granted to the teacher ; it is
concerned solely with the revelation already
made to the Apostles. It does not imply any
Divine impulse or inspiration to teach or to
define : it only guarantees the truth of the teach-
ing and definition when they actually take place.
It does not of itself afford security that it will be
called into operation at fitting times and through
worthy motives ; its one object, its only object,
is to give us absolute certainty that what the
Church of Christ, through her authorized teachers,
declares to be a doctrine revealed of God has
really been so revealed. I have no doubt that
God's providence for His Church, and His
138 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
promises to her, extend far beyond the pre-
rogative we are claiming for her now. I believe
that there is a Divine guidance which leads her
to teach, to define and to condemn, as the needs
of the faithful may require. I think it likely,
and the history of the Church encourages me to
think, that special gifts are not often exercised
by very unworthy men. But infallibility is a
singular and specific privilege ; and, both in its
concept and by the usage of those who claim it
for the Church, has no other purpose than to
protect her authorized beliefs from doctrinal
error. You may have seen a child engaged in
writing down from memory a statement or a
story received from a father's lips. Suppose the
child to exercise a perfect freedom of choice as
to the place and time and other circumstances of
the writing, and even as to whether it will write
at all or no ; suppose it, further, to write under
the father's watchful supervision ; and suppose
the father to pledge himself that he will permit
nothing to be set down in writing which was
not in the story as told originally by himself:
should we not have the father's authority for the
story, as put before us by the child? Should
we not regard the child-writer as sharing to the
TEACHING AUTHORITY 139
full in whatever measure of inerrancy we be-
lieved the father to possess ? In somewhat the
same manner we conceive of the infallibility of
Christ's Church : God makes known a revelation
to His Church, through Christ and His Apos-
tles ; she is to believe and teach that revelation,
under God's eye. Suppose Him to guarantee
that her teaching and belief shall express, when-
soever she teaches and believes, with an absolute
truthfulness the revelation originally communi-
cated to her ; and we shall have the only right
and accepted concept of Church infallibility.
But has infallibility, as thus defined and limited,
been bestowed by Christ upon His Church?
There is no a priori argument to establish her
possession of the gift. God was under no com-
pulsion to make any revelation to mankind ;
and, when in His mercy He made it, and com-
pleted it through Christ and His Holy Spirit,
He was not bound to secure, by a further privi-
lege, its permanency and purity. He might have
left it to believers to show their appreciation
of His gift by their vigilance and solicitude in
guarding it. Or He might have taken measures
to preserve its more important doctrines, while
permitting errors to creep in, in those of lesser
140 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
moment. He allows men and societies of men
to throw away wholly or in part many of the best
gifts which He bestows upon them. Nor does
the seeming desirableness of such a privilege
afford any conclusive evidence that it has, in
fact, been granted. Experience proves that
many privileges have been withheld, which seem
to us, and perhaps are, of surpassing excellence
and value. God is the Master of His gifts : He
grants them when and how He pleases.
But, while we hold that there is no convincing
a priori proof of the Church's infallibility, we
maintain its antecedent likelihood. For, consider
how the case stands : God becomes incarnate that
He may more effectually teach men Divine truth.
** To this end was I born," He says to Pilate,
" and for this am I come into the world, that I
may bear witness to the truth. "^ He founds
an imperishable society, and communicates to it
a revelation — a body of truths, by which its faith,
its sacraments, its worship, its laws, its whole
organization are to be determined. He Himself
and His Apostles, men intimately acquainted
with His intentions, are unceasing in their efforts
to make this revelation known ; are emphatic in
1 John xvni. 37.
TEACHING AUTHORITY 141
declaring that its acceptance is essential to salva-
tion ; are insistent that, though an angel from
Heaven should preach another Gospel, he must
be anathema. They compare it with the older
Dispensation, to bring out more clearly its ex-
cellence and perfection ; and they assert explicitly
that it is the full and final measure of super-
natural revelation to be bestowed on man.
Surely, in all this we have proof that Christ and
His Apostles regarded the Christian revelation
as a blessing of inestimable value ? And surely,
too, it is not unreasonable to infer that some
special precaution is likely to be adopted, some
special assistance to be provided, for its preser-
vation? And the simplest and most obvious
means for preserving it would seem to be infalli-
bility in belief and teaching. I do not, of course,
advance the argument, as though it could warrant
us in asserting positively that the gift has been
bestowed ; but it will at least prepare us to con-
sider favourably the evidence, which we now pro-
ceed to deal with.
The teaching Church, as it was first constituted
by Christ Himself, was infallible. The Apostles
themselves were certainly of this opinion. "It
hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to
142 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
us,"^ they write to the Churches at Antioch and
in Syria and Cilicia, after the Council at Jerusalem.
And St. Paul tells the Galatians, in words al-
ready quoted : " Though an angel from heaven
preach a gospel to you, beside that which we
have preached to you, let him be anathema".^
In his first Epistle to the Corinthians, he com-
mends his teaching on the subject of virginity by
the impressive words : *' And I think that I also
have the spirit of God " ; ^ and when he con-
trasts his own preaching with the ** persuasive
words of human wisdom," he tells them that he
had spoken to them *' in showing of the spirit and
of power ; " * '' not in the learned words of human
wisdom, but in the doctrine of the Spirit " ; ^ for,
as he adds: ** We have the mind of Christ".^
Hence the Apostles demanded an absolute ac-
ceptance of their teaching, as though it were God
Himself who taught. Hence St. Paul thanks
God for the Thessalonians, ** because that when
you had received of us the word of the hearing
of God, you received it not as the word of men,
but (as it is, indeed) the word of God V And
1 Acts XV. 28. 2 Gal. I. 8. ^1 Cor. vii. 40.
* Md., II. 4. 5 /i,^^^ 13^ 6 /^/^^^ j6^
^ I Thess. II. 13.
TEACHING AUTHORITY 143
hence the Apostles condemned so earnestly, al-
most fiercely, apostates who rejected any portion
of the Gospel which they had once accepted.
Surely language such as this, a mode of acting
such as this, implies that the doctrines which they
preached had been revealed by God, and that
they themselves were Divinely guided in making
the revelation known ?
But the view, it may be said, which the
Apostles took of the assistance given them for the
fulfilment of their mission need not necessarily be
correct. There have been persons who believed
themselves under a heavenly guidance, when
carrying out purposes in which God had no part.
We have to bear in mind, however, that the
Apostles were Christ's intimate friends, prepared
by Him during three continuous years and in-
structed for their work, "to whom also He
showed Himself alive after His Passion . . .
for forty days appearing to them, and speaking
to them of the Kingdom of God " .^ They must,
therefore, have been in full possession of His
mind, and of His intentions for His Church, and
not at all likely to be mistaken as to the most
valuable of the gifts which He had determined to
1 Acts I. 3.
144 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
bestow on her. We can turn, besides, to Our
Lord's own declarations, which He made to the
Apostles when conferring the office of teachers
upon them ; and we may consider two, recorded
by the Evangelists in their accounts of His last
discourse, when He was about to ascend into
heaven from them. **A11 power is given to
Me," He says in the Gospel of St. Matthew,
"in heaven and on earth. Going, therefore,
teach ye all nations . . . teaching them to observe
all things whatsoever I have commanded you ;
and behold I am with you."^ It is evident that
He is here sending them forth to preach to all men
the full revelation made by God ; and He solemnly
promises to be ** with " them in the work. Now,
I shall ask you to examine carefully and in some
detail the meaning and force of this expression,
** I (God) am with you," and then its bearing on
the mission entrusted to the Apostles. Clearly
we must take it to mean what it ordinarily meant,
at that day, in the language and country of the
speaker, what the Apostles were accustomed to
understand by it, and what they must, . therefore,
have taken it to mean, when Christ addressed it
to them. Under such solemn circumstances, and
1 Matt. XXVIII, 20,
TEACHING AUTHORITY 145
in confiding such high duties to them, He would
not use language which they could not rightly
understand. The phrase occurs repeatedly in
both the Old and the New Testaments ; and it
retains everywhere one fixed and well-defined
meaning. It implies always, on the part of God,
a particular providence, a special watchful care,
of persons and their interests, so that they shall
unfailingly succeed in the undertakings to which
it refers. Thus we read in Genesis that it was
said to Abraham : "God is with thee in all that
thou dost ".^ And, again, God Himself says to
Isaac : " Dwell in the land which I shall tell thee
of . . . and I will be with thee, and will bless
thee ".^ And a little later : ** Fear not, I am with
thee ".^ Of the Patriarch Joseph we are told :
** And the Lord was with Joseph ; and he was a
prosperous man in all things. And his master
saw that the Lord was with him, and that the
Lord made all he did to prosper in his hand."*
So, too, speaking by Isaias, God comforts Israel :
" Fear not, for thou art Mine. When thou shalt
pass through the waters I will be with thee, and
the rivers shall not cover thee. When thou shalt
^ Gen. XXI. 22. 2 y^?/^., xxvi. 3.
' Ibid,<t 26. * Ibid.y XXXIX. 3.
10
146 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
walk in the fire thou shalt not be burned, neither
shall the flames kindle upon thee . . . Fear not,
for I am with thee."^ In the New Testament,
Gabriel salutes God's chosen mother with the
same assurance of a special Divine protection :
"Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee!"^
And, when ** Nicodemus came to Jesus ... he
said to Him : Master, we know that Thou art
come a teacher from God ; for no man can do
these signs which Thou dost, unless God be with
him ".^ St. Peter, too, when sent to Cornelius
and his kinsmen in Cesarea, takes for granted
that even the Gentiles are familiar with the expres-
sion, and its significance, ** Jesus of Nazareth " :
he says to them, **how God anointed Him with
the Holy Ghost and with power ; Who went
about doing good, and healing all that were op-
pressed by the devil ; for God was with Him ".*
Indeed the phrase occurs close upon one hundred
times in the writings of the Old and New Testa-
ments, in contexts exactly similar to that in which
Christ addresses it to the Apostles ; and it invari-
ably bears the meaning we have assigned to it, of
a particular Divine assistance resulting in success.
1 Is. XLIII. 2. 2 Lul^g J ^3
^ John III. 2. * Acts x. 38.
TEACHING AUTHORITY 147
And, furthermore, we find that when God, in
Holy Scripture, makes choice of anyone for a
work of peculiar difficulty, which seems to be be-
yond the natural strength of the agent He has
selected, He is accustomed to inspire confidence,
and to guarantee success by this same expres-
sion. ** Who am I that I should go to Pharao,
and should bring forth the children of Israel out
of Egypt ? " Moses protested, when God ap-
pointed him their deliverer. And God said to
him, ** I will be with thee ".^ Again, when He
destined Jeremias to the cities of Juda, and the
reluctant prophet objected to the Divine call :
" Ah, Lord God ! behold I cannot speak, for I
am a child," God's answer was : '* Thou, there-
fore, gird up thy loins and arise and speak to
them all that I command thee ... for behold I
am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee ".^
And, when Gideon mistrusted his ability to
" deliver Israel out of the hand of Madian " :
" Behold, my family is the meanest in Manasses,
and I am the least of my father's house," the
Lord said to him, '* I will be with thee ; and
thou shalt cut off Madian as one man ".^ And,
^Exod. HI. 3. ^]er. i. 6, 17, 19.
^Jud. VI. 15.
10*
148 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
once again, in the New Testament, in the midst
of St. Pauls dangers from the Jews of Corinth,
the Lord said to him : ** Do not fear, but speak,
and hold not thy peace ; because I am with thee,
and no man shall hurt thee ".^
But there is no need to accumulate further evi-
dence. Nothing can be more certain than the
invariable meaning in Scripture language, the
language most familiar to Our Lord and His
Apostles, of the phrase, ** I, God, am with thee ".
It signifies always a very special and efficacious
Divine assistance ; and, more particularly, when
a commission is given, which appears to be
beyond human strength, it carries with it a
Divine promise of complete success. Does not
something of the idea attach to the phrase we
ourselves so often use when a friend sets out on
any arduous undertaking : ** God be with you " ?
Now, what was the undertaking, what the
commission, which Christ entrusted to His
Apostles, and to which He subjoined the pro-
mise : " I am with you all days " ? The Gospels
answer: "Go, teach all nations," **.Go, preach
the Gospel to every creature," "Teach them to
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
^ Acts xvni. 9.
TEACHING AUTHORITY 149
you ". Here, surely, is a commission of more
than ordinary difficulty — to teach all men all
things whatsoever Christ had taught the Apostles.
They, the rude illiterate fishermen, *' foolish and
slow of heart to believe," are to publish to the
world the whole revelation which He had made
known to them ; not adding to it, not taking from
it, not changing in any wise the Divine message.
And so He promises to be *' with them" — to
watch over, and to assist them, to secure the
complete success of the teaching mission He has
imposed upon them. Can He do so, if He per-
mits them to fall into error, in the ** teaching of
the nations," in the "preaching of the Gospel to
every creature"? Must He not see to it that
they teach and preach what they have heard and
learned from Him ?
And consider also, in the account St. Mark
gives of the same momentous incident, what he
tells us of the sanction under which Christ sent
His Apostles to " preach the Gospel " : "He that
believeth not," Christ says to them, "shall be
condemned ". He binds all men, under the most
terrible of penalties, to accept the Divine message
in its entirety when presented to them. They
may, indeed, nay, ought to, verify the credentials
150 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
of His messengers ; but they may not examine
critically the message itself. They may not give
a qualified or limited assent. They may not ac-
cept a part and reject the rest. They may not
refuse any the least portion of the Divine gift.
And can we conceive a wise and merciful Re-
deemer imposing such a stringent obligation,
and under such a fearful penalty, if any part of
the message, as delivered, be untrue? When
He binds men, under pain of everlasting misery,
to accept His revelation, as it is announced to
them by His messengers, does He not bind Him-
self to have it announced as He had made it
known? Or, does He command men solemnly
to believe falsehood as well as truth, and under
the same penalty ? And how can He exclude all
falsehood from the teaching of the Apostles unless
He confers infallibility upon them ?
The Apostles, therefore, that is, the teaching
Church, at the time of its foundation, received
the gift of infallibility, for their work of teaching
the revelation made through Christ. And, as we
have seen from their language and from their
ways of acting, they themselves understood
clearly that the gift had been bestowed upon
them. Now, is it likely, is it even credible, that
TEACHING AUTHORITY 151
the first teachers of the Church should receive the
gift, if it was to perish with them ? Christ draws
the Apostles to Him, keeps them with Him for
three years, during which He instructs and trains
them, sends down His Holy Spirit upon them,
•' as it were in parted tongues of fire," and further
safeguards the revelation which He commissions
them to announce by making them infallible.
The Apostles pass away ; their place is filled by
other teachers not formed personally by Christ ;
the Christian revelation must be announced until
the consummation of the world ; the penalty for
non-acceptance of it remains unaltered ; the
danger of error and adulteration grows as one
generation succeeds another : can we, then, be-
lieve that Christ withdraws the safeguard which
He gave in the beginning, just when the need
for it becomes more pressing ? Every probability
points the other way. It was no purely personal
privilege conferred on the Apostles. It was no
mere reward of personal merit. It was granted
to them, for the advantage of those whom they
were to teach. It was attached to the teaching
office, which they were to fill. As long, therefore,
we may conclude, as the teaching office continues
in the Church, as long as men are bound to accept
152 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
the Church's teaching, so long will that teaching
remain infallible.
But further, as we have already seen, the
Church which Christ established is to endure for
ever. Not only is there to be a visible Society,
which shall bear Christ's name ; but it is to
continue one and the same in specific character
and constitution, from the time when He laid its
foundation until it is perfected by His second
coming. Its object, its form of government, its
sacramental system cannot change. It cannot
become other than what He planned and
fashioned. Now, the teaching authority of the
Church is of its very essence, as Christ established
it, like the revelation He commissioned it to pre-
serve and preach. If the teaching authority
which was once infallible should become liable to
error; if the doctrines "once delivered to the
saints " should become corrupted in transmission ;
if the Church's faith to-day should be different
from that of yesterday or of the day before ; with
what semblance of truth could it be said that the
Church of Christ, the same Church founded by
Him and built up by His Apostles, is with us still,
and will remain with us for ever ? And how can
identity of teaching and of consequent belief be
TEACHING AUTHORITY 153
secured, generation after generation, unless He
makes His Church infallible? The argument,
therefore, appears to be conclusive that, as the
Apostles were, so their successors will be, be-
yond the reach of error in their teaching office
until Christ comes again.
