The primitive church and the See of Peter
&©'-Kt:'i'»'.$(i ''4- " ■■■• ■ •'■■ ^::v' '-fSC'^^^^i- /<9. 2-^.2-3 LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON, N. J. BX 955 .R58 189A Rivington, Luke, 1838-1899 The primitive church and th€ See of Peter 1 310 Rivington (Rev. Luke) The Primitive | Church and the See of Peter. 8vo, 10s 1894J t^ The Primitive Church AND THE See of Peter fli\)il oBsitat. SYDNEY F. SMITH, S J. Impnmatitr. HEKCERTUS CARDINALIS VAUGHAN, ARCHIEPISCOPUS WESTM0NASTERIENSI8 IHe 19 ilartii, 1894. The Primitive Church AND THE See of Peter / V { 001 9P 1^03 BY THE REV. ^- " LUKE RIVINGTON. M.A. MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST i6i' STREET 1894 All rights reserved INTEODUCTION BY THE CARDINAL ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER Of course we desire to convert all men — especially our own countrymen, as loving them best — to the Catholic Eeligion. Could it be otherwise ? We believe the Catholic religion to be the one only true religion, founded by Jesus Christ upon the Eock. We should fail, then, in love for God did we not strive to extend His Kingdom, which is His Church upon earth ; and in love for our neighbour, did we not endeavour to per- suade him to become one of God's liegemen and a sharer with us in the Divine life of the Faith and of the Sacra- ments. It is no matter of doubt or of indifference that is at stake, but absolutely the most vital, the most per- sonal, the eternal interest of man. But any kind of conversion will not do. The con- version must be real, genuine, and based on solid grounds. That is to say, it must rest not only upon conviction, but upon a right conviction, a conviction rooted in the right fundamental principle. To come into the Catholic Church simply on account of the beauty of her ceremonial, the reasonableness of this or that set of doctrines and practices, or her venerable antiquity and her attractive traditions, or as a mere VI INTRODUCTION. refuge from persons or systems that have bred dis- satisfaction and distrust, is to enter the Church without a conviction rooted in the right fundamental principle. Wliat is that principle ? Simply this : that the CathoUc Church is the Divine Teacher, set up in the world by Jesus Christ, and that our attitude towards her must be that of a Disciple. The Disciple does not pick and choose according to his taste, nor, when the Divine Teacher is once accepted, can he be ruled by private judgment and understanding. Our Lord Himself shows us this by His own method of procedure. When He had announced, 'My Mesh is meat indeed, and My Blood is drink indeed,' many said, 'This saying is hard, and who can hear it ? And after this many of His Disciples went back and walked no more with Him. Then Jesus said to the twelve, " Will you also go away ? " And Simon Peter answered Him, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life. We have believed and have known that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God"' (John vi.). Christ, therefore, gave no countenance to those who would believe only that which was agreeable to their notion of fitness or possibility. He gave them no explana- tion of how His riesh and Blood were to be eaten and drunk. He demanded this, and this alone, that they should recognise the Divine Teacher, and having found Him, that they should take up their due position as learners or disciples. There was no compromise, no halting; if unwilling to accept this fundamental principle, the position of a Disciple, they might all go away, aye, even the twelve. The vital question, then, INTRODUCTION. Vll is, Where is the Divine Teacher ? Some, prompted by- private motives, with subtilty and sophistry, evade the question, or answer it in a way to leave themselves an escape from the plain obligation of a disciple. Their aim is to stay as they are. To them the Church is a vast organisation incapable of articulate speech, or it is made up of branches, each of which has an independent voice, but without any one living, visible, audible authority to control the whole. Now it is best, in this matter, to come to close quarters, and to deal with a definite member of the Church — namely, with the Head. If the Church is visible at all, it must have a visible Head, at least as visible as the body itself. It is the essential business of the head to speak and direct. It controls the body, according to certain divine laws. It secures to the whole unity of thought and of action. Without its presence and influence the members must either fall into dissolution or destroy one another. Where, then, is the visible Head of the Catholic Church ? For a thousand years the English people professed, with one accord, the Pope to be their religious Head. They acknowledged one centre of authority, the See of Peter ; were led by one Supreme Shepherd, the successor of Peter ; and they were consequently united, by the pro- fession of the same Faith and Sacraments, in one re- ligion, with the whole of Christendom. There is one passage, so aptly setting forth the doc- trine of the Catholic Church, in a letter from King Edward H., a.d. 1314, directed to the Sacred College of Cardinals, during the vacancy of the Holy See, that I VIU INTRODUCTION. quote it not only for its own intrinsic merit, but as showing the belief of the English nation. ' When Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, had consummated the mystery of man's redemption, and was about to return to His Father, lest He should leave the flock He had bought with the price of His Blood bereft of the government of a shepherd. He de- livered over and entrusted the care of it, by an immu- table ordinance, to blessed Peter the Apostle, and in his person to his successors, the Eoman Pontiffs, that they may govern it in succession. He willed that the Eoman Church, who, for the time, presiding as the Mother and Mistress of all the faithful, holds, as it were, the place of God upon earth, should by salutary teachings direct the peoples of the said flock, scattered over the whole world, in the way of salvation, and show them at all times how they should behave them- selves in the house of God ' (Wilkins, vol. ii. p. 450). Three hundred years earlier King Edward the Con- fessor notifies in a solemn charter the extraordinary devotion which the English people had ever had towards St. Peter and his successors : ' summam devo- tionem quam habuit semper gens anglorum erga eum [Petrum] et vicarios ejus ' (Wilkins, vol. i. p. 319). And three hundred years before that, again, Bede was teaching and writing that ' Whosoever shall separate himself in any way whatsoever from the unity of Peter's faith, and from his communion, can neither obtain pardon of his sins nor admission into heaven ' [Horn, xxvii. Giles). The lesson of history teaches unmistakably that the INTRODUCTION. IX unity of the visible Church can be preserved only by its normal union with its visible Head. The Churches, planted among different and antago- nistic races and tongues — for instance, the French, the German, the Italian, the English Churches — are all one in Faith and the Sacraments, through their submission to the See of Peter. So long as the spiritual authority and headship of the Pope was recognised by the English people, they remained united in creed and religion. It was not Canterbury, but Eome that was the source and the touchstone of unity. Though after the apostacy of the sixteenth century the names of the old sees were re- tained, with their accumulated wealth, their extensive patronage, their State protection, Canterbury and the rest of them were unable to hold the English people in unity of faith and practice for a single generation. Though backed up by the sovereign and the whole legislative power of England, and by a code of the most drastic penal laws, they were speedily reduced to the pitiable condition of seeing the people fall away from them in all directions. The nation that had been conspicuous for its religious unity during a thousand years became, from the moment it rejected the authority of the Holy See, a by-word throughout Europe for re- ligious rebellion and sporadic dissent. Had there been, as we are assured by some, no essential change in religion, but only a healthy reform and a purifica- tion from errors and abuses, how came it to pass that this purified and perfected religion began its career by falling into discredit with the people of England, X INTRODUCTION". and to such an extent tliat religious dissent has be- come quite as characteristic of the last oOO years in England, as religious unity and peace had been of all the preceding ages of our history ? I will only add that the leaders of the Established Church need not throw the blame of this upon the English people. Had the various countries of the Continent, which are still united in one faith, withdrawn, like England, from the guidance of the Chief Shepherd, they too, like England, would long since have been similarly torn to pieces by religious strife and discord. The recent revival of Catholic doctrines and prac- tices in the Church of England is very wonderful. It is a hopeful sign. It is a testimony to the patristic dictum that the human mind is ' naturally Christian.' It exhibits a yearning, and a turning of the mind and heart towards the Catholic Church. It is a national clearinsf the way for something more, and is to be regarded as a grace from above. It may be all this ; but it is not yet obedience and submission to the Divine Teacher. A whole cycle of Catholic doctrines might be picked out one by one and strung together, and passionately pro- fessed, upon grounds of private judgment; but that is not submission. It is one thing to recognise that