xxiii. 8: "Be ye not called Rabbi; for one is your Master, and all you are

brethren. And call none your father on earth; for one is your Father, who is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters; for one is your master, Christ. He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." "Christ, therefore," p. 48, "forbade the apostles to take, in relation to one another, the titles of master, doctor, or even father, or pope, which is the same thing." Why, then, does the author take the title of _Abbé_, which means father, or suffer his editor to give him the title of Doctor of Divinity? His non-united Greek friends also come in for his censure; for they call their simple priests _papas_ or popes, that is, fathers; nay, if he construes the words of our Lord strictly, he must deny all ecclesiastical authority, and, indeed, all human government, and even forbid the son to call his sire father. This would prove a little too much for him as well as for us.

The key to the meaning of our Lord is not difficult to discover. He commands his disciples not to call any one master, teacher, or father, that is, not to recognize as binding on them any authority that does not come from God, and to remember that they are all brethren, and must obey God rather than men. God alone is sovereign, and we are bound to obey him, and no one else; for, in obeying our prelates whom the Holy Ghost has set over us, it is him and him only, that we obey. He commands his disciples to suffer no man to call them masters: for their authority to teach or govern comes not from them, but from their Master who is in heaven, and therefore they are not to lord it over their brethren, but to govern only so as to serve them. "Let him that is greatest among you be your servant." Power is not for him who governs, but for them who are governed, and he is greatest who best serves his brethren. The pope, in reference to the admonition of our Lord, and from the humility with which all power given to men should be held and exercised, calls himself "servant of servants." The words so understood--and they _may_ be so understood--convey no prohibition of the authority claimed for the Roman pontiff as the vicar of Christ, and father and teacher of all Christians, by divine authority, not by his own personal right.

Here is all the author adduces from the Scriptures, that amounts to any thing, to prove "that the papal authority" is "condemned by the word of God," and nothing in all this condemns it in the sense defined by the council of Florence, which is all we have to show.

From the Scriptures the author passes to tradition, and first to "the views of the papal authority taken by the fathers of the first three centuries." He does not deny that our Lord treated Peter with great personal consideration, and thinks Peter may be regarded in relation to the other apostles as _primus inter pares_, the first among equals, but without jurisdiction; and he says, p. 48, "We can affirm that no father of the church has seen in the primacy of Peter any title to jurisdiction or absolute authority in the church." But the first father he finds who, as he pretends, absolutely denies the primacy Catholics claim for Peter, and consequently for his successor, is St. Cyprian, who seems to us very positively to affirm it.

{469}

The author has a theory, which he pretends is supported by St. Cyprian, and which explains all the facts in the early ages which have been supposed by Roman theologians to be favorable to their doctrine of the papacy. He does not bring it out very clearly or systematically, and we can collect it only from scattered assertions. He denies that Peter had any authority not shared equally by the other apostles; or that the bishop of Rome had or has by divine right any pre-eminence above any other bishop; or that the church of Rome has any authority not possessed equally by the other churches that had apostles for their founders. He concedes that Peter and Paul founded the church of Rome, but denies that St. Peter was ever its bishop or bishop of any other particular see. How, then, explain the many passages of the fathers of the first three centuries, which undeniably assert Peter as "the prince of the apostles," "the chief of the apostolic college," the superiority and authority of "the see of Peter," "the chair of Peter." and recognize the jurisdiction actually exercised in all parts of the church by the bishop of Rome? No man can read the early fathers, and deny that the church of Rome was regarded as the church that "presides," as St. Ignatius calls it, as the root and matrix, as St. Cyprian says, of the church, as holding the pre-eminence over all other churches, with whose bishop it was necessary that all others should agree or be in communion. The author does not deny it; but Peter meant "the faith of Peter," "the chair of Peter meant the entire episcopate," which was one and held by all the bishops _in solido_, and the pre-eminence ascribed to the church of Rome was in consequence of her exterior importance as the see of the capital of the empire. This is the author's theory, and he pretends that he finds it in the Treatise on the Unity of the Church, by St. Cyprian.

"In fact," he says, p. 79, "he (St. Cyprian) positively denies the primacy of St. Peter himself; he makes the apostle merely the type of unity which resided in the apostolic college as a whole, and by succession in the whole episcopal body, which he calls the See of Peter." "After mentioning the powers promised to St. Peter, St. Cyprian remarks that Jesus Christ promised them to him alone, though they were _given to all_. 'In order to show forth unity,' he says, 'the Lord has wished that unity might draw its origin from one only.' 'The other apostles certainly were just what Peter was, having the same honor and power as he.' 'All are shepherds, and the flock nourished by all the apostles together is one, in order that the church of Christ may appear in its unity.'"