And we are confirmed in our certainty by the
direct and explicit promise of Christ. Let us take
up once more the words in which He pledged
Himself to guard the Apostles against all doc-
trinal error in their preaching of the Gospel :
" Going, therefore, preach . . . and behold, I am
with you — with you, all days, even to the con-
summation of the world ". By the words, " I am
with you," He promises them, as we have seen,
infallibility. By the words, "even to the con-
summation of the world," He extends the promise
to the very end of time. The " you " in " I am
with you " does not restrict the gift to the Apostles
only. It was very usual with Christ to address
Himself to those before Him, as representatives
of others like them in all future generations. The
Sermon on the Mount is rich in examples :
"Blessed are ye that hunger now"; "Wo to
you that are rich " ; "Be ye, therefore, merci-
ful"; "Bless them that curse you," and many
154 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
others/ " Thus, therefore, shall you pray," "^ He
says, when suggesting a form to be used by all men,
throughout all time. '* You shall hear of wars and
rumours of wars,"^ He tells the Apostles, when
pointing out to them the signs of His second com-
ing. Again, in the sixth chapter of St. John, He
warns the multitude : " Amen, amen, I say unto
you, except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man,
and drink His blood, you shall not have life in
you".'* And we might multiply texts almost in-
definitely which while addressed to Christ's im-
mediate hearers, are obviously meant, like those
just quoted, for all His followers to whose know-
ledge they may come. Is it not, indeed, quite
customary, in our own daily life, to speak of
those who have long since died, and of those still
unborn, in words that, taken literally, point only
to ourselves ? We have no fear that any will
misunderstand us, when we say that "We Irish
Catholics have struggled and borne persecution,
through centuries, to preserve our faith " ; or
when we add: "And we shall continue to
struggle, through other centuries, if necessary,
to secure and to maintain our religious rights ".
i-Luke VI. 21-36. 2 Matt. vi. 9.
3 Ibid., XXIV. 6. * John vi. 54.
TEACHING AUTHORITY 155
Such modes of thought and speech are not con-
fined to any people or to any tongue. And so,
in our text, " I am with you," the words spoken
primarily to the Apostles, and declaring their
inerrancy, are applicable also to their successors
in the teaching office ; and the added clause :
" Until the consummation of the world," shows
evidently that they must be so applied ; for the
Apostles are not themselves to preach, *' until the
consummation of the world ". If Christ be " with
them " until then, it must be in the persons of
those to whom they hand on their commission
and their authority.
Finally, the same Divine promise is given to
the Church in Christ's words to St. Peter at
Cesarea Philippi, from which we have already
drawn a proof that she cannot perish. "Thou
art Peter," He says, "and upon this rock I will
build My Church ; and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against her."^ He gives warning of the
trials and dangers in store for her ; He implies
that her whole history is to be one of struggle and
combat ; and He adds the assurance, absolute
and unqualified, that she shall not be worsted in
the strife : no enemies " shall prevail against her".
^Matt. XVI. 1 8.
156 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Now, the full significance of this assurance, as it
bears upon the question with which we are en-
gaged, is only to be understood when we reflect
on the objects for which the Church was founded.
Chief amongst them was the spread and preser-
vation of the doctrines which Christ taught.
Indeed, this purpose underlies all others, for our
conception of the Church and our acceptance of
her claims rest wholly on what Christ has revealed
to us concerning her. Her most important office,
her fundamental duty, is, therefore, to announce
and safeguard the revelation made by Christ.
She fails in her mission if she neglects to make
that revelation known ; and she fails no less
if she corrupts the Divine message, or allows it
to become corrupted in her keeping. How could
her enemies more entirely "prevail against her "
than by effecting an admixture of falsehood with
revealed truth in the Church's common faith,
or by leading her to preach man's mere inventions
as the revealed Gospel of Christ? She must
not, under pain of failure, of ceasing to be the
society of believers which Christ established, hold
any doctrine as revealed which God has not
revealed to her. She must not deny any doctrine
which He has revealed. She may not contradict
TEACHING AUTHORITY 157
to-day what at any time she has ever taught.
She can no more alter her creed than she can
alter her Sacramental system or her form of
government. And, if she is to preserve it un-
altered, she must be safeguarded against error in
belief and teaching, she must be protected by
passive and active infallibility.
We have thus, I think, found abundant warrant
in the Gospels for the statement we set out to
demonstrate : that Christ's Church on earth has
received from Him this high privilege. We
should have judged it antecedently likely that He
would bestow the gift upon her. In His recorded
conversations with the Apostles He pledges Him-
self repeatedly and very solemnly to do so. The
Apostles themselves, the official teachers whom
He has appointed and trained, show plainly, by
their words and acts, that they are certain the
pledge has been fulfilled. And the whole history
of the infant Church — the unconditional assent
which she demands for all her teaching, the
decision and finality with which she condemns
opposing errors, the penalties she threatens and
inflicts on heresy — all conspire to prove Christ's
Church infallible.
There remain certain consequential questions
158 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
which present themselves here for solution.
Some of them we can deal with briefly but suf-
ficiently at once ; others will come up for treat-
ment more appropriately at a further stage of our
inquiries.
First, then, Who is the ** Subject " of infalli-
bility ? Who are the persons upon whom the
gift is bestowed ? Infallibility of belief, or passive
infallibility, we have already seen, vests in the
whole body of believers, in all the members of
the Church ; infallibility of teaching, or active
infallibility, in the whole body of the Church's
teachers. Who these teachers are and whether
any one or other of them can be singled out as
possessed of special privileges, we need not now
determine. Nor is it necessary to define with
any great accuracy what measure of agreement
in believing or in teaching is required as evi-
dence that the gift is operating. Two things
seem certain : one, that absolute unanimity nei-
ther is, nor can be, essential ; the other, that
agreement must have reached such a point that
the majority can be accounted morally the body.
When we know that the faithful, as a body,
though there may be exceptions, hold a doctrine
to be revealed of God, we know, too, that it is so
TEACHING AUTHORITY 159
revealed ; and when we know that the official
teachers of the Church, as a body, though there
may be exceptions, teach a doctrine as revealed
of God, we know, too, that that doctrine is re-
vealed.
Secondly, What is the " Object " of infallibility ?
What are the doctrines, in teaching and believ-
ing which, the Church is under this Divine pro-
tection ? The whole Christian revelation, every
truth revealed by God to man, and commended
by Christ to the Apostles, when He bade them
*'go preach the Gospel to every creature".
Other connected truths may also be included ;
whether it is so or not, we shall probably have
occasion to inquire later ; but, at present, it is
enough to show, as we have shown, that the
whole *' Deposit of Faith," the whole body of doc-
trines entrusted by Christ to the keeping of His
Church, is covered by her infallibility.
Thirdly, How are we to determine the content
of that revelation ? How are we to know the
limits of that doctrinal territory within which the
Church can exercise her infallible authority?
As in the case of all authority, so here, many
questions will lie clearly within her jurisdiction,
many others will as clearly lie outside. In those
i6o THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
which seem doubtful, it will be for the Church
herself to decide. A lower tribunal may deter-
mine the sphere of its own authority in doubtful
cases, though subject to appeal ; the highest
tribunal must determine it, since there is no other
tribunal to which appeal can be made.
Fourthly, How shall we tell when the Church
is exercising her Divine gift ? How may we
know she is teaching or holds a truth infallibly ?
When in any way it is made clear to us that she
is using the fullness of her teaching authority.
She may tolerate opinions in matters of religion,
may approve of them as edifying or pious, may
hold or recommend them as more probable, as
true, or even as certain : and yet there may be no
question of her infallibility, nor of the Divinely
revealed Deposit. But, if the whole Church
should accept a doctrine as revealed, or should
solemnly propose it as a doctrine of Divine faith
through the teaching of Pope or General Council
or the dispersed episcopate : then we know for
certain that belief and teaching are infallible.
Fifthly, What is our obligation to assent, when
the Church so believes or teaches? The same
obligation as though it were God Himself Who
spoke to us immediately. Indeed, our assent is
TEACHING AUTHORITY i6i
given in such cases not to the Church but to God.
I believe the revealed truth, because it is God
Who has revealed it ; and I am certain that God
has revealed it because His Church, Divinely
safeguarded, tells me infallibly that He has
done so.
Other questions bearing upon infallibility we
may defer till later.
Let me sum up, then, very briefly what we
have thus far discussed and decided. We have
seen that in the New Testament writings we
have trustworthy records of the life and doctrines
of Christ. From these records we have learned,
with entire certainty, that Christ claimed to be,
and was, God Himself. From them, too, we
know, beyond all reasonable doubt, that Christ,
the Man God, established a visible Society, which
He called His Church ; which is to endure on
earth, essentially unchanged, until the end of
time ; which is and can be only one — one in
religious faith, worship, government ; which is
Divinely protected against all error in teaching
and believing the revelation entrusted to her ;
and which all men are bound, under the gravest
penalties, to enter, when her claims have been
made known to them.
II
i62 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
That visible society or Church is still on earth,
the same to-day in all essentials as Christ planned
and founded her. And we are in a position now
to identify her. In our next Lecture we shall
proceed to do so.
LECTURE VI.
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST?
In the previous Lectures, we established the
value of the New Testament writings as
historical records, and we proved from them the
Divinity of Christ and the foundation by Him
of a world-wide visible society which He called
His Church. This Church, we saw, is imperish-
able. It is the depositary of Christ's teaching
and sacraments ; and Christ Himself commands
all men to become members of it. It is, and
can be, only one, one among the many rival
religious societies, of which each claims to be
the Church of Christ, or to be at least a branch
or portion of it. It is, therefore, all-important
for us to determine which it is. That is the
question I purpose discussing with you now ; and
I hope to show that the Catholic Church in
communion with the See of Rome, and that
163 II ♦
i64 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Church alone, is the Church which Christ estab-
lished.
We may begin by narrowing the field of our
inquiry. All non-Christian bodies may be ex-
cluded from consideration, for it is clear that the
Church of Christ is not to be found among those
who reject His personal claims, His distinctive
teachings, and ignore or repudiate the very
existence of any society which looks to Him as
its founder.
Nor is there any need to examine in detail
the position of such other religious associations
as call themselves, indeed, by the Christian
name, and accept some Christian doctrines,
while they deny others that lie at the very
foundation of the Christian faith and Christian
organization. There are those who profess a
reverence for Christ and for the laws of moral
conduct which He taught, and yet believe Him
to be only man, or at least think it allowable to
question His Divinity. Now, as we have al-
ready seen, if there be one doctrine more than
another which Our Lord Himself taught clearly
and insistently ; if there be any one which His
Apostles preached as of supreme importance ; if
there be one on which, as on a foundation stone,
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 165
the Church of Christ was established, surely it is
the doctrine that Christ is God. And what part
with the Church of Christ can a body have which
rejects or doubts her central dogma, and, with
that dogma, her Sacraments, her worship, and
her authority ?
We proceed, then, to consider the religious
bodies which profess belief in the Divinity of
Christ, which accept what they believe to be
His teachings, and are organized into societies
which correspond, they think, with the kingdom
that He established. Unfortunately, there are
many such bodies. There is the Anglican Epis-
copal Communion, there is the Greek Church, or
rather there are the various sections — Russian,
Bulgarian, Servian, Hellenic, Turkish — into
which the Greek Church has divided. There
are the Lutherans in Northern Germany, Den-
mark, Sweden, and Norway. There are the
Presbyterians in Switzerland, Scotland, Ulster,
and North America. There are the different
" Connexions " into which Methodism has broken
up ; and there are some hundreds of other less
numerous and less well-known associations : all
bearing the Christian name and reverencing the
Bible. Finally, there is the Church of which
1 66 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
we ourselves are members. Obviously, in face
of such divisions, three questions present them-
selves. Can the aggregate of all these bodies,
the whole multitude of men and women, who call
themselves after the name of Christ, confess H is
Divinity, and accept portions of His teaching,
can they, all together, make up that one Church
which He established? And, if not, can any
smaller group, the Episcopal, for instance —
Anglican, Greek, and Roman — which claim to
possess Sacramental Orders, transmitted lawfully
from Apostolic times? Or, is there only one
among all these conflicting bodies, which is
marked with the characteristics of Christ's true
Church ; and is that one our own, the Church in
communion with the Bishop and See of Rome ?
With the first question we can, I think, deal
very briefly : it is quite impossible to conceive of
the Church of Christ as composed of all the
various societies that take His name. They
make no pretence, they have no wish, to form
one organization. They have no common creed,
no common worship, no common systerh of laws,
no common authority. Many of them are en-
gaged in a bitter and ceaseless endeayour to
destroy one another. If Christ's Kingdom upon
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 167
earth be one, in any intelligible sense of the word,
it cannot be constituted by such warring elements.
Besides, every argument we shall advance against
the Anglican theory of a three-branched Church
— of one Church composed of Anglican, Greek,
and Roman provinces or branches — must tell
with intensified force against a Church composed
of them and of all the other Christian bodies.
What, then, is this branch theory, which has
found so much acceptance among members of the
Anglican communion, especially since the days
of the Oxford Movement ? We are asked to
conceive of the Church of Christ as a great tree,
whose branches fill the earth. The tree is one,
the branches are distinct ; but all draw life from
the same source, which gives a corporate unity
to the whole. And we are asked further to
believe that there are only three branches in the
Church ; because Episcopal and Priestly Orders
validly transmitted are of the very essence of the
Church of Christ ; and it is only in the Anglican,
Greek, and Roman Churches that such Orders
can be found. Lutherans, Dutch Calvinists,
Scotch Presbyterians, all the Nonconformist
sects, are, in this Anglican theory, without the
Christian Church. They neither have, nor claim
i68 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
to have, Bishops and Priests with Divinely ap-
pointed powers, handed on by generation to
generation, from Apostolic times, through Di-
vinely appointed Sacramental rites. Anglicans
alone, they say, with Greeks and Roman
Catholics, have, and claim to have, a Sacrament
of Orders, which only Bishops can confer ; and
therefore, Anglicans, Greeks, and Roman Ca-
tholics alone belong to and constitute the Church
of Christ.
Now, on this theory we may remark at the
outset, and it is a weighty argument against its
truth, that it is wholly modern, entirely unthought
of through all the earliest ages of Church history.
Neither those who separated from the primitive
Church in local schisms, nor those who took
part in the sad division of East and West, and
in the Reformation troubles of the sixteenth
century, had recourse to it ; and we can hardly
doubt it would have been at least discussed, had
anyone imagined it was tenable.
Further, even in our own day, though it has
been prominently before the world for. three-
quarters of a century, it finds no one to accept
and advocate it, outside the Anglican Com-
munion. A section, a small minority, most pro-
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 169
bably, of the Church of England, maintains the
theory ; the large majority of Protestant Episco-
palians know nothing of it ; while Greeks and
Roman Catholics repudiate it utterly. Is it
likely that the Church of Christ is constituted on
a pattern which not one in a hundred of her
members will acknowledge ?
Are we to believe that the true constitution of
the Christian Church was hidden from mankind,
from the Church herself, throughout nineteen
centuries, and was only then made known to a
little group of Anglican theologians who have
failed to persuade any but a handful of their own
Communion that their conception of the Church
is that of Christ ?
Nor is the theory merely novel, and incredible
to those for whom it was intended : in itself it
is quite untenable. We can, indeed, conceive of
local Churches largely independent of each other,
yet forming one ecclesiastical society, through
unity of faith, of communion, and of supreme
government. Such were the Churches of Gaul,
of Spain, of Africa, and others in the early cen-
turies. Such are the Catholic Churches of France,
of Ireland, of Germany, of the United States, and
many others, in our own day. But, where in-
170 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
dependence changes into hostility, where inter-
communion is denied, where there is no common
social authority which all are prepared to recog-
nize, what social unity can there be? How can
distinct and warring bodies be said to form
one society ? When the States of the American
Union seceded from the Mother Country, when
they repudiated her authority, set up an inde-
pendent Government of their own, and pro-
ceeded to make war against her, did they not
cease to form one kingdom with her, even though
they still retained her language, her laws, and her
traditions ? Could they, can they now, with any
propriety of thought or of expression, be said to
form a branch or province of the Empire ? And
if another of the colonies should break away or
be cast off, though it did nothing else than cease
to obey the authority it had obeyed before, would
it not cease to be a portion of the King's do-
minions? Now, God's Church is not less one
than any civil state. We have seen, from the
terms of its institution, and from theteaching and
action of the Apostles, that all its members must
be linked together in unity of faith, of Sacraments,
of communion, and, above all, of government.
It is not, as we saw, a loose federation of more
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 171
or less independent states. It is one organized
society, one " Kingdom," one " Household," one
living " Body," whose members act and re-act
upon each other, and are joined and controlled
in living unity by one principle of life, which is
a common and supreme authority. But, what
unity can we discover in this aggregate of
"branches" or "provinces"? They have no
one visible government which all are prepared to
obey. They have no one profession of Faith,
which all will accept as sufficient and essential.
