Footnote 162:[ (return) ]
See c. Cels. VIII. 68-75.
Footnote 163:[ (return) ]
Comment. in Joh. VI. 38.
Footnote 164:[ (return) ]
Accordingly he often speaks in a depreciatory way of the οχλος της εκκλησιας (the ignorant) without accusing them of being unchristian (this is very frequent in the books c. Cels., but is also found elsewhere).
Footnote 165:[ (return) ]
Origen, who is Augustine's equal in other respects also, and who anticipated many of the problems considered by the latter, anticipated prophetically this Father's view of the City of God—of course as a hope (c. Cels. viii. 68 f). The Church is also viewed as το κατα Θεον πολιτευμα in Euseb., H. E. V. Præf. § 4, and at an earlier period in Clement.
Footnote 166:[ (return) ]
This was not done even by Origen, for in his great work "de principiis" we find no section devoted to the Church.
Footnote 167:[ (return) ]
It is frequently represented in Protestant writers that the mistake consisted in this identification, whereas, if we once admit this criticism, the defect is rather to be found in the development itself which took place in the Church, that is, in its secularisation. No one thought of the desperate idea of an invisible Church; this notion would probably have brought about a lapse from pure Christianity far more rapidly than the idea of the Holy Catholic Church.
Footnote 168:[ (return) ]
Both repeatedly and very decidedly declared that the unity of faith (the rule of faith) is sufficient for the unity of the Church, and that in other things there must be freedom (see above all Tertull., de orat., de bapt., and the Montanist writings). It is all the more worthy of note that, in the case of a question in which indeed the customs of the different countries were exceedingly productive of confusion, but which was certainly not a matter of faith, it was again a bishop of Rome, and that as far back as the 2nd century, who first made the observance of the Roman practice a condition of the unity of the Church and treated nonconformists as heterodox (Victor; see Euseb., H. E. V. 24). On the other hand Irenæus says: 'η διαφωνια της νηστειας την 'ομονοιαν της πιστεως συνιστησι.
Footnote 169:[ (return) ]
On Calixtus see Hippolyt., Philos. IX. I2; and Tertull., de pudic.
Footnote 170:[ (return) ]
See on the other hand Tertull., de monog., but also Hippol., l.c.
Footnote 171:[ (return) ]
Cyprian's idea of the Church, an imitation of the conception of a political empire, viz., one great aristocratically governed state with an ideal head, is the result of the conflicts through which he passed. It is therefore first found in a complete form in the treatise "de unitate ecclesiæ" and, above all, in his later epistles (Epp. 43 sq. ed. Hartel). The passages in which Cyprian defines the Church as "constituta in episcopo et in clero et in omnibus credentibus" date from an earlier period, when he himself essentially retained the old idea of the subject. Moreover, he never regarded those elements as similar and of equal value. The limitation of the Church to the community ruled by bishops was the result of the Novatian crisis. The unavoidable necessity of excluding orthodox Christians from the ecclesiastical communion, or, in other words, the fact that such orthodox Christians had separated themselves from the majority guided by the bishops, led to the setting up of a new theory of the Church, which therefore resulted from stress of circumstances just as much as the antignostic conception of the matter held by Irenæus. Cyprian's notion of the relation between the whole body of the Church and the episcopate may, however, be also understood as a generalisation of the old theory about the connection between the individual community and the bishop. This already contained an œcumenical element, for, in fact, every separate community was regarded as a copy of the one Church, and its bishop therefore as the representative of God (Christ).