the pasture is sweet and wholesome, and another thing to recognise and to obey the voice of the Shepherd. Goats may enter into the pastures of the sheep, and may select at will the herbs, the grasses and clovers they most fancy, and may doubtless deem them sweet and delicious ; but this does not constitute them sheep of the fold. The sheep hear the voice of their Shep- INTRODUCTION. xi herd and they follow Him. He chooses the pastures ; He leads His sheep hito them. The relations of sheep and Shepherd correspond to those of disciple and Teacher. And hence it is clear that no one ought to be received into the Catholic Church unless he come into the fold through the gate, of which Peter, the chief shepherd, is the keeper. Indeed, I may add, that people who, through negli- gence or inadvertence, have been admitted into the Church without having mastered the fundamental doctrine that they are to be disciples and learners of a living Divine Teacher, are apt, upon encountering temptation, scandal, contradiction, or disappointment, to leave her. They had indeed been within the fold, but they were not of it, because they had never really recognised the ShejDherd. A word on two classes of difficulties raised against the Catholic Churcli by her professional opponents. First, intellectual difficulties : no doctrine is free from them, not even the existence of God and the im- mortality of the soul. Difficulties arise from the limi- tation of our faculties, from mists of ignorance, from prejudices, antipathies, and sinful conduct. The sun is shining, but we see it not while dense fogs or clouds and storms interpose between it and ourselves. We see it not when our vision has become gravely affected, or when we close our eyes. It is a common practice with the opponents of the Catholic Church to endeavour to hold souls back by arraigning before them a multi- tude of difficulties and objections against the doctrines of the Church. To this two things may be said. xii INTRODUCTION. First, it would be easy to string together a most for- midable array of difficulties quoted and examined by Catholic theologians in their great scientific works on theology. But it is obvious that it would be necessary to be a trained theologian, or to spend a lifetime in research, were it needful to give detailed answers to them all. Then there are works, like those of Dr. Littledale and others, written in order to blind and mislead : made up of calumnies, misquotations, and a calculated admixture of truth and error. These are often intended to shock and alienate the moral sense quite as much as the intellectual. If they do not finally succeed in this, at least they may succeed in creating perplexity, anxiety, and delay. Now, instead of entering into a maze of objections, into a labyrinth of difficulties, a shorter and more satisfactory course should be taken. Find the Divine Teacher, find the Supreme Shepherd, find the Vicar of Christ. Concentrate all your mental and moral facul- ties upon finding the Head of God's Church upon earth. This is the key to the situation. The learned work to which these words serve as introduction is intended to aid this inquiry, by setting forth for this doctrine various of its reasonable motives of credibility. If only you find the Divine Teacher, you may leave aU objec- tions to the doctrines he teaches to answer themselves. And if you find him not, then answers to the difficul- ties brought against his teaching will go for little. Secondly, moral difficulties have to be met — in- grained antipathies, 1 traditional prejudices, fears and anxieties : fear to offend and grieve parents, guides, INTRODUCTION. xiii and loved ones ; fear of temporal consequences, loss of station, of influence, of fortune, possibly poverty and want ; anxieties as to whether the call be of God, whether to trust Him without clear insight into the future ; perplexities as to the difference between the motives of credibility and the divine certainty of faith. All these are very real and sharp trials ; but these, or others, are to be expected, for it is said, ' Son, when thou comest to the service of God, stand in justice and in fear, and prepare thy soul for temptation. Humble thy heart, and endure ; incline thy ear, and receive the words of understanding, and make not haste in the time of clouds. Wait on God with patience ; join thyself to God and endure, that thy life may be increased in the latter end ' (Ecclus. ii.). Faith is a gift of God. No man can acquire faith by study alone, as by his own skill. ' No man can come to Me, unless it be given him by My Father ' (John vi.). Or, to quote the Council of Trent : ' If any man saith that without the prevenient in- spiration of the Holy Ghost, and without His help, man can believe, hope, love, or be penitent as he ought, so as that the grace of justification may be be- stowed upon