But to this explanation of St. Cyprian there is a slight objection; for we are not able to see from this how the unity of the apostolic college or of the church of Christ is shown forth, manifested, or made to appear, that is, rendered visible, which is the sense of St. Cyprian, or how it can be said to draw the origin of unity from one when it only draws its origin from many conjointly. St. Cyprian says our Lord, "ut unitatem manifestaret, unam cathedram constituit, unitatis ejusdem originem ab uno incipientem sua auctoritate disposuit;" that is, that our Lord established by his authority one chair, made the origin of unity begin from one, that the unity of the body might be manifested or shown forth. St. Cyprian evidently teaches that the unity of the church derives, as the author holds, from the unity of the episcopate, and the unity of the episcopate from the unity of the apostolic college; but that the unity of the apostolic college or apostolate may be manifested, and hence the unity of the church be shown forth, or rendered visible, our Lord made its origin begin from one, that is, Peter. All the apostles, indeed, had what Peter had, that is, the apostolate, partook of the same gift, honor, and power; but the beginning proceeded from unity, and the primacy was given to Peter, that the church of Christ and the chair, the apostolate, by succession the episcopal body, if you will, may be shown to be one. {470} All are pastors, and the flock, which is fed by all the apostles in unanimity, is shown to be one, that the unity of the church of Christ may be demonstrated. "Hoc erant utique et caeteri apostoli quod fuit Petrus, pari consortio praediti et honoris et potestatis, sed exordium ab unitate profiscatur; et _primatus Petro datur_, ut una Christi ecclesia et cathedra una monstretur. Et pastores sunt omnes, et grex unus ostenditur, qui ab apostolis omnbus [omnibus?] unanimi consensione pascatur, ut ecclesia Christi, una monstretur." [Footnote 145]

[Footnote 145: Opp. Cypriani, Migne's Edition, De Unitate Ecclesiae, pp. 498-500. The words primatus Petro datur, are wanting in some manuscripts, and are rejected by Baluze and some others as an interpolation, and Archbishop Kenrick does not cite them in his Primacy, when they would have been much to his purpose. It is thought that they were originally a marginal note, and have crept into the text through some ignorant copyist; but it is just as easy to suppose that they were omitted from the text by some careless copyist, and placed in the margin by way of correction, and afterward restored to their proper place in the text. When several years ago we examined the question with what ability we possess, we came to the conclusion that they are genuine, or, at least, that there is no sufficient reason for regarding them as spurious. They express what is obviously the sense of St. Cyprian, and seem to us to be necessary to carry on and complete his argument. Nevertheless, we have made none of our reasoning against M. Guettée rest on their genuineness.]

St. Cyprian endeavors to show not simply that the church is one and the episcopate also one, but that our Lord has so arranged it that the unity of each may be made to appear and both be seen to be one. The unity of the apostles, of the pastors, or of the church, regarded as a collective body, is invisible. How, then, if it does not arise from one, or if it has no visible centre and beginning in the visible order, is it to be made to appear? St. Cyprian evidently holds that the unity of the apostolic body establishes the unity of the episcopal body, since he holds the bishops to be the successors of the apostles; and the unity of the episcopal body establishes the unity of the flock, which in union with the body each pastor feeds, and therefore the unity of the entire church of Christ. But he just as evidently holds that the apostolic unity in order to exist must begin from a central point, or have its centre and source whence it proceeds, and radiates, so to speak, through the whole apostolic body, making of the apostolate not an aggregation, but a body really one, with its own central source of life and authority; an organic and not simply an organized body, for an organized body has no real unity. Hence, he makes the unity start and radiate from one, as it must if unity at all. This one, this central point, he holds, is, by the ordination of the Lord, Peter. Of this there can be no doubt.

As we understand St. Cyprian, whose treatise on the Unity of the Church is, perhaps, the profoundest and most philosophical ever written on that subject, the church is an organism with Jesus Christ himself for its invisible and ultimate centre and source of life. But as the church is to deal with the world and operate in time and space, it must be visible as well as invisible. Then the invisible must be visibly expressed or represented. But this cannot be done unless there is a visible expression or representation in the exterior organic body of this interior and invisible centre and source of unity, life, and authority, which our Lord himself is. To establish this exterior or visible representation, our Lord institutes the apostolic college and through that the episcopal body, through whom the whole flock becomes in union with their pastors, who are, in union with the apostles, one organic body; but only on condition of the unity of the apostolic college which unity must start from one, from a visible centre and source of unity. Hence, our Lord chose Peter as the central point of union for the apostolic college, and Peter's chair, the "una cathedra," as the visible centre of union for the episcopal body, and through them of the whole church, so that the whole church in the apostolate, in the episcopate, and in the flock is shown to be one, represented with the unity and authority it has in Jesus Christ.

{471}

The trouble here with the author's theory is, not that it makes Peter the sign and type of the unity or authority of the apostolic college, and the chair of Peter the type and figure, as he says, of the unity and authority of the episcopate, but that it does not do so; for it recognizes no visible apostolic or episcopal unity, since it recognizes no visible centre or source from which it originates; and hence neither the apostolate nor the episcopate, save as Jesus Christ, is a unity, but an aggregation, as we have said, a collection, or at least, a sort of round robin. By denying the primacy or centre and beginning of unity to Peter and Peter's chair individually, it denies what St. Cyprian maintains was instituted to manifest or show forth unity. It denies both the manifestation of unity and external unity itself, both of which are strenuously insisted on by St. Cyprian, who, indeed, says expressly in his letter to St. Cornelius, the Roman pontiff, that "the Church of Rome," that is, "the chair of Peter," is the centre whence sacerdotal unity arose.