They have no common religious rites and Sacra-
ments which all may partake of, and to which all
are to be admitted. Each charges the others with
heresy and with schism. Each counts it a duty
and a gain to make proselytes from the others.
And this condition of things has lasted, between
Greeks and Roman Catholics, for eight and a
half centuries ; between English Protestants on
the one hand, and both Greece and Rome upon
the other, for close upon four hundred years. I
am not seeking now to apportion blame for this
disunion, to determine its origin, or to fix the
charge of heresy or schism on any of the con-
tending bodies. I only ask you to observe
that there is disunion, disunion bitter, long con-
172 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
tinued, on fundamental points in the very con-
stitution and teaching of the Church ; and then
to say is it not a mockery to maintain, as Angli-
cans maintain, that these three antagonistic
bodies form one social organization, the one
Church of Christ ?
Or conceive if you can the branch theory set
out for the acceptance of St. Paul, of the St. Paul
on whose emphatic language to the Ephesians
and the Corinthians, on the subject of Church
unity, we have already dwelt. Tell him that
the Church which he and the Apostles founded
has become divided into rival parties ; that the
three chief of these are wholly at variance in
their symbols of belief; that they refuse to com-
municate in the same Sacraments, or join in the
same religious worship ; that they are ruled by
pastors who are openly and earnestly hostile to
each other ; but that the Church is still essentially
unchanged, is still one and the same with that
Apostolic Church which he laboured to establish,
and which had only one Faith, one worship, one
and the same Sacraments, one supreme governing
authority. Would not St. Paul reply that it was
not so he had conceived of the Church's con-
stitution ; that it was not so their Master had
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 173
explained it to the Apostles ; that the unity which
Christ had promised, and they had striven to
realize, was not a curious abstraction, the object,
for centuries, of prayer and longing, but a concrete
fact, an essential attribute, in every period of the
Church's history ?
The Church of Christ, then, is not to be found
in an impossible combination of these three con-
flicting societies. No visible kingdom was ever
constituted of provinces which acknowledged no
visible and common ruler, which permitted no
civil and social intercourse between their citizens,
which made unceasing and active war upon each
other.
And yet the Church of Christ must be identical
with one of these three bodies. They, and they
alone, among all others, have preserved even the
outward forms of that essential organization,
which Christ and His Apostles gave to the Apos-
tolic Church. In no other bodies do we meet
with even a claim to Divinely;appointed teachers,
to doctrinal infallibility, to unity of Faith, to an
ordered transmission of priestly powers, to any
Sacramental system, to a world-wide mission, to
one common ruling authority. Indeed, the only
oneness those others can make show of is that of
174 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
name, and of a few so-called fundamental doc-
trines. What else have the Calvinists of Geneva
in common with those of Scotland ? Or the
Methodists of the United States with those of
Wales ? The Church of Christ, then, is identical
with that of Greece, or that of England, or that
of Rome : where we use the names to designate
not geographical areas, but religious bodies. To
these three we may confine our further inquiry.
And here we are compelled, however unwill-
ingly, to touch on controversy. I have en-
deavoured hitherto to avoid everything which
could cause pain or give offence to others. I
have desired only to explain and justify our own
position. Religious controversy, like every other,
leads few souls into the truth. But we must
enter, in some degree, upon it here. For we have
to show that the Roman Catholic Church, alone
among rival claimants, is the one true Church of
Christ. This we cannot do, unless by rejecting
the claims of others, especially the Greek and
Anglican Communions. We must only strive
to do it temperately and in charity.
And first, as to the Greek or, as it is frequently
called, the ** Orthodox Greek " Communion. We
are to note that it is by no means limited to the
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 175
Christian population of either ancient or modern
Greece. It includes all the Episcopal Churches
in the East, which were once united with the See
of Rome, but which parted from her, first for a time,
under Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, in
the ninth century, and then permanently, under
Michael Caerularius, about 1054. It counts large
numbers of adherents in the Turkish Empire ;
it is spread throughout the whole of Russia ; it is
the religion of the Kingdoms of Greece, Servia,
Montenegro, Roumania, and Bulgaria. Its total
membership must be about one hundred millions.
And it has preserved a great portion of the
Catholic inheritance ; almost all the dogmas of
the Faith, valid Episcopal Succession, Priestly Or-
ders, the Sacrament and Sacrifice of the Euchar-
ist, private Confession and absolution of sins, all
seven Sacraments, devotion to the Blessed Mother
of God and to the other saints, a belief in Pur-
gatory and in prayer for the departed. But it is
not the Church of Christ. Indeed it is not a
Church at all. For Christ's Church, as we have
seen, is an organized Society, the parts of which
are united by a common bond, which can only be
authority. Now, in the Churches of the Greek
Communion there is no common authority. In
176 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Greece itself they are governed by an Episcopal
Synod appointed by the King. In Russia by
the Holy Synod, which is wholly dependent on
the Emperor. In the Balkan States by National
Synods, each within its own territory. In Turkey
by the four Patriarchs — Constantinople, Alex-
andria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. And each
Synod and Patriarch is wholly independent of
every other ; no claim is admitted, no claim is
made, that any should have a right of interference
within another's jurisdiction. It is true, no doubt,
that there is a certain unity of belief among these
Churches ; points of difference are few and un-
important. But the fact seems due to the con-
servatism or intellectual inactivity of the Eastern
mind ; for there is no principle of unity among
them : and as there is no one governing, so
there is no one teaching, authority. Each na-
tional Church in its national Synod may formulate
its creed as it judges best. No power is recog-
nized on earth as competent to declare offi-
cially what the Faith of the Greek Church is.
Such an aggregation of independent bodies is
clearly not the Church of Christ. It corresponds
in no way with the " Kingdom," " Household,"
" City," " Sheepfold," of which Our Lord spoke,
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 177
or with the living human '* body," which was the
chosen metaphor of St. Paul. Nor does the
Greek Church claim to be the one true Church.
It makes no such claim, and has never made it, for
any of the national establishments, into which it
has broken up. And, whatever may have been
its case, when all the Eastern Bishoprics were
grouped about the Patriarchate of Constantinople,
and acknowledged a primacy of honour in that
See, now at any rate, that the primacy has been
set aside, and that the national Churches are as
independent of each other as are the civil States,
the claim is not put forward even for the aggre-
gate of the Eastern Churches. We have it,
therefore, that these Churches make no exclusive
claim to be the Church of Christ ; that they are
without the living unifying principle which Christ
instituted in His Kingdom to make it and to
keep it one ; that they are in fact not one, but
separate and independent bodies. We may, I
think, in consequence, conclude unhesitatingly
that the Orthodox or Eastern Church is not
Christ's Church.
And what of the Anglican Communion ? By
the Anglican Communion I mean the whole body
of Protestant Episcopalians, represented by the
12
178 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Bishops of English-speaking countries, who
assemble from time to time in Lambeth for Pan-
Anglican Synods. Their dioceses lie in England,
Scotland, Ireland, in the various Colonies of the
British Empire, and in the United States of
America ; with a very few others, such as Jeru-
salem, Southern Europe, and Korea. It is not
of course contended that the Anglican Church in
any of these countries is the one true Church of
Christ ; no one has ever put forward such a
theory. A merely local Church — whether of a
city, a province, or an empire — cannot be Christ's
universal Church. But it may be argued that
Protestant Episcopalians in their entirety do
constitute that Church : for they are to be met
with everywhere ; and in number they are many
millions. Let us examine if it be so.
And, first, if we consider them as an aggregate
of all the local Churches, they are in the same
position as the Greeks : they may be one in
name, in methods, and in objects ; but they have
no organic unity. They are distinct and inde-
pendent bodies. There is no common authority
which can legislate for all ; no common authority
which can everywhere declare what are revealed
doctrines. The Bishops of the Anglican Com-
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 179
munion can indeed meet together in Lambeth or
in Canterbury ; and the Anglican Archbishop,
who holds the Cathedral of Anselm and Thomas
Becket, will probably be invited to preside over
them. But no one has a right to convene them :
they meet because they themselves choose to
meet, as might the members of a Section on
Religion in the British Association ; and the out-
come of their conferences and discussions is en-
tirely without authority. They cannot decide a
doctrinal controversy. They cannot determine a
point of liturgy. They cannot enact or abrogate
a single detail of Church discipline. They know,
they have been warned, and they profess, that
even a Pan-Anglican Synod can only discuss
and offer counsel ; it can neither teach nor com-
mand authoritatively. There is no living prin-
ciple of unity in the Anglican, as there is none
in the Greek, Communion. And the consequences
are more disastrous among the Anglicans than
among the Easterns. There is in fact no unity of
faith among them ; a loyal Anglican may hold
whichever he may chooseof contradictory opinions
upon the most vital points of Church doctrine.
Ask him, for instance, if Christ be really present
in the Eucharist ; he will tell you, on the authority
12*
i8o THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
of a late Primate of the Church of England, that
you may affirm and that you may deny it. Ask
him has the priesthood of his Church the power
of offering sacrifice, and the power of forgiving
sin : he will answer that the most learned and
the most devoted members of his Church are
divided on both questions. Ask him, again, is
Episcopacy of Divine institution, and are priestly
powers transmitted by Sacramental rites : he
must reply that high Anglican authorities may
be quoted on both sides of the controversy. Is
marriage a Christian Sacrament, or is it merely
a civil contract, subject, like other contracts, to
State control, and terminable by mutual consent
or legal sentence? He will admit that some
maintain its sacred character ; but others, the
majority, indeed, and not a few among the pastors
of his Church, maintain the contrary. May a
minister of his communion deny the efficacy and
need of Baptism, and still continue to exercise
the ministry? He must say that so it has been
legally decided. Baptism, the Eucharist, Penance,
Marriage, the Sacrifice of the Mass, the histor-
icity and inspiration of the Scriptures, the Resur-
rection of Christ our Lord, His very Divinity —
and we might add almost indefinitely to the list
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? i8i
— are all doctrines on which an approved and ac-
knowledged member of the Church of England
may believe almost anything he chooses. And
he is free to do so, because he has no authoritative
teacher, to whom all must listen. No doubt,
there are the Holy Scriptures, the early Councils
and tradition, which many Anglicans hold in un-
questioning reverence. But where is the living
authoritative interpreter ? Who is to apply the
dead rule to present issues? As matters stand,
it must be each man's private judgment. Synods
and Convocations, whether of York or Canter-
bury, of Ireland, or the United States, or even of
all the Anglican Churches, make no claim to an
infallible authority. Formularies are dead things ;
and there is no living judge of controversies. No
wonder that the very foundations of the Faith
are so uncertain, that there is such diversity of
belief, and such vital and never-ending differences.
And no wonder we fail to find in such a Church
that Kingdom of Christ on earth, which He
promised should be ever one in faith, in worship,
and in government.
But, indeed, the Protestant Episcopalian Church
and the members of the Anglican Communion,
make no claim to constitute, by themselves alone,
i82 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
that Kingdom ; they profess — or those of them
who hold that Christ's Church is visibly to endure
for ever — that they themselves are only part, a
"province" or a "branch," of the great world-
wide organization. And, how unfounded, how
impossible, that theory is, we have seen already.
Neither Easterns, then, nor Anglicans have
any title to be thought the Church of Christ. In
both Communions there are high graces and lofty
virtues, and noble Christian characters ; there are
precious truths of revelation, and a rich outpour-
ing of Divine blessings. But the special mark
and seal of the Christian Church, the oneness of
Faith, government, and means of sanctification,
which Christ made essential — that is possessed
by neither of them in fact or principle.
And here we might almost end our inquiry.
For, if the Protestant Episcopalian Churches do
not constitute the true Church of Christ ; if it be
not formed of the Greek or Eastern Churches ;
and if the branch theory advanced by Anglicans
be unfounded and erroneous ; then we may infer
at once, and with the utmost certainty, that the
Church of Christ is the Catholic Church, the
Church of which we ourselves are members.
We have seen, and we have proved, that the
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 183
visible Church of Christ is an imperishable society.
Therefore, it exists somewhere in the world of
to-day ; and may be recognized by those who
duly seek it. It is not to be sought in an aggre-
gate of all who take Christ's name, or even con-
fess His Divinity. It is not to be found among
the lesser religious bodies, which have broken
away from larger organizations, and make no
claim to be more than fragments. It is not the
Eastern Church ; it is not the Anglican ; it is not
both of them conjoined, together with the Church of
Rome. Therefore, it must inevitably be this last
Church ; for there is no other possible claimant
to the title. The argument is the "argument of
exclusion " ; and it is convincing.
But, furthermore, as the absence of organic
unity is certain proof that the religious society, in
which we observe it, is not Christ's Church, so
its existence in a religious body stamps that body
as the true Church of Christ. And the proof be-
comes more and more convincing as the society
spreads more and more widely, and as the unity
which it manifests is not merely in the present,
but is also a oneness with its own past. A sect
may be, every sect is, in the beginning, one.
Those who form it must have something in
i84 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
common, to join in separating from the parent
body. But as they grow in numbers, as they
extend from one country to another, as genera-
tion follows generation, only a Divine influence
can prevent further divisions from taking place
amongst them. And in a world-wide society,
like the Christian Church, embracing, as it does,
men of every race and class and prejudice, of the
most varied intelligence and education, in every
kind of circumstances and of surroundings, living
on, too, from generation to generation, and from
century to century, abiding unity can only be
from God : the Church herself must be Divine.
And it is plain, I think, to all unprejudiced ob-
servers that in the Catholic Church there is a
wondrous and a perfect unity.
She is one in Faith. The charge, indeed, is
commonly brought against her that independence
and originality of thought are impossible to her
members, because of the crushing uniformity of
belief which she imposes on them. This is not
the time to examine the accusation ; but it testi-
fies, at any rate, to the unity of religious faith
amongst us. Not that all believe explicitly the
same individual doctrines. Beyond the limits of
the Church's authoritative teaching, there is a
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 185
wide field open to discussion ; there have been,
there are, rival schools of Catholic theology ;
there may be different, even contradictory,
opinions as to whether one or other particular
tenet is or is not contained in the Christian Reve-
lation ; even the explicit teaching of the Church
will be brought home differently to different
minds, according to their powers of intellect, and
opportunities for gaining knowledge. But the
disputations of the schools and religious contro-
versy among Catholics are rarely concerned with
revealed truths at all ; they deal chiefly with in-
ferences from them. Controversy is ever* carried
on with entire submission to Church authority.
The disputants are ready to abide by her decision,
if and when the Church sees fit to give a decision
to them. Then there is a great body of revealed
teaching, which all the children of the Church have
learned explicitly and hold in common. No single
truth which she proposes for belief may ever be
called in question by any of her members. And,
above all, her children see in her a Divinely ap-
pointed guide, who speaks to them with a living
voice, which "can neither deceive nor be de-
ceived ". No wonder they have unity of Faith,
not as an accidental fact, but as the necessary re-
1 86 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
suit of obedience to such a teacher, whom they
listen to, within defined limits, as they would
listen to their Divine Founder.
Further, the Catholic Church is one in Sacra-
ments and Sacrifice. Wherever her temples and
her ministers are to be found, there her children
will find the same ministrations, to which all are
everywhere admitted. There may be differ-
ences of language ; there may be peculiarities of
liturgy and ceremonial ; but there is no differ-
ence as to the number, the nature, the efficacy
of her Sacraments, and none as to the reality of
her Sacrifice, or the value and effects of its
oblation.
Again, she is one in government. Her local
churches are, indeed, \ under the rule of local
pastors. But they are joined together into
provinces and nations ; and all are united under
one visible Head, who exercises a universal
and supreme jurisdiction. We are not concerned
here with the origin and rightfulness of this su-
premacy ; it is enough at present that it exists in
the Catholic Church, and that it secures a unity
of Faith, of worship, and of government which it
is vain to look for elsewhere.
But is she one with her own past ? Is she the
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 187
same to-day, in Faith, in ritual, and in govern-
ment, that she was a thousand, fifteen hundred
years ago ? I do not now inquire is she identical
with the Church of Apostolic times. If she be,
she is evidently the Church of Christ. But that
inquiry is dependent on complex historical in-
vestigations, for which satisfactory data are often
wanting, and it involves not a few much-discussed
points of controversy. Nor is it necessary for
our immediate purpose. Identity through a thou-
sand years, over such a vast area, and in such
a multitude of members, with such mysterious
doctrines, and under such changing circumstances,
is convincing proof of a special Divine protection ;
and if God be its author, the Church herself is
Divine. Now, for a thousand and more years,
during which her history is open to us, and
documentary evidence is abundant, the Catholic
Church has undergone no substantial change.