him, let him be anathema' (Sess. vi.). The motives of credibility which may be learnt by reading and study do not produce the absolute and perfect certainty of faith. They lead a man to see that the objects of faith are worthy of belief; they show^ him that lie is under an obligation to give to them the assent of faith. But it is grace, it is God, who inspires the soul with the pious inclination to believe, the 'p^a XIV INTRODUCTION. affectio ad credendum.' The certainty of faith rests, not indeed upon the motives of credibility, or upon facts or arguments that may or may not be evident in them- selves, but upon the veracity of God Who has revealed them. Or, as the Vatican Council defines it : ' Faith is a supernatural virtue, whereby, inspired and assisted by the grace of God, we believe that the thincfs which He has revealed are true ; not because of the intrinsic truth of the things, viewed by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Himself Wlio reveals them, and Who can neither de- ceive nor be deceived.' And again : ' Though the assent of faith is by no means a blind action of the mind, still no man can assent to the Gospel teaching as necessary to obtain salvation, without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Ghost, Who gives to all men sweetness in assenting to and in believing the truth. Wherefore, faith itself, even when it does not work by charity, is in itself a gift of God, and the act of faith is a work appertaining to salvation, by which man yields voluntary obedience to God Himself, by assenting to and co-operating with His grace, which he is able to resist.' And further on the same Council declares : ' That we may be able to satisfy the obligation of embracing the true faith and of constantly persevering in it, God has instituted the Church . . . which both invites to itself those who do not yet believe, and assures its children that the faith which they profess INTRODUCTION. XV rests on the most firm foundation ; and its testimony is efficaciously supported by a power from on high. For our merciful Lord gives His grace to stir up and to aid those who are astray, that they may come to a know- ledge of the truth ; and to those whom He has brought out of the darkness into His own admirable light He gives His grace to strengthen them to persevere in that light, deserting none who desert not Him ' {Cap. de Fide). All this shows that the assent of faith is concerned with the will as well as with the intellect, and that a man who is seeking to come to a knowledge of that article of faith which declares that God has left a Divine Teacher to guide men safely in the affairs of salvation, must give himself to prayer and to humble repentance and contrition as much as to study and to reading. ' The prayer of him that humbleth himself shall pierce the clouds, and he will not depart till the Most High behold' (Ecclus. xxxv.). HERBERT CARDINAL VAUGHAN, Archbishop of Westminster. AUTHOR'S PEEFACE. The particular theory opposed in this book lies at the root of the controversy which we are forced to carry on with our Anglican friends on the subject of Church government at the present moment. It is the theory of the lawful independence of National Churches. Even the Magna Charta has been enlisted in the service of this theory by so able and resj^ected a writer as Lord Selborne. The expression * Let the Anglican Church be free ' is held by his Lordship to express the deter- mination of the Church of England in that century to be independent of Papal jurisdiction.' The present jurisdiction of the See of Canterbury is referred to the general question of the independence of National Churches by so eminent a writer as Dr. Stubbs.^ Mr. Gore goes so far as to deduce from the teaching of St. Cyprian the fundamental independence of each bishop in the whole world. ^ And the present Archbishoj) of Canterbury writes that the ' individual independence of elected bishops ' was the Cyprianic doctrine, but that it is applicable only to * States which have not that intimate union with the Church which the ideal of a Christian nation requires.' •* In other words, the ideal condition, according to his Grace, is the independence, not of each bishop, but of ' A Dcfeiice of the Church of England, by Roundell, Earl of Selborne, fourth edition, 1888. He lays emphasis on the expression ' Anglican,' as though it involved independence of Rome, p. 9. - Eastern Church Association Papers, No. 1. ' R. C. Claims, p. 117, third edition. * Diet, of Chr. Biog. (Smith and Wace), art. ' Cyprian.' a 2 XVIU AUTHOR'S PREFACE. each national Church. And this was certainly the doctrine of some of the most eminent teachers in the Establishment in previous centuries, as for instance, Bishop Overall, the author of part of the Catechism in the Church of England Prayer- book.