The author says, p. 67, that "St. Cyprian was right in calling the Church of Rome the chair of Peter, the _principal_ church, whence sacerdotal unity emanated. But for all that, did he pretend that the bishop enjoyed authority by divine right? He believed it so little that, in his De Unitate Ecclesiae, he understands by the chair of Peter the entire episcopate, regards St. Peter as the equal of the other apostles, denies his primacy, and makes him the simple type of the unity of the apostolic college." The Church of Rome "was the source of sacerdotal unity in this sense, that Peter was the sign and type of the unity of the apostolic college." St. Cyprian makes St. Peter, p. 79, "merely the type of the unity that resided in the apostolic college as a whole, and, by succession, in the episcopal body, which he calls "the see of Peter." "The see of Peter, in St. Cyprian's idea, is the authority of the apostolic body, and, by succession, of the episcopal body. All the bishops had the same honor and the same authority in all that relates to their order, as all the apostles had the same honor and authority as Peter." (Pp. 79, 80.)

Peter, then, is the sign and type of apostolic and episcopal unity, and "the chair of Peter," or "the see of Peter," is the sign and type of apostolic authority. But supposing this to be so, and Peter to have been in no respect distinguished from the other apostles, or to have held no peculiar position in the apostolic body, how came he to be regarded as the sign and type of apostolic unity, and his chair as the sign and type of apostolic authority? There is a logic in language as well as in the human mind of which it is the expression, and there is a reason for every symbolical locution that gains currency. If the fathers and the church had not held Peter to be the prince of the apostles and his see the centre and source of apostolic authority, would they or could they have made his see or chair the symbol of apostolic authority, or Peter himself the symbol, "the sign and type," of apostolic unity? Why the see of Peter rather than that of Andrew, James, or John? or Peter rather than any other apostle? The fact, then, that St. Peter and his see or chair were taken as symbolic, the sign and type, the one of apostolic unity, and the other of apostolic authority, is a very conclusive proof that the primacy was given to him and his see by our Lord, and by succession to the holy apostolic see and the Roman pontiff, as the fathers of Florence define and Roman theologians hold.

Again, how could Peter be a sign and type of apostolic unity or his see the sign and type of apostolic authority, if he, Peter, had no relation, and his see none, to that authority not held equally by all the apostles and their sees? In the church of God there are and can be no shams, no make-believes, no false signs or types, no unrealities, no calling things which are not as if they were. Signs which signify nothing are not signs, and types which represent nothing are simply no types at all. The real apostolic unity and authority are internal, invisible in Jesus Christ himself, who, in the primary and absolute sense, as we have seen, is the rock on which the church is founded, the sole basis of its solidity and permanence, the sole ground of its existence and fountain of its life, unity, and authority. {472} Peter and Peter's see, if the sign and type of this invisible unity, must represent it or show it forth in the visible order. But how can Peter represent that unity, unless he is in the visible order its real centre and source, in which it begins and from which it emanates? Or how can the see or chair of Peter be the sign and type of the invisible apostolic authority, unless it really be its source and centre in the visible order? The external can represent the internal, the visible the invisible, only in so far as it copies or imitates it. In calling Peter the sign and type of apostolic unity, the author then concedes that Peter represents our Lord, and that he is, as the council of Florence defines, "the true vicar of Christ;" and in making Peter's see the sign and type of apostolic authority, he makes it the real centre in the visible order of that authority, and consequently concedes the very points which he rejects, and undertakes to prove from St. Cyprian are only the unfounded pretensions of the bishop of Rome.

That the primacy here unwittingly conceded by the author is not that absolute and isolated sovereignty which the author accuses Catholic theologians of asserting for Peter and for the bishop of Rome as his successor, we readily admit, but we have already shown that such a sovereignty is not claimed. The pope is not the sovereign, but the vicar or chief minister of the sovereign. He governs the church in apostolic unity, not as isolated from the episcopal body, but as its real head or supreme chief. His authority is said to be _loquens ex cathedra_, speaking from the seat of apostolic and episcopal unity and authority. He is the chief or supreme pastor, not the only pastor, nor pastor at all regarded as separate from the church. He is the visible head of the church united by a living union with the body; for it is as necessary to the head to be in living union with the body, as it is to the body to be in living union with the head. Neither can live and perform its functions without the other; but the directing, controlling, or governing power is in the head. St. Ambrose says, "Where Peter is, there is the church;" but he does not say Peter is the church, nor does the pope say, "L'Eglise, c'est moi," I am the church. Succeeding to Peter as chief of the apostolic college, he is the chief or head of the church. The author's theory makes the church in the visible order as a whole, acephalous, headless, and therefore brainless.