Growth, development, there must be, if she lives ;
but in all essentials her glory is the accusation
made so bitterly against her : " Semper eadem " —
"ever the same". Two or three points there
may be, in which adversaries may say she
has added to her creed. They prove nothing.
Are they, are they not, additions is in con-
1 88 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
troversy. Were it even granted that they are,
what are they in the unchanging sameness of a
thousand years ? But we do not grant it. There
is nothing in our belief, in our worship, in the
government of our Church to-day, which would
cause even a moment of surprise or an instant of
hesitation in Columbanus, or Malachy of Armagh,
or Anselm of Canterbury, or Francis of Assisi,
or any of the saints and doctors and simple faith-
ful of the ten last centuries.
This, then, is our first and all-sufficient argu-
ment. There is a visible Church of Christ on
earth. It is one, not merely numerically but
organically as well ; one, that is, in Faith, sacra-
ments, sacrifice, government, and historical iden-
tity ; and it is organically one, not in fact only,
but through an abiding principle by which
that unity is permanently secured. Now, no
religious body, as we have seen, except the
Catholic Church, has that essential unity. There-
fore, no other religious body can be the Church
of Christ. And again, the unity of which we
speak is so peculiarly the privilege of Christ's
Church that it cannot be found in any other
religious body. Now it is found, as we have
shown, in the Catholic Church. Consequently,
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 189
the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church
only, is Christ's true Church.
Consider, further, that until the division be-
tween East and West, until the days of Photius
and Cserularius, the visible society of Christ on
earth, His Church, was the Catholic Church,
united in communion and obedience with the
See of Rome. Then came the separation : a
word,^ the Greeks complained, had been unlaw-
fully added to the Creed ; and there were some
Western liturgical details to which they made
objection. Therefore, they cut themselves off
from Rome and the Churches in communion with
her. What view are we to take of the result ?
Till then, the faithful, the bishops, the chief pastor,
of the Latin Church had been members of the
one true Church of Christ. Did they cease to be
so when the Greeks withdrew from their com-
munion ? They had committed no act of schism ;
they still held the faith which had been held by
the united and infallible Church, up to the days
of separation ; the Church of Christ did not
perish then, or become invisible. The Latin
Church, therefore, preserved its membership of
Christ's Church ; and since Christ's Church is
^ The ^/iogui.
190 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
one, and one only, the Latin Church alone was
then the true Church of Christ. Now, see what
follows. Until the religious trouble of the six-
teenth century the Latin Church in communion
with Rome was the one true Church. Till then
there was one united Western Church, visible
and infallible, under the obedience of the Bishop
of Rome, and in full communion with him. And
when Northern Europe, and then England and
Scotland, separated from her, what was the con-
dition of those who remained faithful to her?
We must reason exactly as we did on the separa-
tion of Greeks and Latins, five centuries before.
Roman Catholics continued to hold the faith
which the whole Western Church had held until
the Reformation, and which Church infallibility
had kept free from error. They retained the
Sacraments and Sacrifice, which all had held to
be Divinely instituted. They still obeyed the
authority which all had believed to have been
set over them by God. They could not lose
membership of the Church except through her-
esy or schism, and, clearly, they were guilty of
neither. They must, then, have continued in the
Church ; and since the Church is visible, and is
not composed of "branches," they and they alone
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH? 191
could constitute it. In the sixteenth century,
therefore, as in the ninth and the eleventh, the
Christian Church was that which remained united
with the Roman See. Roman Catholics were
then, and so they must be now, the one Church
which Christ established.
And, finally, the Catholic Church alone is
Christ's, because Christ's Church is infallible, as
we have already seen ; and only the Catholic
Church makes claim to be so. In an able and
singularly bitter attack, which Dr. Salmon, a
former Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, makes
on the Catholic Church, in his lectures on Church
Infallibility, he says very truly : " The issues of
the controversy mainly turn on one great ques-
tion — I mean the question of infallibility of the
Church. If that be decided against us our whole
case is gone " ; and the object of his book, as he
says further on, is to demonstrate the proposition :
"that God has appointed some one on earth
able to give infallible guidance to religious truth,
admits of no proof, and is destitute of all prob-
ability". On Dr. Salmon's showing, then, our
case stands thus : If there be an infallible Church
on earth, the Roman Catholic Church is that
Church ; and the controversy between Roman
192 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Catholics and Protestants is ended, in favour of
the former. Many Protestants, I know, and all
Anglicans will refuse to follow him. But his in-
ference, I am confident, is justified ; as we shall
see, if we examine it.
A Church might, indeed, claim infallibility, and
yet be false ; but a Church which disclaims it
cannot be the Church of Christ : for Christ*s
Church is infallible. The infallibility of the true
Church is, as we have seen, a doctrine revealed
of God ; and so the infallible, the true Church
cannot disclaim or even doubt it. And, further,
the true Church must claim infallibility. She
must preach the Gospel, and declare that those
shall be condemned who will not accept her
teaching. She must determine controversies,
anathematize heresies, define dogmas ; and all
this irrevocably. She must demand assent to
her decisions, under the most grievous penalties.
What teacher and judge, if not infallible, and
claiming infallibility, would be justified in doing
so ? Consider now the various Churches, the
various religious bodies, which hold themselves
descended in legitimate succession from the
Apostolic Church. The Catholic Church, and
she alone, believes herself to be infallible ; she,
WHICH IS THE TRUE CHURCH 193
and she only, claims for herself infallibility. All
others, Greek, Anglican, Protestant, Episco-
palian, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Nonconformist —
of whatever name and nature — put forward no
such claim ; indeed, profess openly they have no
such privilege. On this ground, then, also, the
Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ.
And now, let me sum up briefly the considera-
tions on which we have just dwelt. Assuming,
from previous lectures, that the ** Kingdom of
God," Christ's Church, the heir to the Divine
promises, the chosen channel of Divine graces,
is a visible society, existing upon earth even now,
and seeing the many different religious bodies
around us, the question is at once suggested :
which amonor them all is the Church of Christ ?
How shall we identify her? In studying the
foundation and constitution of the Church, we saw
Christ willed she should be one and universal.
She was to spread throughout the world, and
endure throughout the ages ; and yet she was
to remain one through historic continuity, and
one in her profession of revealed truth, in her
sacraments and sacrifice, and in her government.
And in no society but the Church of Christ can
such unity be found ; it is the work and gift of
13
194 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
God alone, and God will not, and cannot,
authenticate a falsehood. The Church, too, is
infallible in her teaching of revealed truth, and
she must be conscious of and claim, as well as
exercise, the Divine gift ; the religious society
which repudiates it is not Christ's Church ; and if
one only among religious societies lays claim to
it, that society must be the Church of Christ.
And then we saw that the Catholic Church, and
she alone among all the Churches, fulfils these
requirements ; from which we infer with certainty
that she and she only is Christ's true Church.
We shall inquire next into the teaching and
governing authority of the Church, who the
persons are in whom it vests, and what is its
nature and its extension.
LECTURE VII.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE.
We have now reached a point in our inquiry into
the foundation and constitution of the Christian
Church, where we know with entire certainty that
the one visible Kingdom of Christ upon earth,
His Church, is that of which we ourselves are
members ; and that in teaching and believing
the revealed truths confided to her, that Church
cannot err. We have reached a point, therefore,
when we can appeal with confidence to the Cath-
olic Church herself for assistance in our further
inquiries. Hitherto, we have never had recourse
to her authority. On the various questions
which we have discussed her testimony is distinct
and decisive. She believes and teaches the
genuineness and authenticity of the New Tes-
tament writings. She believes and teaches the
Divinity of Christ. She believes and teaches the
foundation of the Church as a Divine Society
— one in Faith, ritual, and government. She
X95 13 *
196 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
believes and teaches its visible continuance until
the end of time ; and she believes and teaches
its infallibility in belief and teaching. But we
have not appealed to her authority. We wished
to mark the steps by which an impartial student
of religion might be logically led on, through a
critical investigation of the Church's origins and
of the present condition of the Catholic Church,
to a reasoned acceptance of her claims and doc-
trines. I was anxious to avoid argument ** in a
circle ". I was not seeking to explain why and
how we Catholics, educated and uneducated alike,
hold and profess the truths we have discussed in
previous Lectures. In childhood, in youth, even
in maturer years, we do not, for instance, believe
Our Blessed Lord's Divinity because of the
proofs that may be drawn from His statements
about Himself, His character, the wonders that
He worked, and His Resurrection. Our assent,
as we may have occasion to see later on, is very
much more simple. But I was concerned to
show how rigorously scientific the Catholic Faith
itself is, what a critical examination it is prepared
to undergo, and how satisfactorily we can justify
our religious position to ourselves and to in-
quirers, when need for justification arises.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 197
Now, however, that the infallible authority of
the Catholic Church in the domain of revealed
truth has been demonstrated, there can be no
reason why we should not in future make use of
that authority. We might do so, even to the
exclusion of every other argument. We noted,
as a characteristic of Christ's teaching, that He
simply asserted the truths which He put forward :
He offered no proofs in their favour ; they were
guaranteed by H is Divine infallibility. Similarly,
when once the infallibility of the Catholic Church
has been made clear to us, we are bound to assent
to her belief and teaching of revealed doctrines,
though she advanced no other proof, and we saw
none other ourselves, in support of them. Her
living voice is warrant for our assent, and makes
it obligatory. But, as we have already seen, she
receives no new revelation. Her teaching office
is to preserve and to explain the revelation made
to the Apostles. And because that revelation,
in all its main features, and most even of its de-
tails, has been enshrined in the New Testament
writings, and because the accurate understanding
and authentic interpretation of those writings has
in large part come down to us in Catholic tra-
dition, we can almost always corroborate the
19S THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
authority of the Church from those other sources.
Truths, too, are proposed to us by the Church
at times, as contained an revelation, which are
antecedently probable, or even capable of a
rational demonstration ; and there is no reason
why we should reject arguments that may render
our assent both easier and clearer.
And we proceed to apply this method to the
question which is to occupy us to-day — the per-
son or persons in whom the supreme authority
of the Church is vested. Infallibility of belief, or
passive infallibility, as it is often called, resides
evidently in the whole body of the Church's
members. The Church is passively infallible, is
Divinely preserved from error, when her children
hold, universally, any truth as a doctrine of
Divine Faith, or reject any error as certainly op-
posed to it. There remains to be considered the
active authority of the Church, her authority in
teaching and in governing ; and we are to ex-
amine now the position, which we Catholics
maintain, that all such authority is concentrated,
though not exclusively, in the Bishop and See of
Rome ; that the Pope is infallible teacher and
supreme ruler of Christ's Church on earth.
And first it seems antecedently likely that
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 199
some such teacher and ruler must exist. Christ
planned and founded a visible and imperishable
society, in which He Himself was supreme visible
Teacher and Ruler, while He lived on earth.
We should be disposed, therefore, to expect that
He would make the office a part of the Church's
constitution, and provide for successors who
should occupy it. This is no proof, of course,
that He actually did so ; but it prepares us to
consider favourably any arguments which go to
show that He did. Then, further, He deter-
mined that His Kingdom should be universal,
and should be one, should be spread over the
earth, yet with all its parts bound together, in a
common Faith, into one organized social whole.
To secure such Catholic unity, no means would
appear better adapted than one sr.preme visible
head. The object could, doubtless, have been
obtained in other ways — by the direct controlling
action of the Holy Spirit on all the members of
the society, or by entrusting all authority to a
Senate or a Council. But the balance of ad-
vantage and the parallelism of the Theocracy
and of the Hebrew Monarchy would point to the
likelihood of government by an individual. And
we are confirmed in this view, when we find one
200 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
among the Apostles singled out for a very special
prominence by Our Lord Himself, and acknow-
ledged in a very marked manner as a leader
by the other Apostles. It is not without signifi-
cance, that, alone of the Apostles, Simon, the son
of Jona, had a name selected for him by Christ,
and that the name was Rock or Peter. He was
one of the chosen companions of Our Lord at the
Transfiguration and the Agony in the Garden.
When Our Lord addresses the Apostles, it is in-
variably to Peter that He speaks. When the
Apostles would address or question Christ, it is
almost always St. Peter who is allowed to do it.
In the lists of the Apostles, which all four
Evangelists give us, St. Peter is placed always
first. When tribute is to be paid, Peter is bid-
den by Our Lord to pay it for both himself and
Christ.^ On every occasion, when Peter is men-
tioned in the New Testament with any other
of the Apostles, the phrases recur : " Peter with
the eleven,"^ or *' Simon and they who were with
him," ^ or '' Peter and the two sons of Zebedee,"*
or *' Simon Peter and Thomas, who is called
Didymus, and Nathanael,"^ or " Simon Peter and
^Matt. xvn. 26. ^^^ts n. 14. ^Luke vni. 45.
■^Matt. XXVI. 37. ^John xxi. 2.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 201
the other disciple whom Jesus loved ".^ After
the Ascension, St. Peter seems to assume at once,
and as of course, the position of chief of the
Apostles. He proposes the election of a succes-
sor to Judas. He preaches the first Apostolic
discourse on the Feast of Pentecost. He works
the first Apostolic miracle on the lame man at
the Temple gate. He defends the Apostles
when brought prisoners before the Council. He
receives the first Gentiles into the infant Church,
and lays down the principle that Gentiles are to
be admitted. He pronounces against the con-
tinuance of the Jewish ceremonial law, as an un-
bearable "yoke on the necks of the disciples".
He seems to take unquestioned a place among
them, which recalls — though at infinite distance
— the place which Christ had held before the
Passion ; and it is a place we must find it difficult
to understand or to explain, unless on the ground
of a Divine appointment. I do not say that this
New Testament evidence is conclusive proof of a
primacy of teaching authority and of jurisdiction
conferred by Christ upon St. Peter ; but it does,
I think, point to a prominence and a pre-eminence
which are scarcely to be distinguished from such
^ John XX. 2.
202 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
a primacy ; and, whatever the privilege was, It
was given seemingly for the welfare of the
Church, and cannot, therefore, in the absence of
proof, be supposed to perish when St. Peter
died.
But the Gospels offer us a more convincing
argument. They tell us of a plain promise made
by Christ to Peter that He would give him su-
preme authority in the Church — supreme, and
therefore infallible, authority to teach ; supreme
authority to govern. And they tell us also of
the solemn fulfilment of the promise.
You remember the questions which Our Lord
put to His disciples, when He came with them
" into the quarters of Csesarea Philippi " : '' Whom
do men say that the Son of Man is ? " ; and, a
little later : ** But whom do you say that I
am ? " ; and then St. Peter s answer : '* Thou art
Christ, the Son of the living God ". ** And
Jesus answering said to him : Blessed art thou,
Simon Barjona. . . . And I say to thee : that
thou art Peter ; and upon this rock I will build
My Church, and the gates of hell shall not pre-
vail against it. And I will give to thee the keys
of the Kingdom of Heaven ; and whatsoever
thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 203
in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on
earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven."^ It is
clear, from Our Lord's words, that He regarded
St. Peter's declaration of belief in His Divinity
as of great importance, and as deserving of a
great reward. And He goes on to say what this
reward will be : ** Thou art Peter (Cephas or
rock, in the language which Christ spoke), and
upon this rock (Cephas) I will build My Church ".
In the original there is a play upon the name,
which is lost to us in English, but is clear in some
other translations. " Tu es Pierre, et sur cette
pierre je bdtirai mon ^glise," renders it precisely.
St. Peter, therefore, is chosen to be the founda-
tion on which Christ will raise His Church ; '' and
the gates of hell," the powers of evil, *' shall not
prevail against her ". St. Peter is to be to the
Christian Church what a rock foundation is to an
ordinary edifice — the principle of stability, unity,
permanence; and, because he is so, no enemy
** shall prevail against her ". Now the unity and
stability, and therefore the continued existence,
of a society are due chiefly to the authority which
binds its elements together. And, if an essential
function of the society be to maintain and teach
^ Matt. XVI. 13.