^ And this ideal of independence is asserted to be the teach- ing of history, the natural outcome of the principles which are to be discovered especially in the primitive Church. There, we are told, there was no dependence on Eome ; there was no shadow of centralisation to be seen ; there, if the Pope comes at times to the front, it is as the occupant of a See, great by reason of its relation to the empire, not because of any special relation to the Apostolic College. It was with this ideal of independence that, according to Dean Church, the Oxford movement was in special and profound sympathy.^ In the following pages, the doctrine set forth by John Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, in his famous letter to King Edward the First, as that of the Church of England, is maintained as the teaching of the primitive Church.^ It is, of course, perfectly true that Magna Charta spoke of the Anglican Church being free ; but the freedom claimed and granted was not from the authority of the Pope, but from the lawlessness of the king — in a word, it involved, amongst other things, freedom to appeal, when necessary, to Eome."* ' The Anglican Church ' at that time signified a religious body in the closest communion with Eome, and under her obedience in spiritual matters. For in that same Charter, the Arch- bishop of Canterbury is called a Cardinal of the Holy Roman ' See the thesis of his Convocation Book. * Oxford Movement, p. 211. He also quotes (p. 47) Hurrell Froude's saying {Remains, edited by J. Keble), viz. ' Let us give up a National Church, and have a real one,' i.e. if a national Church means lack of discipline. Dean Church tliinks that the Oxford movement purged the national Church of its deeper faults. ' ^ See quotation from this letter, infra, p. 381. * Hume says that by Magna Charta 'all checks on appeals were removed.' He is speaking of appeals to Eome. AUTHOR S PREFACE. XIX Church, and the next words to those quoted by Lord Selborne proclaim the fact that the confirmation of ' the lord Pope Innocent ' had been 'obtained' for this very matter.' It is maintained in this book that the close communion with Eome which the Church of England thus avowed, and which it cherished during all those centuries from St. Augustine to the sixteenth century, is a principle deeply embedded in the life of the primitive Church. But when we say that Papal supremacy is found deeply embedded in the life of the primitive Church, what do we exactly mean ? No one who appeals to the primitive Church professes to find in her actual life a literal transcript of his own present position. National Churches certainly did not exist in Europe ; it would be hard to say what could be in- cluded under the national Church of Eome. The appeal must be to something else than a primitive presentation of the form and outward appearance of any system in the nine- teenth century. What, then, do we ourselves mean when we say that the Papal regime was in existence in the earliest beginnings of Christianity ? The question really is as to whether the alleged counterpart in the early Church differs from its successor in the present, in substance, in principle, in essential features. Is the difference, for instance, between the Papal regime of to-day and the position of the Papacy in the first four centuries of the Christian era more than between the oak and the acorn '? Does the difference between the two argue a dissimilarity of constituent elements, or is it merely the necessary difference between various stages of normal growth ? On meeting some one whom we have not seen since his childhood we are often constrained to exclaim, * I should never have known it to be you ! ' Yet it is the same person whom Almighty God brought into the world as an infant, whose powers and appearance have thus developed. This ' Viz. concerning the election of bishops. XX AUTPIOR'S PREFACE. simile of the child and the grown man, as well as that of the oak and the acorn, was adopted in regard to the Church by St. Vincent of Lerins, the author of the formula (though not of the truth) of the * always, everywhere, and by all,' as a test of truth not yet defined. And yet an idea has taken hold of many minds to the effect that when Dr. Newman wrote his book nearly fifty years ago, now called ' The Development of Christian Doctrine,' he was striking out a new theory,' instead of merely illustrating, with that force which belonged to the greatest religious genius of this country, the theory on which the Church has always proceeded in teaching Christian history. His first title may be thought to countenance the idea ; but the second corrects it. And St. Vincent of Lerins is a sufficient witness that the theory which Cardinal Newman so expanded and illustrated was not new even in the fifth century. Dr. Dollinger only reflected the general teaching of the Church when he wrote, sixty years ago, with