The author bases his assertion that St. Cyprian denies the primacy of Peter on the fact that he says, "All the other apostles had what he had, the same honor and the same power." This is with Mr. Guettée a capital point. His doctrine, so far as doctrine he has, is that the church has no visible chief; that all the apostles had equal honor and authority; that all bishops as successors of the apostles are equal; that one bishop has by divine right no pre-eminence above another; and that, if one is more influential than another, he owes it to his personal character or to the external importance of his see. And this he contends is the doctrine of St. Cyprian. But, if he had understood St. Cyprian's argument, he would have never done that great saint such flagrant injustice. St. Cyprian's argument is, as is evident from the passage we have cited at length, that, although all the apostles received the same gift, the same honor, and the same power, yet, for the sake of manifesting unity, our Lord constituted one chair from which unity should begin, and gave the primacy to Peter, that the unity of the apostolic or episcopal body and of the whole church of Christ might be shown. The author himself contends that the apostolate, and by succession the episcopate, is one and indivisible, and held by the apostles or bishops _in solido_. {473} Then, if all the other apostles had the apostolate, they must have had precisely what Peter had, and if the other bishops have the episcopate at all, they must have precisely what the Roman pontiff has, yet without having another apostolate or another episcopate than that which they all equally receive and hold in its invisible unity, or anything in addition thereto. He may, nevertheless, be the head or chief of the episcopal body and the centre in which episcopal unity and authority in the visible order originate, and from which they radiate through the body, and from the bishops to their respective flocks, and bind them and the whole church together in one, which, as we understand it, is the precise doctrine of St. Cyprian, and certainly is the doctrine of the Roman and Catholic Church.

The author, even if a learned man, does not appear to be much of a philosopher or much of a theologian. There are depths in St. Cyprian's philosophy and theology which he seems unable to sound, and heights which are certainly above his flight. He is, we should judge, utterly unaware of the real constitution of the church, the profound significance of the gospel, the vast reach of the Christian system, its relation to the universal system of creation, or the reasons in the very nature of things there are for its existence, and for the existence and constitution of the church. All the works of the Creator are strictly logical, and together form but one dialectic whole, are but the expression of one divine Thought. Nothing can appear more petty or worthless than the author's shallow cavils to a man who has a little real theological science.

The author cites the controversy on the baptism of heretics, in proof that St. Cyprian denied the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome, or his authority to govern as supreme pontiff the whole church, but unsuccessfully. St. Cyprian found the custom established in Carthage, as it was also in certain churches in Asia, to rebaptize persons who had been baptized by heretics, and he insisted on observing the custom. He complained, therefore, of St. Stephen, the Roman pontiff, who wrote to him to conform to the ancient and general custom of the church. Whether he conformed or not is uncertain, but there is no evidence that he denied the authority of the Roman pontiff, and he certainly did not break communion with him, though he may have regarded his exercise of his authority in that particular case as oppressive and tyranical. It would seem from the letter of St. Firmilianus to St. Cyprian, if genuine, of which there is some doubt, as there is of several letters ascribed to Cyprian, and from the address of St. Cyprian to the last council he held on the subject, which Mr. Guettée cites at some length, that the question was regarded as one of discipline, or as coming within the category of those matters on which diversity of usage in different churches and countries is allowable or can be tolerated, and on which uniformity has never been exacted. He insisted not that all the world should conform to the custom he observed, but defended, as our bishops would to-day, what he believed to be the customary rights of his church or province. That he was wrong we know, for the universal church has sustained the Roman pontiff.

We do not think the author has been very happy in placing St. Cyprian on the stand against the primacy of the holy apostolic see and the Roman pontiff. The saint is a much better witness for us than for him.

The author, unable to deny the preponderating influence of the Roman pontiff and his see in the government of the church, and the importance everywhere attached to being in communion with the bishop of Rome, seeks to evade the force of the fact by attributing it not to the belief in the primacy of the Church of Rome, but to the superior importance of the city of Rome as the capital of the empire, as if the Catholic Church were merely a Roman Church, and not founded for the whole world. {474} We, indeed hear something of this when Constantinople, the New Rome, became the rival of Old Rome, and its bishop, on account of the civil and political importance of the city, set up to be oecumenical bishop, and claimed the first place after the bishop of Rome; but we hear nothing of it during the first three centuries, and the author adduces nothing to justify his assumption. All the fathers, alike in the East and the West, attribute the primacy held by the Church of Rome not to the importance of the city of Rome in the empire, but to the fact that she is "the church that presides," is "the principal" or governing "church," is "the see of Peter," holds the chair of Peter, "prince of the apostles," is "the root and matrix of the Catholic Church," and that Peter "lives" and "speaks" in its bishops. Now, whatever our learned author may say, we think these great fathers, some of whom were only one remove from the apostles themselves, and nearly all of whom gained the crown of martyrdom, knew the facts in the case as well as he knows them, and that there is every probability that they meant what they said and wrote.

"We see," says the author, p. 48, "that as early as the third century the bishops of Rome, because St. Peter had been one of the founders of that see, claimed to exercise a certain authority over the rest of the church, giving themselves sometimes the title of 'bishop of bishops'; but we also see that the whole church protested against these ambitious pretensions, and held them of no account." That the bishop of Rome was accused by those whom the exercise of his authority offended of assuming the title of bishop of bishops, by way of a sneer, may be very true, but that he ever gave himself that title, there is, so far as we are aware, no trustworthy evidence.