204 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
a body of doctrines or opinions, whether philo-
sophical or religious, the supreme authority must
have power to declare what those doctrines or
opinions are. Christ Himself is the one Divine
foundation of His Church. ** Other foundation,"
as St. Paul tells the Corinthians,^ *'no man
can lay than that which is laid, which is Christ
Jesus." And Christ is the foundation, not only
because He purchased the Church with His
Precious Blood, and framed her constitution, and
instituted her Sacraments, but also because He
taught her all revealed truth with infallible
authority, and ruled over her with a jurisdiction
from which there was no appeal. In the former
of those prerogatives, he called no one, neither
St. Peter nor any other, to take any part. In the
latter — supreme authority to teach and govern —
He promises, in our text, that St. Peter shall
have a share. And He goes on to emphasize, in
the words which follow, the privilege that He will
bestow: "I will give to thee," He says, ''the
keys of the Kingdom of Heaven ". No meta-
phor was better known to the Jews than the
keys, as a symbol of authority.''' They were as
familiar with its meaning as we are, when we
^i Cor. III. II. 2 js^ xxn. 22.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 205
present the keys of a city to the sovereign, on his
entrance into it. St. Peter, then, is to receive
the keys of the kingdom, supreme authority to
teach and govern under Christ.
And after the Resurrection, the promise was
fulfilled. Before our Lord ascended into
heaven He entrusted His whole flock, sheep and
lambs, to the guardianship and guidance of St.
Peter. As He had associated Peter with Him-
self, when He used the metaphors of " founda-
tion " and of ** keys," so does He here, where He
speaks of the sheepfold, whose supreme pastor
He Himself is. " Feed My lambs," He says to
Peter, "Jdc the shepherd of My lambs," "feed
My sheep ".^ No member of the Church of
Christ is excepted from the commission ; the
Apostle is to feed and shepherd all. He is to
teach them the doctrines which Christ taught, to
administer to them the sacred rites which Christ
instituted, to govern them under the laws which
Christ laid down. Where we are to note that
Christ had already, on a previous occasion, be-
stowed on all the Apostles jointly the Apostolic
mission and Apostolic powers : " As the Father
hath sent Me, I also send you," He had said to
1 John XXI. 15.
2o6 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
them ; ** Receive ye the Holy Ghost, whose sins
you shall forgive they are forgiven them, and
whose sins you shall retain they are retained ".^
Now He addresses Himself particularly to Peter ;
and, as at Csesarea Philippi, on eliciting from
Peter a profession of Faith in His Divinity, He
gave him the promise of the primacy, so here,
on eliciting a protestation of love. He bestows
on him the promised dignity.
I need not tell you that controversy rages
fiercely round these two texts, for it is felt that, if
they are admitted to prove a supreme governing
and teaching power conferred on Peter, there
must still be someone in Christ's Church invested
with that power. The constitution of the Church
has not changed. Such as she was in substance
and essentials in the days of the Apostles, such
she must be to-day. She cannot become other
than she was. If Christ founded a monarchy,
and made St. Peter to be ruler over it, infallible
and supreme, then there is to-day a successor to
Peter, in Christ's Church on earth ; and that suc-
cessor can only be the Bishop of the See of
Rome. No other has ever claimed the title ; for
no other has any claim been ever made. Hence
1 John XX. 21,
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 207
it was maintained by some — while disputants were
still willing to allow the authenticity > of both pass-
ages and the undeniable inference from them of
Peter's primacy — that the privilege had ceased
with the Apostle. His dignity, it was said, was
personal to himself, and passed away with him ;
or it was needed in the special circumstances of
the infant Church ; it was no longer necessary
and was, therefore, withdrawn, when the Apostle
died But such opinions find few, if any, to sup-
port or follow them to-day. If Roman claims
are to be repudiated, the primacy of St. Peter,
it is felt, must be denied. And so the most
varied explanations have been invented to escape
the cogency of the texts, culminating in the theory
of some hard-pressed controversialists that the
passage in St. Matthew, which contains the
promise made to Peter, is unauthentic. But I
shall not weary you by entering further into this
detail of our subject. I need only say that there
is no argument of the smallest scientific value
against the genuineness of the passage ; and
add, that the undivided and infallible Church,
before the schism of East and West, and then
the Western Church, until the Protestant Re-
formation, accepted both the texts as equally
208 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
authentic, and attached to both the dogmatic
meaning which we have given them.
Besides, the whole temper of the Church, as
recorded in her history, has ever been to recog-
nize, both in fact and theory, the primacy of
Rome, and to recognize a primacy because the
Roman Bishop is the successor of Peter. Com-
munication with the Roman See was carried on
with difficulty in the days of persecution. We
have little documentary evidence concerning the
Christian Church during the three first centuries.
But we have enough to show us the position of
pre-eminence already occupied by the Church and
Bishop of Rome ; and when persecution ceases,
the evidence of an acknowledged primacy be-
comes overwhelming.
Towards the close of the first century, during
the lifetime, therefore, of St. John the Apostle
and Evangelist, dissensions arose in the Church
of Corinth. The faithful of that Church sought
advice and direction, not from the living Apostle,
but from Rome. And we still possess the
Epistle of St. Clement, in which, as Bishop of
the Roman Church, he prescribes what the
Corinthians are to do ; in which he exhorts them
to obey in those things ** which through the Holy
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 209
Spirit he has written to them," and declares that
** Christ speaks to them through him," and that
those who refuse to listen sin gravely.^ At the
beginning of the second century, the Martyr
Ignatius, in a letter to the Romans, speaks of
their Church as presiding over all the Churches,
and of himself as anxious to approve whatever
they may teach and order. '^ In the same century,
Polycarp of Smyrna, St. John's disciple, voyages
to Rome to consult with Pope Anicetus on some
Eastern controversies,^ and the Martyrs of Lyons
send to Pope Eleutherius, asking his assistance in
combating the errors of Montanus.* Even here-
tics, like Marcion and the Montanists, make their
way to Rome, in order, if they may, to secure Ro-
man recognition.^ At the close of the century,
St. Irenaeus, a witness to the belief of Asia and
of Gaul, having asked how true tradition may
be distinguished from false, makes answer that it
will be enough to examine what is held by the
Church of Rome, since "all other Churches must
^ Ad Corinth., c. 59; Lightfoot, ii. p. 170.
'•^Ad Rom.; Lightfoot, ii. pp. 189, 203.
^Euseb., "Hist. Eccl.," v. c. 24 (ed. Burton).
* Ibid., c. 3.
* "Epiph. Haer.," 42, n. i ; M. G., xli. 695.
14
2IO THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
agree with her, because of her greater authority ".^
At the same time, Pope Victor urges the Bishops
of Asia to hold synods for the settlement of the
Paschal controversy ; and when the Bishops of
Asia Minor refuse to adopt the Western usage,
Victor lays a command upon them, and seeks to
enforce it by excommunication.^ In the third
century, Tertullian speaks of the Pope as
" Pontifex Maximus "— that is, the *' Bishop of
Bishops " — and tells us of his issuing " a peremp-
tory edict " concerning absolution from sin, and
intended for the guidance of the Church universal.^
And Tertullian's disciple, the Martyr Cyprian,
writes to Pope Cornelius of the Roman Church
as **the Chair of Peter, the principal Church,
whence the unity of the priesthood took its rise,
whose faith is praised in the preaching of the
Apostles, to whom faithlessness cannot have
access," * and he urges Pope St. Stephen to
excommunicate and depose Martian, Bishop of
Aries, and to appoint another Bishop in his stead.^
Uren., "Contra Haer.," in. c. 3 ; M. G., vn. 849.
2Euseb., *'Hist. Eccl.," v. c. 24.
^TertuU., "De Pudic," c. i ; M. L., n. 980.
*Ep., 59, n. 14; alit. xii. ; M. L., 111. 818.
^Ibid.^ 67 ; M. L., iv. 399.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 211
In the same century Pope Stephen s decision on
the validity of heretical baptism overcame the
opposition of Cyprian, Firmilian, and many
African and Eastern Bishops, and was received
by the whole Church as a rule of Faith and prac-
tice. At the same time, we find Origen and
Denis of Alexandria writing to the Roman Bishop
to make a profession of belief and clear themselves
of all suspicion of error.^ We have St. Athanasius
and St. Peter of Alexandria seeking the assistance
and protection of Rome.^ We have Bishops
deposed by local Councils and carrying their
appeals to Rome^ — appeals received and dealt
with by the Roman See, and solemnly approved
of by the Decrees of Sardica.* We have heretics
and schismatics hurrying to Rome in order to
snatch a favourable decision from the Roman
Bishop, which could be set against, and would
override, the decision of local Churches. When we
can raise a little the veil which hides from us the
Church life and organization of those three first
lEuseb., "Hist. Eccl., " vi. 36; Athan., "Ep. de Sent.
Dion.," n. 13 ; M. G., xxv. 499.
^Hieron., Ep., 127, n. 5 ; M. L., xxii. 1090.
'Cyprian, Ep., 67 ; M. L., iii. 986.
* Harduin, i. 638, and cf. Hefele, i. p. 649 sqq.
14*
212 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
centuries, we find the Church and Bishop of Rome
in very much the same assured position of au-
thority to which the following- centuries testify
with overwhelming evidence. Nor is it an au-
thority in the making. Wherever we can observe
it, it appears to be already settled, traditional,
and acknowledged. Even angry outbursts, like
those of Firmilian, in the controversy with Pope
Stephen, about the middle of the third century,
are confirmation of the claims which Rome put
forward. When he tells us that Stephen *' prides
himself on the place of his Episcopate, and con-
tends that he holds the succession of Peter, upon
whom the foundations of the Church were laid " ;
when he accuses him of "provoking quarrels and
dissensions" by his decision, ** through the
Churches of the whole world " ; when he charges
him with ** thinking that all may be excommuni-
cated " by him, we can see that he recognizes
him as the Chief Bishop of Christendom,
does not venture directly to call in question his
authority, or even hint that the assertion of it is
a novelty.
And, when the age of persecution ended, when
communications with Rome were rendered easy
by favour of the Civil Government, and when
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 213
the Bishop and Church of Rome were at liberty
to exercise their privileges more openly, the two-
fold primacy — of teaching and of jurisdiction —
appears not merely universally admitted, but is
everywhere held to be decisive. I do not propose
quoting individual fathers — the great Bishops and
Priests of the early Church, who are witnesses to
its faith, and on whose teaching the Church's faith
was established. In East and West their testi-
mony is clear and unanimous. Gregory of
Nazianzus and Basil, Chrysostom and Cyril of
Alexandria, Theodoret and Chrysologus, Am-
brose, Augustin, Jerome, the great Popes,
Damasus, Leo, Innocent, Celestine, and a multi-
tude of others : all are at one in proclaiming the
prerogative of Peter, and the ordered succession
to Peter's rights in the See of Rome. But I pre-
fer to lay before you the collective witness of great
Church assemblies, in which the Church's Faith
found public and solemn expression.
In the Council of Ephesus (ann. 431), com-
posed mainly of Eastern Bishops over whom, by
appointment of Pope Celestine, St. Cyril of Alex-
andria presided, sentence against Nestorius was
introduced in these terms : " Being necessarily
constrained by the Canons, and by the letter of
214 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
our most holy Father and fellow minister,
Celestine, the Bishop of the Church of the
Romans, we have, with many tears, come to this
mournful sentence against him" (Nestorius).
And, Nestorius having been deposed, '* Philip,
priest and Legate of the Apostolic Chair, con-
tinued : No one doubts, yea all ages know, that
the holy and most blessed Peter, the prince and
head of the Apostles, the pillar of the Faith, the
foundation of the Catholic Church, received the
keys of the Kingdom from our Lord Jesus
Christ . . . who, even until now, and always,
lives and judges in his successors. Wherefore
our holy and most blessed Pope,- Celestine
Bishop, his successor in order, and holder of his
place, has sent us to this holy synod, to supply
for his own presence."^ And, twenty years
later, in the Council of Chalcedon, after Pope
Leo's letter to Flavian of Constantinople had
been read, in which the errors of Eutyches were
condemned, the six hundred Bishops, Orientals
almost all, cried out : ** This is the faith of the
Fathers ; this is the faith of the Apostles. Thus
we all believe ; thus do the orthodox believe.
Anathema to him who believes not thus.
^Harduin, i. 147.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 215
Thus hath Peter spoken through Leo." ^ Again,
in the third Council of Constantinople (ann. 680),
presided over by Papal Legates, and numbering
between two and three hundred Eastern Bishops,
Pope Agatho's condemnation of the Monothelite
heresy having been read and confirmed, the
Bishops exclaim : " Through Agatho Peter
hath spoken " ; and to the Pope himself they
write : *' Therefore, unto thee, as Bishop of the
chief See and of the Universal Church, standing
on the firm rock of Faith, we leave to determine
what is to be done ; acquiescing gladly in the
Letters of true confession sent to the most pious
Emperor by your fatherly Blessedness, which
Letters we accept as though Divinely written by
the Head of the Apostles ".^ The General
Councils of Lyons and Florence, in which both
Latins and Greeks took part, teach the same
doctrine ; the latter in a solemn definition : We
also define, it says, "that the holy Apostolic See
and the Roman Pontiff possess a primacy over the
whole world, and that the Roman Pontiff himself
is the successor of Blessed Peter, prince of the
Apostles, and true Vicar of Christ, Head of the
whole Church, Father and Teacher of all
1 Harduin, 11. 305. ^ Ibid., 111. 1422.
2i6 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Christians ; and that to him was given, in Blessed
Peter, by our Lord Jesus Christ, full power to
feed and rule and govern the Universal Church,
as is also set forth in the Acts of General Councils
and in the Sacred Canons"/ And, finally, as
placing the question beyond all doubt and contro-
versy for us Catholics, we have the definitions of
the Vatican Council in our own day : "If any-
one shall say that Blessed Peter the Apostle was
not appointed by Christ the Lord chief of all the
Apostles and visible head of the whole Church
Militant, or that he received from the same Jesus
Christ our Lord a primacy of honour only, and not
directly and immediately one of true and proper
jurisdiction, let him be anathema".^ And : '* If
anyone shall say that it is not by institution of
Christ the Lord Himself, and so of Divine right,
that Blessed Peter should have a perpetual line of
successors in the primacy over the Universal
Church, or that the Roman Pontiff is not Blessed
Peter's successor in that primacy, let him be
anathema "/ And : ** If anyone shall say that the
Roman Pontiff has the duty only of inspecting and
directing, but not full and supreme power of
jurisdiction over the Universal Church, not only
^ Denz., n. 694. ^ Ibid., n. 1823. ^ Ibid,^ n. 1825.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 217
in things which concern Faith and morals, but in
those also which relate to the discipline and
government of the Church, which is spread
throughout the whole world ; or that he has only
the principal part, but not the entire fullness of
this supreme power ; or that his power is not
ordinary and immediate, both over each and all
the Churches, and over each and all the pastors
and the faithful, let him be anathema ".-^ Then,
as though the infallible teaching authority of the
Pope were not sufficiently defined in his primacy
of jurisdiction, there is the further explicit defini-
tion : " Faithfully adhering to the tradition
handed down from the beginning of the Christian
Faith, for the glory of God our Saviour, the exalta-
tion of the Catholic religion, and the salvation of
Christian peoples, with the approval of the Holy
Council we teach and define it to be a Divinely
revealed dogma, that the Roman Pontiff, when
he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in discharge
of his office of pastor and teacher of all Chris-
tians, he defines in virtue of his supreme Apostolic
authority, a doctrine concerning Faith or morals,
to be held by the Universal Church, is, through
the Divine assistance, promised to him in Blessed
^ Denz., n. 1831.
2i8 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Peter, possessed of that infallibility with which
the Divine Redeemer willed His Church to be
endowed, in defining doctrines concerning Faith
and morals : and that therefore, such definitions
of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not
through the consent of the Church, irreformable.
And if anyone — which may God avert — should
presume to contradict this our definition : let him
be anathema."^
Other conciliar definitions we might quote to
the same effect, as we might have quoted a
vast mass of ecclesiastical witnesses scattered up
and down through the Church's history. But
we have already quoted more than sufficient for
our purpose. I wished to prove that in the
Church of Christ, which we have shown to be
the Catholic Church, one man, and that the
Bishop of Rome, enjoys a primacy ; that he has
supreme power for the government of the
Church, and that in his teaching of revealed truth
he is infallible. We conceive, indeed, of these
as distinct prerogatives, though one does in fact
include the other. In a society, of whose very
essence is unity of Faith, and which cannot itself
err in the revealed doctrines which it believes
1 Denz., n. 1839.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 219
and teaches, the supreme governing authority
must clearly, within the domain of revelation, be
an infallible teacher and an infallible judge of
controversies. We began, then, by noting that
it was antecedently probable Christ would ap-
point some one supreme ruler in His Church,
and would provide for a perpetual succession of
such rulers. Christ's own attitude towards St.