his usual felicity of expression, the following passage : ' Like all other essential parts of the constitution of the Church, the supremacy was known and acknowledged from the beginning as a divine institution, but it required time to unfold its faculties ; it assumed by degrees the determined form in which the Bishop of Eome exercised systematically the authority entrusted to him for the preservation of the internal and external unity of the Church.' ^ And some years afterwards the same writer says of the Papacy : ' Its birth begins with two mighty, pregnant, and far- reaching words of the Lord. He to whom these words are addressed realises them in his person and in his acts, and transplants the institute to which he has been appointed into ' Cf. Canon Bright's Lessons from the Lives of Three Great Fathers (Pre- face), where he assumes this. * Geschichtc der christUchcn Kirche (1835), vol. i. p. 305 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xxi the centre of the infant Church, to the Eoman capital itself. Here it grows up in silence, occulto reliit arbor (Evo ; and in the earliest times it manifests itself only in particular traits, till the outlines of the ecclesiastical power and action of the Bishop of Eome become ever clearer and more definite. Already even in the times of the Eoman Empire the Popes are the guardians of the whole Church.' ' I venture to call this view of the matter more in accord with history than that proposed by the respected writer to whom I have alluded,^ which in effect prescinds all real development from the action of the Papacy, if it is to be acknowledged as of divine institution. It is the repudiation of the necessity of a real development which seems to me the greatest blot in a book which appeared last year under the auspices of the Bishop of Lincoln, who has made himself responsible for its general accuracy as well as its thesis. I have incorporated in this book an answer to the main points of that work. I have not, how^ever, included an account of the Acacian troubles, because I have dealt with these elsewhere ; ^ but, in point of fact, the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon (with which this book closes) is such as to establish the fact that the law of Christian life is communion with Eome, and any seeming exceptions must be treated as such, and must not be quoted as establishing a principle of action in the future. To the history of that council I venture to draw the especial attention of the reader, because I am not aware of any English work that contams as full an account of its various acts. And it is only by seeing certain expressions in their context that their full value can be gauged, as esta- blishing, not what St. Leo claimed (though that has its value), ' The Church and tJie Churches, p. 31, Eng. trans. * Bright's Lessons, dc, ' In the Dublin Eevieiv for April 1894, where I have shown that com- munion between Eome and the East was not broken ofif at that time, but only suspended in some of its effects, and that consequently no argument can be derived from the existence of sanctity in some members of the Eastern Church. xxii AUTHOR'S PEEFACE. but what the Church at large received without consciousness of novelty or usurpation. I have sometimes referred the reader to the original of Dr. Bollinger's writings, but more often to the English trans- lation, since the former is much less accessible than the latter. I have, in conclusion, to thank his Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster for so kindly enriching this volume with an introduction, and the Censor Deputatus, Father Sydney Smith, S.J., for going beyond the necessities of his office in the way of many helpful suggestions. Note. — Since the above lines were written, a book has appeared ' by the Eegius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, containing a chapter on ' Papahsm and Antiquity,' which consists for the most part of a critique on a book of mine published in 1889.2 Lest the following pages (especially the last two hundred) should seem a miracle of anticipation, I may as well say that the chapter in Canon Bright's work, to which I allude, is a reproduction or recension of an anonymous article by that writer in the ' Church Quarterly Review ' for October 1889, characterised by much bitter- ness against the ' Church of Rome,' calling it an atmosphere of untruthfulness. I do not propose to descend into the arena of vituperation and invective. But I am able to say that the following pages contain a direct answer to most of the arguments advanced in Canon Bright's * Papahsm and Antiquity.' For after reading his article in the ' Church Quarterly,' when it appeared in 1889, I came to the con- clusion that there was need of a fuller account of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon than has yet been given in English, with special reference to the points urged in that article, and now re- peated in Canon Bright's recension of the same. It rarely falls to the lot of a writer to be able to produce an answer to such repre- sentations of history as Canon Bright proposes in his new book, within a few weeks of their appearance. But it is my good fortune ' Waymarks in Church History, by W. Bright, D.D., Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History. 