"The church protested against these ambitious pretensions." Where is that protest recorded? That bishops were then as now jealous of their real or supposed rights, and ever well disposed to resist any encroachment upon them, is by no means improbable; and this, if the bishops generally held that the Roman pontiff had no more authority by divine right over the church than any other bishop, must have made it exceedingly difficult for him to grasp the primacy of jurisdiction over them. Their power to resist, in case they believed they could resist with a good conscience, must have been, being, as they were in the fourth century, eighteen hundred to one, somewhat greater than his to encroach. That the bishops or simple priests whom the Roman pontiff admonished or censured protested sometimes, not against his authority, but against what they regarded as its unjust, arbitrary, or tyrannical exercise, is no doubt true, and the same thing happens still, even with those who have no doubt of the papal authority; but that the whole church protested is not proven; and in all the instances in which protests were offered on the part of individual bishops that came before an ecclesiastical council, the universal church uniformly sustained the Roman pontiff. When St. Victor excommunicated the Quartodecimans, some bishops remonstrated with him as being too severe, and others opposed his act, but the council of Nicaea sustained it. Even before that council, the author of the Philosophumena, whose work must have been composed in the early part of the third century, treats the Quartodecimans as heretics, although, except as to the time of keeping Easter, their faith was irreproachable. So on the question of the baptism of heretics, the whole church, instead of protesting against the decision of St. Stephen, approved it, and follows it to this day. It will not do to say the whole church treated the acts of these popes "as of no account."

The writers of the letters attributed to St. Cyprian and Firmilianus are good evidence that the popes claimed and exercised jurisdiction over the whole church in the controversy on the baptism of heretics, and Tertullian affords no mean proof of the same fact at a yet earlier date. {475} In a work written after he had fallen into some of the heresies of the Montanists, he writes, as cited by our author, p. 78, "I learn that a new edict has been given, a peremptory edict. The sovereign pontiff, that is, the bishop of bishops, has said: 'I remit the sins of impurity and fornication.' O edict! not less can be done than to ticket it--GOOD WORK! But where shall such an edict be posted? Surely, I think, upon the doors of the houses of prostitution." This passage undoubtedly proves that Tertullian himself, fallen into heresy, did not relish the papal decision that condemned him, and perhaps that he was disposed to deny the authority of the Roman pontiff; but if it had been generally held that the Roman pontiff was no more in the church than any other bishop, and therefore that his decision could have no authority out of his diocese or province, would his decision have so deeply moved him, and called forth such an outburst of wrath? If the claim to the primacy of authority in the whole church, and therefore to jurisdiction over all bishops, was not generally recognized and held, what occasion was there for so much indignation? What point would there have been in the sneer, or force in the irony, of calling him the sovereign pontiff, or the bishop of bishops? Tertullian's language, which was evidently intended to exaggerate the authority claimed by the Roman pontiff, plainly enough implies that he was generally held to have authority to make decisions in doctrine and discipline for the whole church, and that a censure from him was something of far more importance than that from any other bishop or patriarch.

The author cites to the same effect as Tertullian the work published at Paris a few years ago under the name of Origin, entitled Philosophumena, "justly attributed," he says, "to St. Hyppolytus, Bishop of Ostia, or to the learned priest Caius." The authorship of the work is unknown, and no documents have yet been discovered that enable the learned to determine with any degree of certainty by whom it was or could have been written. The work, however, bears internal evidence of having been written by some one belonging to the East, and who lived during the pontificates of St. Victor, St. Zephyrinus, St. Callistus, St. Urban, and perhaps St. Pontian, bishops of Rome, that is to say, from 180 to 235, certainly not later. The work, when published by M. Miller at Paris, in 1851, attracted the attention of English and German Protestants by its gross charges against the two venerated Roman pontiffs and martyrs, St. Zephyrinus and St. Callistus--charges which for the most part refute themselves. But though Protestants have not been able to make much of it against the papacy, Catholics have found in it new and unexpected proofs of the authority extending over the church in all parts of the world, exercised by the popes of that early period. "In his invectives," says the Abbé Cruice, "the adversary of Callistus acknowledges his great power, and furnishes new and unexpected proofs of the supremacy of the holy see." The Abbé Cruice, who, we think, we have heard recently died Bishop of Marseilles, published at Paris, in 1851, an interesting History of the Church of Rome under the pontificates of St. Victor, St. Zephyrinus, and St. Callistus, in which he has incorporated these proofs with great judgment and effect. As we are not now considering the affirmative proofs of the primacy of the Holy See, but the arguments intended to prove the papacy schismatic, we can only refer the reader to this learned work and to the Philosophumena itself. We will only remark that the unknown author is far more bitter against the popes than his contemporary Tertullian, and leaves more unequivocal evidence to the extent of the papal power. No one can read the Philosophumena without perceiving in the complaints and incidental remarks of the author that the hierarchy at the end of the second century was as regularly organized as now, and precisely in the same manner, with the Roman pontiff at its summit.