Peter, as recorded in the Gospels, implies a
quite singular pre-eminence conferred on that
Apostle. So, too, does the manner in which the
New Testament writers refer always to him,
and the leading position which he assumes, and
which the other Aposdes yield unquestioningly
to him, after the Ascension. But we are not
left to inferences or surmises. In the plainest
language Our Lord first promises, and then
bestows, the twofold primacy on Peter ; and
from the nature of the case, and from Christ's
words themselves, we gather that the primacy is
to continue in the Church for ever. But, in
what See ? The belief of the Church has ever
been that the Bishop of Rome is the successor
of St. Peter and the heir to his primacy. No
other See has ever made any claim to it. Such
too, we saw, was the opinion of the earliest
220 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Church Fathers, whose scanty writings have
been preserved to us from the days of persecu-
tion. Such was the opinion of the great Bishops
and Doctors of the fourth, fifth, and sixth
centuries, when persecution had died away.
Then, and later, the action of Popes supposed,
and was based upon it, and CEcumenical Councils,
first in the East and later in the West — Councils
of the undivided Church and Councils of the
Latin Communion — have solemnly and un-
equivocally declared and defined the doctrine.
Assuming, then, as already proved, that Christ's
Church, the Catholic Church, is infallible in be-
lieving and teaching revealed doctrines of Faith
and morals, the personal supremacy and personal
infallibility of the Pope — that is, of the lawfully
elected Bishop of Rome — is for us Catholics a
defined dogma of our religion. The teaching
Church proclaimed it in the Council of the Vati-
can ; and, even were it possible to entertain a
misgiving about the Vatican decrees themselves,
the whole Catholic Church, the Bishops, without
even one exception, and the Faithful, accepted
the definition, and believed it. Not a single Ca-
tholic Bishop refused or hesitated to promulgate
the doctrine. A handful of German priests and
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 221
a few thousands of German and Swiss laymen
rejected it, and became "Old Catholics"; they
created scarcely a ripple on the vast expanse of
Catholic unity. Had we even, therefore, no
other argument, the Vatican definition alone, and
the infallible Church's acceptance of and faith in
it, would be abundantly sufficient. But we have
all the other arguments as well, which we have
been just considering ; and it is difficult to under-
stand how any impartial mind, which accepts the
New Testament writings, and believes in Church
infallibility, can resist their cogency. I do not
say that any one or other text of the Gospels, or
any isolated facts in the Gospels or Acts of the
Apostles, must necessarily convince a fair-minded
inquirer. I do not, indeed, think that any of the
great truths of the Catholic faith can be satis-
factorily demonstrated by single texts or incidents
in Scripture. But the cumulative weight of New
Testament references to St. Peter seems to me
well-nigh irresistible. They assign him a posi-
tion apart from and above the other Apostles,
which we cannot explain on grounds of age or
ability or personal qualities of any kind : we are
driven back on Divine appointment. And, if a
Headship were given to Peter, for the welfare of
222 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
the Church, the Headship did not die with him.
Besides, the belief and teaching of the Church
are a convincing interpretation of the Scriptures ;
and in the East and West, in sermons, in formal
treatises, in great gatherings of Bishops, in the
conduct and determination of religious contro-
versies, in the ordinary social life and work of
the Church, we see the conviction growing more
distinct and more emphatic that, in the Gospels
of St. Matthew and of St. John, we have the re-
velation of a primacy conferred on Peter, a pri-
macy to be continued in his successors for ever.
The Councils of Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Con-
stantinople express the faith of the undivided
Church : Lyons and Florence bear witness for the
Western. Evangelical Protestantism is logical,
when it rejects their testimony, and reads its own
into the Bible ; but what of the Greek and Angli-
can positions ?
The Pope, then, or Bishop of Rome, has a
Divinely given primacy. It is not conferred on
him by the Church ; it is not entrusted to him by
his electors. It comes to each Pope, as it did to
Peter, immediately from God, when he is validly
elected, and because, by such election, he is St.
Peter's successor.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 223
And what is the primacy ? First, it is not sin-
lessness. Christ could, of course, had He so willed
it, have made His Vicars sinless. He has chosen
not to do so. There have been grave scandals
in the history of the Roman See — not so many,
not so grave, as in the history of other kingdoms ;
and they have been exaggerated grossly for pur-
poses of controversy. But, in any case, they
have no point of contact with the subject of the
present lecture. Holiness of life commends all
those who teach and govern ; but it is not es-
sential to their office. It is not infallibility, it is
not supreme, legislative, judicial, or executive
authority. It is not even a condition precedent
to the valid or lawful exercise of any of them.
And Christ our Lord has promised these latter
gifts, not holiness of life, to St. Peter, and to St.
Peter's successors.
Again, the primacy does not involve the pri-
vilege of inspiration. No doubt God's pro-
vidence over His Church will lead Him, at
special times and under special circumstances, to
interfere actively in its government. He may
move authority to define a doctrine, or He may
restrain it. He may guide it to frame a law, or
to repeal one. He may guarantee executive acts
224 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
against imprudence, timidity, or obstinacy. He
often exercises a similar special providence even
over individuals. But it is not inspiration, as the
term is applied to Holy Scripture. It does not
make God the author of the acts, or law, or
definition.
Nor does the primacy suppose any new reve-
lation. Revelation is the unveiling of truth by
God to His creatures ; and there is no new re-
velation where no new truth is revealed ; and
no new truth is needed for the exercise of the
primacy.
That primacy, therefore, is nothing other than
supreme authority — supreme authority in teach-
ing, which is necessarily infallible ; and supreme
authority in governing, which is the power to
legislate, to judge, and execute the laws, without
appeal to a superior. The latter, in the Church,
includes the former ; but, as we have already
said, the ideas are distinct, and the Vatican
Council defines and explains each separately.
And next, when does the Pope, according to the
Council, speak infallibly? He must speak in
''his office of Pastor and Teacher of all
Christians ". It cannot be as a friend or a
private theologian, or as Bishop of Rome, or
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 225
Primate of Italy ; it must be as successor of St.
Peter in his headship of the whole Church. And
he must speak, and show clearly that he speaks,
*' with supreme Apostolical authority ". It is not
enough to speak as Head of the Church, which
he may do, and does at times, even when speak-
ing only as Prefect or President of a Roman
Congregation. It is not enough to use his
teaching authority in exhorting, advising, or
instructing the whole body of the faithful. He
must make use of it in its highest form, and to
the fullest extent in which it has been bestowed
upon him. And, hence, he must "define," that
is, put an end to all discussion ; he must decide
irrevocably. Then, too, the doctrine he defines
must be ** concerned with Faith or morals," and
with Faith or morals as contained in the re-
velation which was given to the Apostles. His
gift extends only to the truths which were en-
trusted to the Church at her foundation, and to
such other truths as may be necessary for the
maintenance of the original deposit. And he
must require that the doctrines so defined shall
be " held " — held, that is, with a firm interior assent
— " by the universal Church ". As Chief Pastor
of the Church he may, of course, teach in-
J5
226 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
dividuals and local Churches ; he may prohibit
a doctrine to be taught, or he may impose silence
on a controversy. But in none of these things
is his infallibility involved. He is only infallible
when he demands assent, and demands assent
from all the Church's children. If all these
conditions be fulfilled we have an infallible
definition ; and such a definition, the Vatican
tells us, is *' irreformable " — not liable to modifica-
tion or revision — of itself, and at once, not
through the Church's subsequent acceptance and
approval of it.
The Pope has, further, a primacy of juris-
diction ; he not only teaches, he governs, the
Church, under Christ, without hindrance from,
or appeal to, any other authority. As in the
civil state, so in the Church, supreme authority,
in whomsoever it may vest, must make laws
when needed, apply them to individual cases,
and see to their proper execution. This, too, is
the function of the Pope, within his sphere of
jurisdiction. For his power is not unlimited. It
is confined within the purpose for which the
Church has been established. The power of the
State is determined by the object for which the
State exists ; its authority extends to everything
THE AUTHORITY OF THE POPE 227
which is necessary for the existence, and even
for the well-being, of the commonwealth. Now
the Church is a spiritual society, whose object is
the spiritual welfare of souls. Things spiritual,
therefore, constitute the native sphere of Church
and Papal jurisdiction ; things temporal belong
to it only in so far as they have a bearing on the
spiritual. But, within that sphere, the juris-
diction of the Pope — legislative, judicial, and
executive — is supreme. There is no power
within Christ's Church which he cannot exercise.
It is given him directly by God ; it is not
delegated to him by the Church. It is uni-
versal, as extending to all the members of the
Church, wherever they may be, and of whatever
order, class, or dignity. And it is immediate ; he
may exercise it over whom he wills, without the
intervention of any local, and, therefore, inter-
mediate authority.
He may also, nay he must, make use of
instruments — individuals, and congregations or
committees — to carry on his government. He
could not himself alone meet the needs of such
a vast organization. And he can share his
jurisdiction with others. Infallibility is his in-
communicable prerogative ; he can give no part
15*
228 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
of it to his Cardinals, no part to his most
important and most trusted congregations. But
the power to make spiritual laws, and issue
precepts, and grant dispensations, to exercise
judicial functions, and to execute justice, he must
delegate in part to different sections of the
machinery by which he rules. But he does not,
and he cannot, divest himself of any the least
portion of the jurisdiction which Christ has given
him. He remains always the supreme governor,
as he is the supreme and infallible teacher of
Christ's Church.
LECTURE VIII.
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS.
We saw something in our last lecture of the
position which the Bishop of Rome holds in the
Church of Christ. He becomes, on his election
to the Roman Bishopric, the successor of St.
Peter, and, as St. Peter's successor, he is invested
with a primacy of teaching and of governing
authority over the universal Church. Within
the limits of the Christian Revelation he cannot
err in what he proposes to the Church as
doctrines to be believed, and, within the con-
stitution given to the Church of Christ, he has
supreme legislative, judicial, and executive
authority.
But in Christ's Church, as we see it, and as we
know it in its history, the Bishop of Rome is not
sole teacher, he is not sole ruler. The Divine
commission, " Preach the Gospel," was not
spoken to St. Peter only ; it was addressed to all
229
230 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
of the Apostles. The power to bind and to
loose was not promised to St. Peter alone ; it was
promised to all the Twelve. And the Apostles
were not mere delegates of Peter in teaching and
in governing ; their authority was given to them
by Christ Himself. St. Peter did, indeed, re-
ceive a primacy for himself and for his successors.
Under Christ it was supreme, plenary, and inde-
pendent. But it was not the sole authority,
although supreme. Side by side with it, subor-
dinate to it, and therefore dependent upon it, was
the authority which Christ gave to others also,
and which He willed to continue in His Church
for ever.
The Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the
Epistles — all show us very clearly that Christ
Himself appointed a body of teachers and rulers
for the Society He was founding. He did not
establish the Society, and invest it with an autho-
rity to teach and govern, which it might transfer
wholly or in part to delegates, as we may con-
ceive to be the case in civil States. He Himself
appointed the governors and teachers, who were
to build up the Church ; and these, in turn, were
to make provision for their successors. It is
quite obvious that Christ had no thought of
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 231
establishing a pure democracy. In considering
the primacy conferred upon St. Peter, and the
Roman Bishops, in succession to him, it was
made clear that " the Kingdom " is a monarchy.
If we consider now the appointment of the
Apostles, we find that there are to be subordinate
authorities, entrusted with a share of the teaching
and ruling powers bestowed upon St. Peter.
"All power is given to Me in heaven and on
earth," Christ says to them, after His resurrec-
tion ; ** Going therefore teach 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.
And behold I am with you all days even to the
consummation of the world. "^ He commissions
the Apostles to preach, to baptize, to direct be-
lievers in the way of obedience to the Christian
law ; and He promises to be with them in doing
so until the end of time. Clearly, He contem-
plates a perpetual continuance of the office to
which He is appointing them ; and, equally
clearly. He must will that they shall have suc-
cessors for ever in it. Besides, as we have had
already occasion to note, the Constitution of
^Matt. XXVIII. 18.
232 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Christ's Church cannot undergo any substantial
change. As He established it, with its Divinely
appointed teachers and rulers, so, in the absence
of all evidence to the contrary, we must suppose
it will remain until the end. And this, indeed,
is a defined dogma of our Faith. *' If any one
shall say," the Council of Trent declares, ''that
in the Catholic Church there is not a hierarchy,
instituted by a Divine ordinance, and consisting
of Bishops, priests, and ministers : let him be
anathema." And, ''If any one shall say that
Bishops are not superior to priests, or have not
the power to confirm or ordain, or that the
power which they have is common to them with
priests, let him be anathema".^ It is, therefore,
of Catholic faith that there is, and ever will be,
in the Church a governing authority, embodied
in Bishops, priests, and ministers or deacons :
distinct Offices and Orders, whether they are
held by different individuals, or held as they so
often are by one. For every Bishop is at once
Bishop, priest, and minister combined.
But though the doctrine is of faith, and long-
continued practice marks clearly the distinction
between priests and Bishops, it is not so easy to
^Sess. XXIII., can. 6 and 7; Denz., 966-7.
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 233
distinguish them in Apostolic times. The autho-
rity of the Apostles themselves is clearly recog-
nized in all the Churches. It is certain, too, from
the Acts of the Apostles, and from the Epistles,
particularly St. Paul's pastoral Epistles, that
there were persons in authority in all the local
Churches; though it is not always easy to de-
termine from the New Testament writings alone
what their precise functions were. They are
variously called: at one time "presbyters," at
another *' Bishops" ; and it would seem that the
same persons were called now by one name, again
by another. We are not now concerned with the
Order of deacons, of which the origin and original
duties are set out in the Acts of the Apostles.
Nor with the individuals possessed of very special
spiritual gifts : of prophecy, of healing, of tongues,
of discerning of spirits, and the like ; whom St.
Paul speaks of frequently in his greater Epistles.
Such gifts, or "charismata," wonderful manifesta-
tions of Divine grace and religious life, in the
infant Church, were not necessarily elements or
even accompaniments of Church authority. Our
difficulty lies in distinguishing those two first
Orders of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which the
Council of Trent has told us are of Divine
234 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
institution : the Order of Bishops and the Order
of Priests ; and in assigning to each its proper
powers and duties. Of Paul and Barnabas we
are told in the Acts that they "ordained
presbyters or priests in every Church," which
they established in Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch/
A little later Paul and Barnabas "go unto the
Apostles, and presbyters to Jerusalem ".^ After
the Council, in which "the Apostles and
presbyters were gathered together, to consider "
the controversies referred to them, the decree of
the Council was issued in the names of the
" Apostles and the presbyters brethren ".^ Later
again, St. Paul " calls to him the presbyters of
the Church of Ephesus," and, in the course of
his address to them, he says : " Take heed unto
yourselves, and to all the flock in which the
Holy Ghost hath made you Bishops to rule the
Church of God "/ His Epistle to the Philippians
is sent to " all the saints in Christ Jesus who are
at Philippi with the Bishops and deacons "/ He
bids Timothy, " Not neglect the grace that is in
thee, which was given thee with the laying on
of the hands of the Presbytery," ^ or priesthood.
^Acts IV. 23. ^ 3id., XV. 2. ^ Ibid., 23.
^ Ibid., XX. 28. sPhil. i. i. ^1 Tim. iv. 14.
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 235
He reminds Titus, "that for this cause I left
thee in Crete, that thou shouldst ordain priests
(or presbyters) in every city ".^ He declares : '* If
a man desireth the office of a Bishop he desireth
a good work,"^ and he then proceeds to describe
the qualifications of a Bishop. " Let the priests,"
he says, further on, ** that rule well be esteemed
worthy of double honour, especially those who
labour in the word and in teaching."^ And St.
Peter writes, in his first Epistle " to the strangers
dispersed through Pontas, Galatia, Cappadocia,
Asia, and Bythinia, elect": **The presbyters
therefore, that are among you, I beseech, who
am myself also a presbyter . . . feed the flock
of God, which is among you, exercising the
oversight, not of constraint, but willingly . . .
being made a pattern to the flock from the
heart".* But I need not further multiply quota-
tions. From those which I have made we may,
I think, gather that it would be difficult to
distinguish, on New Testament evidence, be-
tween the Bishops and the presbyters or priests,
to whom the New Testament so often makes
reference. It is possible that the names were
^ Titus I. 5. '-^ I Tim. 111. i.
3 Ibid., V. 17. * I Pet. V. i.
236 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
used indiscriminately, though the offices and
powers were distinct — that Bishops, as we under-
stand the name and office, were often called
'* presbyters " or ** elders " or " priests " ; and
priests, corresponding in functions and authority
with the "priests" of our day, were called
" Bishops " or ''overseers". It seems certain,
also, from the incident at Miletus — where St.
Paul ** called to him the presbyters " and then
addressed them as *' Bishops " — that the same
persons bore sometimes both names. And it
may be that the powers of the Episcopacy and
of the priesthood were vested always in the same
individuals, that full Episcopal Orders were
conferred on every priest in Apostolic times.