1894. - Depetidence ; or t)ie Insecurity of the Anglican Position. By Rev. Luke Rivington, M.A. (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1889.) AUTHOR'S PREFACE. XXUl to have been able to do this through the accident of having selected the original draft for particular refutation. I would draw especial attention to the treatment of the twenty-eighth Canon of Chalcedon, on pages 437-449, as meeting one of Canon Bright's chief points.' But I feel bound to add a few words here on one passage in Canon Bright's chapter on Papalism, referring to this very subject.-^ The Eegius Professor says (p. 234), 'When Mr, Rivington tells us that " nothing more transpired concerning the canon, and it was omitted from the authorised collection of canons even in the East," he omits, and it is no small omission — it is a real suijpressio veri — to say after Hefele that the Greeks did not adhere to the profession made by Anatolius, and that his successors continued to act as patriarchs under the terms of the new canon, with the full approval of their emperors, and in despite of the protests of Rome.' Will it be believed that Canon Bright has altered my words by a most important, nay, crucial omission ? My words are (' Depen- dence,' p. 60), 'Nothing more transpired concerning the canon. No further apjjeal was made to it at that time, and it was omitted from the authorised collection of canons even in the East.' Now this statement is absolutely true. Hefele, to whom Canon Bright ap- peals, says the same : ' From that time Leo continued to exchange letters with Anatolius, and his successor Gennadius, but there was nothing more said between them on the subject of the twenty-eighth Canon' ('Hist, of the Councils,' § 207). But Canon Bright has omitted the all-important words, which I have placed in italics, and thus made my statement refer to the future instead of the present only. The strangest part of the matter is that in his anonymous article, of which he calls this chapter a ' recension ' (cf. Preface, p. vii), the words I have italicised above appear in their right place, and he there accuses me only of ' going near io suppressio veri ' (' Church Quarterly Review,' October, 1889, p. 133) ; whereas now, havmg in his ' recension ' omitted the crucial words of my statement, he accuses me downright of that form of Hterary dishonesty. But, further, I had actually said on the same page, ' What Con- stantinople did was to continue its encroachments.' And on the next page but one (p. 62) I have given an instance of an attempt to revive the canon, and of the emperor's fruitless endeavour to induce Rome to recognise it. How, then, can Canon Bright say ' This canon is cherished as suggesting that Rome's primacy was due to her secular position alone. - His accusation of ' carelessness ' on p. 227 will be seen by reference to p. 409 infra to be based on a misinterpretation of the passage as a whole. xxiv AUTHOR'S PREFACE. that I even suppressed this ? Nor is this writer correct in saying, ' It is all very well to talk of " the canon invalidated," i.e. from the Papal stand-point, but it is the canon which has practically pre- vailed.' The canon was invalidated from the high AngUcan stand- point; for as Le Quien (' Oriens Christianus,' p. 51) points out, a canon, to be a canon of the whole Church, must be accepted by the West. This was repudiated by the West. Even the Ill}T.'ians did not sign. And when, centuries after, Constantinople was allowed to take precedence of other Eastern sees, it was not on account of this canon ; and in the previous centuries it was not the canon that prevailed, but unjustifiable encroachments. Does Canon Bright imagine that a canon passed under such disgraceful circum- stances as I have described below (cf. p. 440) — dropped by the arch- bishop and emperor in whose reign it was proposed — could override the Nicene settlement ? The Pope said, No. And when Acacius came on to the scene and acted on the canon, it was to place heretics, who opposed the doctrine of the Incarnation, as defined at Chalcedon, in the Eastern sees — heretics like Peter the Fuller at Alexandria. Canon Bright, in the same paragraph, quotes Libe- ratus against me ; but my account altogether agrees with that of Liberatus, who in the same chapter speaks of the ' usurpations ' of AnatoHus, and in the passage quoted by Canon Bright is stigma- tising the Erastianism and encroachments