{476}

The author, p. 82, says Tertullian, who in several passages refers to the Church of Rome as a witness to the apostolic tradition, "does not esteem her witness testimony superior to that of others." Perhaps so, for in the cases referred to Tertullian had no occasion to discriminate between one apostolic church and another. He is using against heretics the argument from prescription. Their doctrines are adverse to the apostolic tradition, and therefore false. If any one would know what is the apostolic tradition, he may learn it from any of the churches founded by apostles "where their sees still remain, where their epistles are still read, where their voice still resounds, and their face, as it were, is still seen. Is it Achaia that is near thee? thou hast Corinth; if thou art not far from Macedonia, thou hast the Philippians; if thou canst go to Asia, thou hast Ephesus; if thou dwellest near Italy, thou hast Rome, whose authority is near us," that is, near us in Africa. It is true Tertullian pronounces a eulogium on the Church of Rome that he does not on the others, but no great stress need be laid on that. Any one of the apostolic churches was sufficient for determining the apostolic tradition, and there was no reason why he should mention the primacy of the see of Peter if he held it, and it would have weakened his argument if he had appealed to that primacy, doubtless then as now rejected by heretics.

But this leads us to a remark which it may be well to bear in mind. All the churches founded by the apostles were during the whole of the first three centuries in existence, and preserved the apostolic doctrine or tradition, and it could be learned from Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Ephesus, etc., without the necessity, at least on ordinary occasions, of recurring to the supreme authority of Rome. The author quotes several of the fathers who call the see of Antioch Peter's see; he might have gone further, and shown that each of the four great patriarchal sees, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, were so-called, and because they were held to have been founded by Peter. This is the reason why they received the dignity and authority of patriarchal churches. Peter was held to survive and govern in each one of them, but more especially in Rome, where he gave his life for his faith, and where stands his tomb. It is Peter who governs one and indivisible in them all, and consequently, to get Peter's authority, it was not, except in the last resort, necessary to apply to his successor in the see of Rome. It is this fact, misapprehended by the author, that has made him assert that the see of Peter, or the chair of Peter, means the universal episcopate which all the bishops, as St. Cyprian says, hold _in solido_. Every bishop in communion with Peter's see, no doubt, was regarded as _solidaire_ with the whole episcopal and apostolic body, as we have already explained; but we have not found the "see of Peter," or "chair of Peter" applied to any particular churches, except those tradition asserted were founded by Peter, and only those sees had originally patriarchal jurisdiction, and this fact is in itself no slight proof that the primacy was held to be vested in Peter as we have already explained, and the author has given us the opportunity of proving from St. Cyprian.

This fact that Peter was held to govern in the four great patriarchal sees, though supremely only in the Church of Rome, explains why it is that in the early ages we find not more frequent instances of the exercise of jurisdiction beyond his own patriarchate of the West by the Roman pontiff. The bishops of these Petrine churches were not originally called patriarchs, but they exercised the patriarchal power long before receiving the name, and probably from times immediately succeeding the apostles. So long as these patriarchs remained in communion with the bishop of Rome, their head and chief, most of the questions of discipline, and many of those of faith, could be, and were, settled by the patriarch, or local authority, without resort to the Roman pontiff. {477} But when these sees fell off from unity into heresy or schism, Peter remained only in the Roman see, and all causes that had previously been disposed of by the patriarchs of the East had to be carried at once to Rome, before the supreme court.

Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch were the three chief cities of the empire, and the capitals the first of the empire itself, and the others of its two largest and most important prefectures. This fact may seem to favor the author's theory that the ecclesiastical superiority is derived from the civil superiority; but had this been so, Jerusalem would hardly have been selected as the seat of the third patriarchate of the East. The geographical position and civil and political importance of these cities may have influenced the apostle in selecting them to be the chief seats of the ecclesiastical government he under Christ was founding, but could not have been the ground of their superior ecclesiastical jurisdiction, because the church was not organized as a national religion, or with a view to the Roman empire alone, and the apostles themselves carried the gospel beyond the farthest limits of that empire, into regions never penetrated by the Roman eagles. The church was catholic, and was to subsist in all ages and teach all nations, as well as all truth. Our Lord said, "My kingdom is not of this world;" it does not hold from the kingdoms of this world, and is independent of them, both in its constitution and in its bowers. These remain always and everywhere the same, whatever the revolutions or the rise and fall of states and empire. The authority of the church is immediately from God; her grandeur and glory are spiritual, and not derived from the greatness, grandeur, wealth, or power of earthly cities. St. Augustine makes the city of Rome the type of the city of the world, which he contrasts with the church or city of God. The idea that the rank or the authority of the bishop derived from the civil rank and importance of the city in which he held his see was a Constantinopolitan idea not heard of till the fifth century, and, as we shall see in its place, one of the chief causes of the schism between the East and the West.

The author denies that St. Peter was ever, in the proper sense of the word, bishop of Rome, or of any particular see. If he is right, how could the unity of the church have a visible starting-point or centre? or how could it be said to begin from Peter or the chair of Peter, as his own witness, St. Cyprian, asserts? If Peter had no particular see, established his see, or set up his chair, his cathedra, nowhere in particular, the whole argument of St. Cyrian [Cyprian?] as to the origin and manifestation of unity is baseless, and goes for nothing. Besides, it is contradicted by universal tradition. The testimony that Peter had his chair at Rome is ample, and leaves nothing to be desired. But this is not the point. It is for the author to prove that he was not bishop of Rome; for he has undertaken to prove the papacy is schismatic, and at every step he takes, the burden of proof is on him. Where are his proofs?