We cannot advance much further in the solution
of the question, with the aid of the New Testa-
ment alone. Nor is it necessary ; for this, at
any rate, the New Testament does make clear
to us : that already during the lifetime of the
Apostles, a very few years after the death of
Christ, there were men, not themselves Apostles,
appointed and ordained through the Apostles by
the Holy Ghost to exercise authority in the local
Churches. They are to ** preach the word," to
''impose, or lay on, hands," to "ordain priests,"
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 237
to " rule the Church," to " feed the flock of God,"
to "command and teach," ^ to "receive an ac-
cusation against a priest only under two or three
witnesses,"^ to "reprove, entreat, rebuke in all
patience and doctrine,"^ to "speak, exhort,
reprove, with all authority,"* to "commit to
faithful men, who shall be able to teach others
also the things which they had heard " ^ from the
Apostles. Assuredly, we have in these and
similar passages convincing proof that the office
and powers of Christian Bishops, as they have
been known to the Catholic Church throughout
her history, existed already fully and definitely
in the Apostolic Church. The titles given to
the office, and to the men who held it, have an
historical interest only, and are without bearing
on the one important question : Is the office itself,
and are the powers inherent in it, of Divine
institution, and of established usage in Apostolic
times ? The answer of the New Testament is an
emphatic affirmative.
And we are strengthened in this opinion by
all the information we can glean from the scanty
remains of the earliest Church writings. St.
^ I Tim. IV. II. '^ Ibid.^ v. 19. ^ 2 Tim. iv. ;»,
♦Tit. II. 15. »a Tim. 11. 3,
238 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Clement of Rome, towards the close of the first
century, in his letter to the Corinthians, mentions
as a fact, about which there could be apparently
no doubt, that " the Apostles, instructed by our
Lord Christ, . . . themselves appointed Bishops,
and gave order that, when such Bishops died,
other approved men should succeed them in
their office"/ And he goes on to censure the
Corinthians gravely for their rebellion against
their Bishops. About the year 107, Ignatius
Martyr, disciple of St. John the Evangelist, in
several of his authentic letters, shows us a Church
organization very much the same as it is in our
own day. He was himself Bishop of Antioch ;
and in his various letters, written to local
Churches, on his way from Antioch to Rome
and martyrdom, he assumes the government of
each to lie in the hands of one Bishop, with
priests and deacons to assist him ; and he is
emphatic in urging the duty of union with and
obedience to the Bishop. ** When you are
subject to the Bishop as to Jesus Christ," he
tells the Trallians, " you seem to me to live ac-
cording to Jesus Christ, and not according to
^XLiv. I ; Lightfoot, 11. p. 131.
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 239
men."^ And to the same Trallians he says
further on : "It is necessary you should do
nothing whatsoever without your Bishop ".^ To
the Ephesians he writes : "It is manifest we
should look upon the Bishop as Christ Himself" ; ^
and to the Smyrniots : "Apart from the Bishop,
let no man do aught of things pertaining to the
Church ; let that be held a valid Eucharist
which is under the Bishop, or one to whom he
shall have committed it. . . . It is not lawful
apart from the Bishop either to baptize or to
celebrate the Agape ; but whatever he shall
approve, that is well pleasing to God also."*
And, again, to the Philadelphians : " See to it
that you partake of one Eucharist, for one is the
flesh of Christ our Lord, and one the chalice of
His blood, one altar, and there is one Bishop,
with his priests and deacons ".^ And there are
many other passages equally clear and equally
decisive in his seven great Epistles, in which
his teaching is briefly this : The Hierarchy of
^ Trail., II. 5 ; Lightfoot, 11. p. 154.
'^ Ibid.y II. 10; Lightfoot, p. 155.
' Eph. VI. I ; Lightfoot, p. 46.
^Smyrn., viii. 10; Lightfoot, p. 309.
*Phil. IV. 10; Lightfoot, p. 257.
240 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
the Church was instituted by Christ Himself;
it consists of three Orders — Bishops, priests, and
deacons ; Bishops are superior, by Divine
authority, to priests ; they are to be found in all
Churches ; without them there is no Church ; ^
all are to be united with and to obey them. In-
deed the testimony of Ignatius is so cogent in
favour of the Catholic doctrine of Episcopal
authority, and of Episcopal authority as exercised
by one Bishop in each local Church, before the
beginning of the second century, and he assumes
so unquestioningly in all his letters that the
arrangement is everywhere the same, and that
no one of those to whom he writes will contro-
vert his statements, or make any charge of
novelty against him, that many opponents of
Episcopacy are driven to assert the spuriousness
of the letters. But, since Bishop Lightfoots
labours, no serious critic will be found to even
doubt their genuineness.
One other writer I shall quote — from the
second half of the second century. St. Irenseus,
the friend of Polycarp, who had been disciple of
St. John, represents the ecclesiastical tradition of
both East and West ; and he is, if anything, more
1 Trail, III. I ; Lightfoot, p. 158. '
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 241
explicit than Ignatius Martyr, in declaring the
authority of Bishops and their Apostolic origin.
" We must be obedient," he says, ** to the presby-
ters of the Church, to those who have succession
from the Apostles, who have received the certain
gift of truth, together with the Episcopal inheri-
tance."^ He speaks of *' those who were insti-
tuted Bishops by the Apostles, and are their suc-
cessors even to our own day '* ; ^ and, because it
would be too long to enumerate the succession of
Bishops *'in all the Churches," he gives that of
Rome and of Smyrna, in the latter of which his
friend Polycarp had been appointed Bishop by
the Apostles.
I do not cite the testimony of later writers ; for
it is agreed on all hands that dating from the
second century, the belief of the Church, expressed
in the clearest terms by her Fathers and historians
and Councils, has always been the same belief
which the Council of Trent defined : that the
Bishops of the Catholic Church are the successors
of the Apostles, appointed, according to Christ's
institution, for the preaching of the Gospel, the
administration of religious rites, and the govern-
^ "Contra Haer.," iv. c. 26, n. 2 ; M. G., vii. 1053.
'^ Ibid., III. c. 3, I ; M. G., vn. 848.
16
242 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
ment of local Churches. And the Church her-
self has no power to make any change in this
Divine economy. She could no more alter the
constitution given her by Christ and promulgated
by the Apostles, in what concerns the Episcopal
Order than in what concerns the Primacy. The
one is as necessary to her existence as the other.
It is not essential that she should ordain deacons,
as a class apart, to be occupied in special minis-
terial functions. Deaconship, in fact, according
to the present discipline of the Church, is only a
stage on the way towards the priesthood. The
deacon is absorbed in the priest ; one man holds
and exercises the twofold office. Similarly, it is
not essential there should be a separate body of
priests, either secular or religious. As the same
individual is at present priest and deacon, so he
might be Bishop also were the Church to so de-
termine. We might have Bishops only, to teach
and minister in the Church, who would unite in
their own persons the several Offices and Orders
of Bishops, priests, and deacons. But the
Episcopacy itself, scattered throughout the world,
and governing and teaching the local churches,
with a God-given authority, is essential to the
Church's very existence, no less than to her well-
being.
THE, AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 243
And when we inquire what the authority of
Bishops is, we find the answer in what we have
already seen : that the Bishops succeed to the
Apostles. Their office, therefore, within certain
limits is the Apostolic office ; their duties, their
authority, those of the Apostles. They have to
teach, preserve, and spread Christ's Gospel.
They have to feed and govern the faithful com-
mitted to their care. They have to hand on the
Office and the powers which were entrusted to
them. We say they have to do this "within
certain limits," for their mission is not quite the
same as that of the Apostles. The Bishops as a
body, succeed to the Apostles as a body ; " college
succeeds," it has been said, "to college". But
only the head of the Apostolic College has a suc-
cessor with all the fullness of that Apostle's powers
and rights. The Roman Bishop of to-day has
the same Divine mission, receives precisely the
same authority which the first Roman Bishop,
St. Peter, had. But other Bishops individually
are under somewhat different conditions. They
are not sent "into the whole world," not com-
manded to '* preach the Gospel unto every
creature" as the Apostles were. A definite
fMDrtion of the vineyard is assigned to each of them,
16 ♦
244 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
a part only of the flock of Christ. Nor is their
individual teaching protected by infallibility, as
we conceive the teaching of each Apostle to have
been. They may misconceive, they may falsify,
the message which they are sent to convey.
But we shall understand better the nature and
the extent of their authority, if we consider the
threefold class of circumstances under which they
exercise it. The Bishops of the Catholic Church
may meet to take counsel on the necessities of the
Universal Church, to make laws for the guidance
of all the faithful, to explain or define doctrines
which all are to believe. Even dispersed
throughout the world, each busied with the needs
of his own flock, they still constitute, when taken
together, the one Divinely appointed body of
teachers and rulers on whom the faith and unity
of the Church depend. And finally, they may be
regarded as individual members of the one great
ruling and teaching body, in their relation only
to those of the faithful who are committed to
each one's special care.
They may meet in Council. I do not intend
to discuss here at any length the various questions
which are concerned with General Councils. It
will be enough to say that the Bishops of the
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 245
Church may come together under such circum-
stances that they shall be, or shall adequately
represent, the teaching and governing authority
of the Church. And, should they do so, it is
clear that their decisions must carry all the value
which attaches to such authority. Their defini-
tions, in matters of Divine Faith, must be in-
fallible : for the congregated Bishops constitute
or represent the teaching Church ; the Church
universal is bound to accept their teaching ; and
both the teaching and the universal Church are
endowed with infallibility. Their laws, too,
within the sphere in which the Church has
power to legislate, are binding upon all the faith-
ful. They form a High Court, from which there
is no appeal, in judicial proceedings ; and they
can exercise all the functions of a supreme ex-
ecutive.
Or, we may consider the Bishops of the Ca-
tholic Church, "dispersed" throughout the world
engaged in their ordinary duties of teaching and
governing, but still forming, in the aggregate,
one body of teachers and rulers. Considered in
this way, it is impossible to see how they can ex-
ercise any judicial or executive functions. They
cannot even legislate ; though if they chanced, or
246 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
were all agreed, to frame the same laws, each for
his own diocese, those laws would soon acquire
the binding force of universal custom. But what
if they are at one in teaching doctrines of Faith
or Morals? Then, beyond all doubt, they are
infallible. Dispersed, no less than gathered to-
gether in Council, they are the teaching Church ;
and the teaching Church is not infallible then
only when, on rare occasions, the Bishops are
convened in oecumenical assemblies. The Church,
too, is passively infallible ; and the Church be-
lieves, and must believe, what, day by day, and
year by year, the Bishops of the Church, her
Divinely appointed teachers, are agreed in teach-
ing. A Bishop may err, through ignorance or in
malice ; the Bishops of a province, of a nation,
may teach heresy ; neither active nor passive in-
fallibility is promised to individuals or to peoples.
But the whole teaching body, the whole believ-
ing Church, cannot err in delivering, or in hold-
ing the revealed doctrines of the Faith ; and,
therefore, the unanimous teaching of the Bishops,
even when dispersed, must be infallible.
Or, finally — and this is the most important
point to be considered, as being of most practical
and immediate consequence — we may take each
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 247
Bishop in his own particular diocese, and inquire
what his authority is in it. I do not speak now
of the authority which Bishops in the past have
often exercised, and which in places many exer-
cise, in fact, to-day, without any Divinely given
right to do so. Christian Europe, in mediaeval
times, entrusted large powers to the Head of the
Christian Church, which were no part of the au-
thority bestowed on him by her Founder. So,
too, in the case of Bishops ; circumstances have led
often to their acceptance of duties and privileges
entirely outside their spiritual mission. They
became princes of the Empire, peers of parlia-
ment, high officers of State, judges in merely
civil matters. Until recent years, the Arch-
bishop of Armagh, in Ireland, and the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, in England, by inheritance
from pre- Reformation times, had their Courts of
Probate, in which all questions concerning wills
were to be decided. And Bishops, of course, lose
none of their rights as citizens at consecration ;
they are entitled to all the influence and authority
which birth and ability, and education, or other
natural and acquired qualities may win for them.
We speak, therefore, of that authority alone
which is inherent in their office, which Christ be-
248 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
stows upon them when appointed to a diocese.
And the general reply to our inquiry is plain and
easy. Each Bishop in his diocese, and under
certain limitations, is to his own faithful people
what an QEcumenical Council and the Roman
Pontiff are to the Church universal. Under cer-
tain limitations : for his laws and precepts, his
judicial decisions, his executive measures, may be
appealed against. He may not decide questions
of Faith or Morals, which, with the knowledge
and acquiescence of the Church, are subjects of
controversy among Catholics. His doctrinal de-
cisions are not infallible. But within these
limitations, the authority of the Church is in his
hands to exercise.
He is the one authentic teacher of Faith and
Morals within the diocese. To him, and to him
only, are Our Lord's words applicable : *' Going,
therefore, preach the Gospel " . To him, and to
him only, may be applied the instructions and
exhortations addressed by St. Paul to Titus and
to Timothy. He, and he alone, is the successor
of the Apostles. He, and he alone, has received
the Apostolic Commission. There may be others
in his diocese, abler, of greater intellectual gifts,
more profound, more widely read theologians.
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 249
There may be some among his clergy, both
secular and regular, more eloquent, better fitted
to expound the truths of Revelation. But he,
not they, is the Divinely appointed public teacher
of his people. They can only teach publicly at all
in so far as he permits, or calls, them to assist him
in his labours ; and they can only teach what
the Bishops in union with their head on earth
approve and sanction.
And his teaching authority extends to the
whole contents of the Christian revelation. It is
clear that he has no direct commission to com-
municate profane knowledge. He may be deeply
versed in history, philosophy, biology, » or mathe-
matics : but he has not been sent to preach them ;
they are not part of the Gospel, which Christ has
entrusted to him. His concern, like that of the
Church, which he represents officially, is with the
*' Deposit of Faith," the body of revealed truths,
which Christ and His Holy Spirit made known
to the Apostles. This he must explain and de-
fend ; as also whatever other truths are so bound
up with it that they stand or fall together. And
his people are obliged to accept his teaching.
They may not reject it, they may not pass it idly
by : they are bound, speaking generally, to give
250 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
assent to it. I know, of course, that a Bishop
may err in what he teaches, even in matters of
revealed Faith and Morals. But the mere pos-
sibility of error in a teacher exempts no one from
the duty of believing. When a child receives its
first lessons in religion from a parent or a guardian,
it is not justified in denying or even doubting the
truths proposed to it, on the ground that father
or mother or guardian may be mistaken. If my
Bishop teaches what I know to be at variance
with the admitted doctrines of the Church, or if I
have serious reasons for questioning his state-
ments, I may withhold assent, and, in the former
case, I must withhold it. But in the ordinary
circumstances of life, and where no grave reason
for doubt presents itself, to refuse belief in matters
of Faith and Morals to what my Bishop teaches
me is to reject a message which purports to be
Divine, conveyed to me by a messenger whom I
know to be Divinely appointed. Besides, it
would mean that I should believe only what I
chose myself; and it would base the whole re-
ligion of the Church upon private judgment. And
hence a Bishop's religious teaching has a claim
upon his flock, which no other teaching, except
the infallible teaching of the Church, can have.
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 251
The inferior clergy, those charged with the cure
of souls, members of Religious Orders, professors
in great seats of ecclesiastical learning, parents
themselves, may and must teach the truths of the
Christian Revelation ; but they are not specially
accredited messengers ; they have no special ap-
pointment from God, the author of that Revela-
tion.
And not only is the Bishop in his diocese to
teach authoritatively, within the limits of Faith
and Morals, but it is for him also to declare
authoritatively, in case of doubt, how far those
limits extend. There are questions which lie
evidently within the sphere of revealed truth, if
there be any such sphere at all. There are others
which lie as evidently without it. But there is a
third class of questions, on which opinion may be
divided, or in which at least the Bishop's authority
to pronounce may more readily be denied or
doubted. And this is the common lot of all
authority, which is only finite ; whether it be
civil or religious, in the home, the State, or the
Universal Church. There will be a certain
territory in which each holds undisputed sway ;
there will be other territories, in which it has no
jurisdiction whatsoever ; and there may be some,
252 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
in which its claims are doubtful, or are at any
rate contested according to the varying interests
or principles or passions which are affected. Now,
it is in this third class of question that we assert
the Bishop's right to determine, subject to appeal,
the limits of his own jurisdiction. He has not
only the power to teach, but he has also the
power to declare what questions are contained
within the limits of his teaching power. For, if
he have not, who has ? Not the State ; the
State has no power of interference in the teaching
of the Christian Revelation. Not, surely, the
persons to be taught ? It has never been sug-
gested that those subject to a jurisdiction must be
permitted to fix its limits. Therefore, it must be
the Bishop. We argue here as we do in the
case of Church infallibility. The Church is in-
fallible, not only in determining questions of
Faith and Morals, but in determining how far
the circumference of Faith and Morals extends.