that went on under the pretext of that canon, and in the following chapter describes the usurpations of the heretic Acacius (' detectus hereticus ').' In fact this whole passage in Canon Bright's book is, I regret to say, a tissue of misrepresentations, his accusation of suppressio veri being actually supported by omitting the very line which confines my statement to the present, whilst the truth supposed to be suppressed is concerned with the future. ' Breviarium, cap. xviii. L. R. The Presbyteuy, Spanish Place, London, W. March 30, 1894. CONTENTS Introduction by the Cardinal Archbishop op Westminster . . v Author's Preface xvii PEEIOD I. A.D. 96-300. CHAPTEE I. THE EPISTLE OF ST. CLEMENT ; OR THE TYPE SET. § 1. The Church of Rome intervenes in the Schism at Corinth, p. 1. § 2. Reasons why St. Clement omitted his Name, 2. § 3. The authoritative Tone of the Letter, 7. § 4. Probably a Case of Appeal, 8 . pp. 1-10 CHAPTER 11. THE CLEMENTINE ROMANCE. § 1. St. Clement's Personality, p. 11. § 2. The Clementine Literature, 12. § 3. Its Use by the Tubingen School, 13. § 4. Use by anti-Papal Writers to account for the Expression ' See of Peter,' 13. § 5. Impossibility of this Supposition, 15. § 6. The List of Hegesippus anterior to the Romance at Rome, 17. § 7. Irenaius on the See of Peter, 22. § 8. The Clementines at Rome later than Tertullian, 25. § 9. Historical Results, 29 . pp. 11-31 CHAPTER m. ST. IREN^US, OR THE SOVEREIGNTY OP THE CHURCH OF ROME. § 1. His Statement of the Rule of Faith, viz. Agreement with Rome, p. 32. § 2. Protestant Endeavours to wrest his Meaning : e.g. (a) Rome's Orthodoxy secured by the Confluence of Strangers, 34 ; (b) her ' principalitas ' only Primitiveness, 35 ; or (c) due to her secular Position, 36 ; [d) umligtie, not = everywhere, 86 ; (e) in qud, not = in communion with, 37 . pp. 32-38 CHAPTER IV. ST. VICTOR, OR THE GUARDIAN OF THE COMMON UNITY. § 1. The Modes of observing Easter, p. 39. § 2. St. Victor's Attempt to pro- duce Uniformity, 40. § 3. St. Irena-us' Intervention, 42. Note on Mr. Puller's Interpretation, 44 • PP. 39- XXVI CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. THE DOCTBINE OF ST. CYPEIAN ON UNITY. § 1. St. Cyprian on the Authority of St. Peter, p. 47. § 2. The Occasion of his Treatise on Unity, viz. (o) Danger to the Episcopal Authority, 50 ; (/3) an unlawful Bishop at Eome, 55. § 3. Teaches Papal Supremacy inci- dentally, 57. § 4. St. Peter in the Treatise on Unity, 60. § 5. Corollaries, 62 pp. 47-64 CHAPTER VI. ST. CYPBIAN ON APPEALS TO ROME. § 1. Edsumd of the Saint's Teaching on Unity, p. 65. § 2. Fortunatus de- nounced for going to Eome, but not the Principle of Appeal, 67. § 3. Case of Marcian referred to Eome, 70. § 4. Spanish Bishops may be, but do not deserve to be, restored by the Pope, 72. Note on Mr. Puller's Interpre- tation pp. 65-76 CHAPTER Vn. ST. CYPRIAN'S ERROR ON BAPTISM BY HERETICS. § 1. Doctrine of Unity misapplied ; his threefold Error, p. 77. § 2. Convokes a Council on the Subject, 81. §3. Second Council and Letter to Jubaianus, 84. § 4. Eefers the Matter to Eome, 86. § 5. Meanwhile holds third Council and decides in favour of Eebaptising, 88 . . . pp. 77-93 CHAPTER Vin. Rome's decision and cyprian's irritation. § 1. St. Stephen's Decision, p. 94. § 2. St. Cyprian's Legation to Eome, 97. § 3. Letter to Pompeius and Firmilian, 97. § 4. Firmilian"s passionate Eeply, 100. § 5. Did St. Stephen actually excommunicate St.Cj-prian? 105. § 6. Did St. Cyprian retract ? 111. § 7. Corollary as to Papal InfaUibility, 114 pp. 94-116 CHAPTER IX. ROME, ALEXANDRIA, AND ANTIOCH, SEES OF PETER. § 1. Only Peter left a Successor of his Apostolate, p. 117. § 2. Eome the Eallying-point from the first, 118. § 3. The three Sees of Peter, 120. § 4. Eelationship of Eome to Alexandria, 121. § 5. Eelatiouship of Eome to Antioch, 122. § 6. Why these three Sees chosen, 125. Appendix on the Popes' witness to their Office, 127 PP- 117-136 CONTENTS. XXvii PEEIOD II. A.D. 300-384. CHAPTEE X. THE DONATISTS AND THE COUNCIL OF ARLES. § 1, The Origin of the Donatist Schism, p. 139. § 2. The Donatists appeal to the Emperor, who refers them to Kome, 140. § 3. The Papal Sentence, 141. § 4. Final in the Eyes of Augustine, as that of Peter's See, 142. § 5. Case reheard to sift additional Facts, 144. § 6. British Bishops at Aries, 146. § 7. Donatist Erastianism, 147. § 8. Archbishop Laud's Mistranslation, 148 pp. 139-152 CHAPTEE XI. THE COUNCIL OF NIC^A. ' Part I. — Beasons of its Meeting. § 1. The good Eesults of Heresies, p. 153. § 2. Need of a Council compatible with Papal Infallibility, 154. § 3. The Circumstances, 155, § 4. Papal Consent, 157. § 5. Why the Pope desired a Council, 159. Part II. — The Cozmcil itself. § 1. The Pope presided, p. 161. § 2. Papal Jurisdiction not in Question, therefore not directly mentioned, 164. Part III.— The Sixth Canon. 