The author says St. Linus was bishop of Rome when Peter first arrived in that city. A church which has a bishop is already a church founded and constituted. Yet the author allows and cites authorities that prove that Peter was the founder, or at least one of the founders, of the Roman Church! That St. Linus was the first bishop of Rome after St. Peter there is no doubt; that he was the first bishop, or bishop of Rome, before the arrival of St. Peter in the city, there is no evidence, but any amount of testimony to the contrary. We say there is no evidence. The lists given by the fathers sometimes enumerate him as first and sometimes as second, as they do or do not include the apostle; but all make him the successor of St. Peter. The fathers, in giving the lists of other apostolic sees, are not uniform, and sometimes they include and sometimes they exclude the apostle, and reckon only from his death. {478} Eusebius says, as cited by the author, p. 144, "After the martyrdom of Paul and Peter, Linus was the first that received the episcopate at Rome." Tertullian, as also cited by the author, p. 145, says that "Peter sat on the chair of Rome;" but he contends that Tertullian "does not mean that he was bishop, but that he taught there," that is, St. Peter was a professor of theology at Rome! This might do if Tertullian had been treating of the Sorbonne, or of the French university, but will not answer here. In ecclesiastical language, _chair, cathedra_, means simply the seat of the bishop, and, figuratively, the episcopal authority. To say Peter sat in the chair or cathedra of Rome is saying simply he was bishop of Rome. The presumption is, that Tertullian meant what he said, understood according to the usages of the language he used. Besides, if chair _may_ sometimes be used figuratively for teaching, it is the author's business to prove that it must mean so in this particular case. This he does not and cannot do.

The author pretends that the tradition which makes Peter seven years bishop of Antioch and twenty-five years bishop of Rome is obviously false; for any one can see by counting that there was not time enough for it between the day of Pentecost and the martyrdom of Peter. We do not pretend to be very good at counting, but as we count, seven years bishop of Antioch and twenty-five years bishop of Rome make in all thirty-two years. The day of Pentecost, according to the usual reckoning, was in A.D. 33, and St. Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome under Nero, A.D. 66, or at the earliest 65. Tillemont says 66, which leaves thirty-three, at least thirty-two years; and we see no reason to suppose that the organization of the church at Jerusalem and committing it to the care of James, its first bishop, and the setting up of his chair at Antioch, might not all have been done before the close of the year of the crucifixion. But even an error in the chronology would not prove that Peter was not bishop of Rome.

The pretence that it was incompatible with the dignity of an apostle to be the bishop of a particular see has nothing to sustain it. It is not necessary to suppose Peter, by establishing his see at Rome, was obliged to confine his whole attention and labor to that particular church, or that he remained constantly at Rome. Indeed, it is very possible, and thought by many to be very probable, that he committed the care of that church daring his absences to St. Linus as his vicar, and there are several authorities to that effect. Some of them join St. Anacletus, Cletus, or, as the Greeks say, Anencletus, and St. Clement, successively bishops of Rome, with St. Linus in the government of the Roman Church under Peter during his lifetime; but, however this may have been, tradition is constant that St. Linus was the immediate successor of Peter, which at least implies that Peter was regarded as having held the see as well as having assisted in founding it; for otherwise St. Linus could not have been regarded as his successor, and no reason could be assigned why he was called the successor of Peter rather than of Paul, who also assisted in founding it, and is honored even to-day by the Roman Church as one of its founders.

We have taken up the author's theory point by point, and we find him utterly failing to establish it in whole or in part. His allegations are set forth with great confidence, but the authorities he cites do not sustain them, and are either not to his purpose or, like St. Cyprian, point blank against him. He may have demolished the man of straw which he himself had set up, but he leaves standing the papacy as held by the Catholic Church and defined by the council of Florence. {479} He has asserted in very strong terms the ignorance, the chicanery, the sophistry, and the dishonesty of the Roman theologians, and leaves no doubt in the minds of intelligent readers that he greatly excels them in the qualities and practices he ascribes to them; but he adduces nothing beyond his own assertions and misrepresentations against their fairness and candor, and their intelligence and learning. His sneers at them are pointed only by his own ignorance or malice, and present him in a most unfavorable light. His cant, so abundant against them, is very stale and simply disgusting. From first to last he proves that he lacks, we will not say the humility of the Christian, but the modesty and reserve of real learning and science, and that he is moved not by love of truth, but by a spirit of hatred and revenge.

Here we might well close, for the author has refuted from St. Cyprian himself, by proving by his own witness the primacy of jurisdiction by divine right was possessed even in the third century, while he has left all the arguments and authorities adduced by the Roman theologians from Scripture and tradition to prove affirmatively the papal authority by divine right, or by the positive appointment of Jesus Christ in their full force. But the reasons which induced us in the first place to begin the examination of the author's lucubrations induce us to go through with them. The work has been translated and published here under Protestant auspices, set up as an important work against the papal authority and the Church of Rome, "the root and matrix of the Catholic Church," as says St. Cyprian, and, were it left unnoticed or unreplied to, many people might take it to be really what it is represented to be, and conclude that we cannot answer it because we have not done it.