If those whom her teaching failed to please might
lawfully refuse assent, by pleading that, while
bound to yield submission where she had a right
to claim it, it was they themselves who were to
judge how far her right extends, then her teach-
ing authority could be always set aside.
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 253
But, indeed, every authority — legislative,
judicial, executive, as well as doctrinal — must
have the right to declare what are the boundaries
of its own jurisdiction. If the authority be su-
preme, no appeal, of course, is possible ; but still
the right is always claimed and exercised. If an
appeal lies, the decision of the inferior authority
may be called in question ; but, until overruled,
the decision holds ; and those subject to the au-
thority are bound to accept and to obey it. I
may not, therefore, avoid an act of supreme
Church authority on the ground that the subject
matter of her decision lies outside her jurisdic-
tion : she can declare infallibly what her jurisdic-
tion is. And, in matters not clearly beyond the
bounds of Episcopal authority, I may not refuse
obedience or assent upon the ground that, in my
opinion, the limits of rightful authority have been
exceeded. I may, of course, appeal to a higher
court ; but I may not myself reject the decision
arbitrarily ; and until my appeal is admitted and
allowed, the decision of my Bishop binds me.
The principle, as you will see, is an important
one, and when feeling runs high, one liable to
be ignored or questioned even by Catholics them-
selves. We have already had occasion to con-
254 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
sider that the mission of the Church is a spiritual
one — to souls. It is only indirectly that, as a
Society, she can interfere in what is temporal :
only in so far as things temporal have a bearing
on what is spiritual. Now, given her right to
exist at all, no one will question her authority in
things purely spiritual. Further, we Catholics
ourselves disclaim for her all power to meddle in
things merely temporal. But there is a wide
field of matters, in themselves temporal, but with
a spiritual side, which some will think justifies,
others will think does not justify. Church interfer-
ence. Who is to decide the question ? On Catho-
lic principles, the Church herself, and the Church
only. Now, the Bishop exercises, fallibly, sub-
ject to appeal, and under certain limitations, the
powers inherent in the Church universal. He
has direct and unquestioned power in things
wholly spiritual ; he has no power whatsoever in
things wholly temporal. In those of a mixed
nature, he has authority, so far as its exercise is
needed for his spiritual mission. Who is to decide
when it is so needed ? On Catholic principles, it
is not the State, not politicians, not individual
Catholics lay or clerical : it is the Bishop himself ;
and, subject to appeal, the Bishop only.
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 255
The Bishop, therefore, is the one authoritative
teacher in his diocese ; and he is to teach re-
vealed truth, truth necessary for its maintenance,
and, therefore, if need be, the extent of his own
teaching authority.
He is also a governor or ruler ; and as such he
may make laws for his diocese. Every social
body has power to legislate for its members. If
men join together to work out a common purpose,
there must be rules of conduct binding upon all,
and some machinery to enforce their execution.
Otherwise there will be chaos. But the larger
the social body is, the more widely it extends,
the more need there will be to provide for local
conditions and necessities. You cannot have
one only code, which shall be applicable, in all its
details, to every portion of the British Empire.
There must be colonial and provincial legisla-
tures ; there are county, municipal, and district
councils, with power to frame by-laws and regula-
tions for the areas subject to them. Now Pope
and Bishops are the only law-makers of the
Church. When they meet in GEcumenical
Councils, they legislate for the universal Church ;
and the Pope, in virtue of his primacy, can do as
much alone. But, in a world-wide empire, like the
256 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
Church, universal laws must be supplemented to
meet local needs. And so we have National
Synods or Councils, and Provincial Synods, In
which the Bishops of a whole country, or of an
ecclesiastical province In It, make laws In common
for the laity and clergy confided to their care.
There remains the diocese — the Divinely ap-
pointed unit of Church organization. Its con-
ditions may be so peculiarly its own as to require
some special legislation. If so, the Bishop Is
Divinely empowered to provide it. We need
not repeat here what has been already said, as to
the authority of the Bishops defined In the New
Testament, and In the lifelong usage or traditions
of the universal Church. It all applies to the
Bishop In his diocese, and to his legislative
power. And it shows us also how that power Is
limited. Like the Church herself he cannot
modify or even dispense from the Divine law.
He may not legislate against general Church
law — statute or customary, or against the decrees
of National or Provincial Synods, though he may
dispense from them in certain cases. He cannot
make laws which are concerned with merely
temporal matters, or aim at merely temporal re-
sults. His legislation, like all his authority, is
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 257
spiritual. And, even in the spiritual order, his
legislation must be reasonable, must not impose
an unduly heavy burthen upon his flock. Hence
the universally admitted axiom : " Church law —
whether universal or particular — does not bind,
when grave inconvenience would be the conse-
quence ". But, in the spiritual order, and even in
those temporal matters which, as we have seen,
may be linked closely with the spiritual, and sub-
ject to the limitations imposed by Divine and ec-
clesiastical law or usage, a Bishop's right to enact
laws, and issue precepts, in his diocese can only
be defined by the spiritual welfare of his people.
His right is beyond all doubt, in matters purely
spiritual. H e makes rules for the teaching of the
Faith, the administration of Sacraments, the
offering of the Holy Sacrifice, the whole ritual of
public worship. But, in matters not purely
spiritual and in particular instances, his right is
not always quite so evident. His case is similar
to that of the supreme authority of the Church.
It is often difficult to show clearly such a relation
between the temporal and the spiritual as to
warrant the Church's interference in what of it-
self is temporal. The interference, too, is some-
times based, as it was at times in the Middle Ages,
17
258 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
on a grant of power by princes or by peoples to
the Church. Or a law may have grown out of
custom, introduced by the faithful themselves,
and merely sanctioned by the Church's rulers.
Thus the Church forbids the use of certain meats
at certain times ; but the prohibition seems to
be the outcome of popular custom, and not of
any statutory enactment. How far the Church
could forbid the use of other kinds of food, at
times or altogether ; how far she could legislate
on dress, social amusements, professional occu-
pations, civil contracts, political associations, and
kindred matters, because of their bearing upon
spiritual interests, it might not be easy in par-
ticular cases to decide. But two things seem
quite clear — one, that she has power to make
laws and impose precepts in such matters when
the well-being of souls is vitally concerned ; the
other, that when doubt arises in an individual
case it is for her to determine what her power is.
No one else can. Somewhat in the same way
we must regard the Bishop, legislating for his
own flock where the subject matter is primarily
temporal, but important spiritual issues are in-
volved. He forbids the reading of a newspaper
or of a book ; he condemns a particular form of
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 259
amusement ; he warns his people against a
secular association ; he calls on them upon oc-
casion to vote with a political party at Parlia-
mentary or municipal elections, and the like. No
Catholic can question his right to do so, if ade-
quate spiritual interests are concerned. But who
shall judge? The newspaper editor? A poli-
tician ? The author of the book ? Only the
Bishop himself, or, on appeal, his superior in the
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. And until an appeal
is taken and allowed, the decision of the Bishop
stands. Otherwise all Episcopal jurisdiction, how-
ever Divinely given, could be reduced to naught.
And, finally, the Bishop has judicial and ex-
ecutive authority as well. But we need not
consider it in any detail. Practically, in our
day, the Bishop acts as judge towards members
of his clergy only ; the penalties that he im-
poses are purely spiritual ; and no principle is
involved which we have not already taken into
consideration.
And now, in closing this series of lectures, may
I sum up briefly the stages through which we
have passed in our inquiry ?
We desired to justify, on purely rational
grounds, our own position as Catholics, and to
17*
26o THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
study in its broad outlines the Constitution of
the Church of which we are members. And we
began with an examination of the historical
sources, from which almost all our knowledge of
the Church's Founder and foundation is derived.
We saw that critically, on both intrinsic and ex-
trinsic evidence, the writings of the New Testa-
ment are documents of unimpeachable value,
entirely trustworthy in what they tell us of the
persons, doctrines, and events which they describe.
We gathered from them the claims and the
character of Christ, which prove conclusively that
Christ was God ; a conclusion rendered still more
certain by His Resurrection from the dead.
Christ, God, planned and established a Society,
which He called His Church, which is to be im-
perishable, universal, numerically and organically
one, infallible in teaching and belief, the ordinary
source and channel of the fullness of His graces
to mankind. That Church exists to-day, and
can only be the Roman Catholic Church, since
she alone is possessed of that unity in Catholicity
which Christ promised to His Church, and since
she alone is and claims to be infallible. All this,
I think, we have satisfactorily established, and
so have laid the foundations of our whole Faith
THE AUTHORITY OF BISHOPS 261
and practice. We can and must ** believe every-
thing which the Holy Roman Catholic Church
proposes to our belief" ; and we must obey the
whole law, her own and the Divine, which she
lays upon us. Then, examining the structure of
the Church as a Society, we found it to be Mon-
archical, taught and governed by one visible
Head on earth, to whom in Peter and his suc-
cessors Christ gave supreme authority. The
Bishop of Rome, St. Peter's successor, is therefore
infallible in teaching, and exercises the fullness
of the Church's jurisdiction over us. But we live
under a more immediate spiritual head, the Bishop
of our diocese, who is set by the Holy Ghost to
teach and govern us. These two — the Pope and
our Bishop — are in the ordinary Providence of
God the Divinely appointed representatives of
Christ to us. They come to us with a Divine
authority which no one else can lay claim to or
possess.
It is well with us, then, in the Catholic Church,
where we have the infallible teaching of religious
truth, the Sacraments and sacrifice instituted by
Christ for our sanctification and salvation, the
guidance of a Divinely appointed religious au-
thority which speaks to us with the voice, and
in the name, of God.
INDEX.
Agatho, Pope, 215.
Anglican Church, not the Church
of Christ, 177.
Anselm, St., 188.
Apostles, chosen and trained by
Christ; then sent to preach,
govern, minister, 83.
— success of their work, 88.
— not delegates of St. Peter, 230.
— to have successors until the
end, 231.
Authority of Bishops, 229, 243,
246.
Church, 3, 129.
Pope, 195.
B
Bishops, authority of, 229.
— diocesan, authority of, 247.
— in primitive Church, 233.
— teaching authority of, 249.
— legislators and rulers, 255.
— office of, 237.
— Clement of Rome on, 238.
— Ignatius Martyr on, 238.
— Polycarp on, 240.
— essential to existence of the
Church, 242.
— threefold activity of, 244.
— determine extent of their juris-
diction, 251.
— legislative power, 255.
Branch theory of the Church, 167.
C^RULARius, 175, 189.
Celestine, Pope, 213.
Chalcedon, Council of, on Papal
authority, 214.
Characteristics of Church, 96,
Charismata, 233.
Christ, man, 30.
— God, 31.
— His Character, 36, 93.
— His Claims, 40.
— His Resurrection, 53.
Church, Anglican, 177.
— Greek Orthodox, 174.
— of Christ, imperishable, 99.
One, 106.
membership of, obliga-
tory, 114.
infallible, 134.
believed to be infallible
by Apostles, 141.
Clement of Rome, 16, 208, 238.
Columbanus, St., 188.
Corinth, Church of, 208.
Comely, on date of Gospels, 14.
Councils, General, on Roman See,
213.
Cyprian, St., 210.
Deists, 10.
Divinity of Christ, 31, 93,
Division of East and West, 189.
262
INDEX
263
Ephbsus, Council of, 213.
F
Faith, unity of, in Catholic
Church, 184.
Pilioque, 189.
Firmilian, 211, 212.
Florence, Council of, on Roman
Primacy, 215.
Foundation of Church, 61.
Francis, St., of Assisi, 188.
Greek Orthodox Church, 174.
H
Harnack, 13.
Heresy, Apostolic view of, 120.
Higher criticism, 6, 10, 12.
I
Ignatius Martyr, on Roman
Church, 209.
on Bishops, 238.
Indifferentism, religious, 125.
Infallibility, active and passive,
134.
— what it is not, 137.
— of Apostles, 141.
Church, 138, 150.
— antecedently probable, 140.
— promised by Christ, 144.
— subject and object of, 158.
— claimed by Catholic Church,
192.
— A mark of the true Church,
192.
— Dr. Salmon on, 191.
Ircnaeus, St., 17, 209, 240.
Jurisdiction, Primacy of, 226.
Justin Martyr, 17.
Kingdom founded by Christ, 67.
— not a school of thought, 68.
— nature of the, 71.
— not earthly, 71.
— yet on earth, 73.
— and visible, 75.
— universal, 77.
— independent, 79.
— its conception a proof of
Christ's Divinity, 93.
Lecky, Mr., on the character of
Christ, 39.
Leo, Pope, 214.
Lightfoot, Bishop, 240.
Malachy, St., 188.
Manuscripts of New Testament, 7.
Martyrs of Lyons, 209.
Muratorian Fragment, 17.
Newman, Cardinal, i.
New Testament, ancient ver-
sions, 8.
authorship, 15.
date of composition, Z2.
historical value, 9.
manuscripts, 7.
variant readings, 7.
writers, 15.
well informed, 18.
truthful, 20.
believed Christ to be
God, 32.
as human documents, 6.
" Old Catholics," 221.
264
INDEX
PAN-Anglican Synods, 179.
Papal authority, antecedent likeli-
hood of, 199.
— infallibility, 198.
in Church History, 208.
proclaimed by Councils, 213.
what it is not and what it is,
223.
when exercised, 224.
incommunicable, 227.
— jurisdiction, 226.
Papias, 17.
Paul, St., Epistles of, 20.
Peter, St., in New Testament, 200.
Christ's promise to, 202.
commission to "feed lambs
and sheep," 205.
Petrine texts, 206.
Photius, 175, 189.
Polycarp, St., 209.
Pope, authority of, 195.
Priests and Bishops in Apostolic
times, 233.
Primacy, what it is not, 223.
— what it is, 224.
Protestant Episcopalians, 177.
Reformation of sixteenth century,
190.
Resurrection of Christ, a proof of
His Divinity, 53.
vision, and swoon theo-
ries, 58.
Roman See, in primitive Church,
208.
— congregations, 227.
Sardica, Decrees of, 211.
Salmon, Dr., on Church infalli-
bility, 191.
Sources of our knowledge, i.
Stephen, St., 211, 212.
Supremacy promised to St. Peter,
202.
Teaching authority of Church,
129.
TertuUian, 210.
Trent, Council of, on ecclesiastical
hierarchy, 232.
True Church, which it is, 163.
U
Unity, in Greek Orthodox Church,
174.
Anglican Communion, 177.
Roman Catholic Church,
184.
Vatican Council,
macy, 216.
Victor, Pope, 210.
on Roman Pri-
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THE CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD: A Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ. By the Abb6 Constant Fouard. With an Introduction by His
Eminence Cardinal Manning. Cheaper Edition, without the Notes and
Appendices. 8vo. Paper Covers. Pp. xx-i-2Si. $0.25.
LIVES OF THE ENGLISH MARTYRS DECLARED BLESSED BY POPE
LEO XIII. IN 1886 AND 1895. Written by Fathers of the Oratory, of
the Secular Clergy and of the Society of Jesus. Completed and Edited
by DoM Bede Camm, O.S.B., of Erdington Abbey. 2 vols. Crown 8vo.
Each, $2.50 net.
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Editors of the Franciscan Lives: The Very Rev. Fr. OSMUND, O.F.M.,
Provincial, and C. M. ANTONY. Editors for the Dominican Lives: The
Rev. Fr. BEDE JARRETT, O.P., and C. M. ANTONY. Fcp. 8vo. Each
Volume, Illustrated, $0.50 net.
ST. PIUS V. Pope of the Holy
Rosary. By C. M. Antony. With
a Preface by the Very Rev. Monsignor
R. H. Benson.
ST. VINCENT FERRER, O.P. By
Fr. Stanislaus M. Hogan, O.P.,
S.T.L.
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Of the
Order of Preachers (1225-1274). A
Biographical Study of the Angelic
Doctor. By Fr. Placid Conway, O.P.
ST. BONAVENTURE. The Sera-
phic Doctor. Minister General of the
Franciscan Order,. Cardinal Bishop of
Albano. By Fr. Laurence Cos-
TELLOE, O.F.M.
ST. JOHN CAPISTRAN. By Fr.
Vincent FitzGerald, O.F.M.
ST. ANTONY OF PADUA. The
Miracle-Worker (1195-1231.) By C.
M. Antony.
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