Besides, the controversy between large classes of Protestants and Catholics is narrowed down to two questions, the honor we render to Mary the mother of God, and the authority we attribute to the Holy See and the Roman pontiff. M. Guettée, having been reared in our communion and gone out from us because he was not of us, and having in this work done his best to prove the papacy schismatic, and that its assertion has been the cause of the schism between the East and the West, affords us as good an occasion as we can expect to discuss the latter question, and to consider the arguments, facts, and authorities alleged in their defence by those who refuse their obedience to St. Peter in his successor. The work is rambling, and made up of details most wearisome to read, and difficult to bring into a shape in which its real value can be brought to the test, but it is a fair specimen in spirit and arrangement of the works written against the Roman and Catholic Church, and contains in some form all that schismatics allege first and last against her. We may as well make it our text-book for the discussion as any other. But we have already trespassed long enough on the patience of our readers for this month.

{480}

Translated from the French.

The Crucifix of Baden.

A Legend of the Middle Ages.

Will you follow me to Baden? Not to that elegant and wild and whirling Baden of painted faces and flashy toilettes, where gentlemen of the turf display their horsemanship on the plain of Iffezheim; where the majesty of old Germany elbows, in the Trinkhalle, the princes of Bohemia; but to the fresh, dark, silent, almost unknown nooks of that Baden which God has made and which man has yet left untouched; where the artist wanders for his picture, the poet for his inspiration, the dreamer for his vision, the Christian to murmur his prayer; for it is to a burial-ground that I am about to lead you. But fear not on that account; this burial-place of Baden has comparatively but little of the mournful in its appearance; it is truly, as its name declares, the _Fried Hof_--the Court of Peace. Under that green turf, under those flower-clad hillocks, there lie bodies that suffer no more, but sleep in quiet; their souls may suffer, indeed, and be in pain, but their souls are no longer there; and can repose alone be frightful? Look around, and, as far as the eye can reach, what beauty shines in the landscape, what a charm invests the distant meeting of earth and sky! Look up to the gray blue heaven, pale and transparent, as is ever that sky which stretches over the valley of the Rhine; to those pure white clouds floating like distant sails on a stormless sea; to those distant hills, with outlines softening as they recede; to the green woods that fringe their sides; to those walls which time has breached; those crumbling towers; those ruined castles which seem to overhang the plain of the dead--man's work, and the hands that created it, becoming dust together. These sights may, indeed, be melancholy, but they are peace-giving too; for there in the midst hangs Christ bowing his weary head and stretching out his bruised arms in yonder great crucifix of stone.

In a churchyard, nothing is more frequent, nor, so to speak, more natural, than to see a crucifix. It is there like the flag on the bastion, the mast on the vessel. Without it the place would be accursed and desolate, for hope would be wanting there. All know and acknowledge this, but, nevertheless, few passers-by bestow a glance on the holy image. Some faithful ones may, when they see it, make the sign of the cross; others bend slightly before it; well-bred people uncover; free-thinkers, with proud look and step, with unbending knee and body erect, pass it by, they who would bow so low before the coronet of a prince or even the key of a chamberlain.

And certainly indifferent, timid, and free-thinking ones come to the _Fried Hof_ of Baden; but _there_, few stop not and marvel, if by chance their eyes fall upon its crucifix. There is upon that rigid face--those features of stone--a look of life, of flesh and blood, which enchains you, moves the depths of your heart, speaks to you. To understand that gaze, it is not necessary to be a Christian; alas! it is enough to be a man. Those lips, half parted in a sigh, tremble in the stone; those half-closed eyes seem really to weep; agony sits upon every feature; bitterness of soul has worn every one of those furrows, the arch of the brows has been contracted, the pure lines of the profile broken, the calm of the forehead destroyed by a sorrow, overwhelming, silent, inconsolable; and you would have before you the image of human misery the most complete, the deepest, the most horrible, if a ray from the Majesty on high did not come to elevate and illumine that petrifaction of grief.

{481}

When you have long studied those features and contemplated their agony, you involuntarily ask yourself: Where did the sculptor find so suffering a face, so living an agony? whence came his model? for you feel that those features once were the flesh of one to whom ordinary grief were as nothing. That look of life, that pain so real, came certainly from a human heart that once beat beneath them, and in them painted its wounds, its tortures, and its agony. They were _seen_, and not merely created in the artist's brain.

Yes; you are right. Those features are those of a suffering, repentant, and miserable man. If you approach the base of the crucifix, you will see graven in the once soft stone, in long Gothic letters, and in the Suabian dialect of the fifteenth century, these short and simple words, which are the explanation and the ending of its story:

"MINA, OTHO. "May God receive you and pardon me."

Nothing more; no signature to the work, nor name added to the prayer. But young souls, simple hearts, poetic spirits, which still may be found at Baden, in spite of "sport" and "the turf," will relate to you the birth of the work and the fate of the artist; for, alas! the story of the crucifix is also the story of the sculptor.

----